On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Chuck Cole wrote: > But that says the USB 2.0's 480 mb/s is no better than 100mb/s of the > net, and that is much slower than direct access to a drive. The extra > USB speed provides a net speed buffer in that case. Each of those cases > is much slower than a direct access to a fast drive, and that was the > original point. I'm not sure anyone has mentioned the new kid on the block: External SATA (a.k.a., eSATA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#External_SATA That's gonna be sweet. ;-) On the topic of what is good enough: Most of the time I don't need much. Let's face it, I was happy when I got a 2400 baud modem! Recently, I couldn't get a pcmia card to work in an old Gateway laptop, so I bought a USB 2.0 wireless card. Only problem is that the USB port on the old box is USB 1.1 which might get me as much as 8 Mbps. While surfing the net from that box, you really can't tell that it is "slow" by current standards. It works fine. I have no complaints. Mike