Why firewire? Less time in my hotel room downloading equals more time in the bar:)

I thought you were shooting with the 7D.

I am Bill, but I have firewire 800 and firewire 400 CF readers that I use for download. At the end of a long day shooting on two cameras I can have over 100GBs of footage that I need to copy to two hard drives. Currently I use a 17inch Mac but I'm having a look to see if there's an alternative.

Ah, OK. Is the firewire card reader lots faster than USB? When I copy over a full 16 gig card it finishes in just a few minutes. Haven't really timed it but it doesn't take long at all. I guess using a slower computer like a netbook would affect that.I rarely have much more than 50 gigs in a day so you're dealing with a lot more footage than I do.

Yes, firewire is faster, not dramatically faster, but when the cab is waiting and the producer is giving you the hurry-up it makes a difference - albeit a small one.