FireWire Depot is showing off a new FireWire combo hub/repeater and a 2.5-inch FireWire hard drive enclosure as the highlights of their booth at Macworld Expo in San Francisco.
“For G4 Cube users, it’s a dream come true,” said Jeff Chasick, president of FWDepot. “You just plug it into the bottom of the Cube and you never have to turn your Cube over again.”
In addition, the hub/repeater is stackable for additional units with a center locking button.
“What sets this enclosure apart from the competitors is that it’s the first to have bus-power via USB for PowerBooks,” Chasick said. “It comes with all the instructions on how to add a hard drive which customers would buy from other third-party dealers, and comes with a carrying case for the drive, as well as USB and FireWire cables.”
Chasick said more and more Mac users are finding it’s cheaper to buy the enclosure, or case, for a FireWire drive and add their own drive.
“It gives them added flexibility to add the hard drive that meets their needs, whether it be the capacity of the drive, speed, or price,” he said. “Customers are finding it’s really not that difficult to build their own drive. It’s not like the old days of soldering pins and doing complicated configuring.”