Product: DuoConnect Company: Adaptec Website: http://www.adaptec.com Estimated Street Price: 115.99$ Review By: Julien Jay

Introduction

For different reasons, people may be using external hard disks or burners on their PCs. These kinds of devices have one common point; they require huge bandwidth to achieve maximum performance. To date, two different high speed interfaces are available to connect high demanding external devices to a computer: FireWire and USB 2.0. The FireWire interface is an inheritance from the Mac that is mainly used by digital video devices, while USB 2.0 is the new standard (defined by the USB Implementers Forum) for supporting speeds up to 480 Mbps. Both standards are interesting and powerful despite a little theoretical advantage for the USB 2.0. Until now, users had to have an IEEE1394 PCI adapter and a PCI USB 2.0 adapter. If you do the math, you can see how having a FireWire & USB 2.0 adapter in a PC wastes two precious PCI slots. That’s why Adaptec came out with an original, genuine idea. They combined the Adaptec DuoConnect, FireWire & USB 2.0 connectors into a single PCI card, thus taking your computing experience to an entirely new level while saving precious space in your PC. Furthermore, the purchase of a single card is more affordable than buying an IEEE 1394 controller separately and a USB 2.0 adapter. In this review we will take a look at how the DuoConnect performs.

Features

• Combination FireWire and USB 2.0 card: add both high-speed I/0 standards to your computer with a single card;
  no need to open your computer twice, or occupy two PCI slots

• Complete DV Editing and Creation Software Package: includes MGI VideoWave 4 SE for editing your digital video,
  and Sonic MyDVD 3 for creating DVD, VideoCD, or DVD-on-CD discs

• Full USB-IF Hi-Speed Certification: guarantees USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 compatibility and hassle-free operation