When I was investigating this a few months ago for use with a laptop, firewire was definitely the way to go.
As although USB2 (480Mbps) is in theory slightly quicker than firewire (400Mbps) in practice firewire wins the race.
More importantly, each firewire device is guaranteed its bandwidth, whereas each USB2 device must share its bandwidth. (e.g. a USB2 Hard drive and Soundcard operating at the same time will each be running at 240Mbps, whereas equivalent firewire devices will both be operating at 400Mbps)
I'll appreciate anyone with any practical experience of all this to give the thumbs up or thumbs down on what I've just written!
