Now I feel pretty awful. I really didn't mean to come over as the "SCSI Heavy" - I've had too many arguments over the years about SCSI vs. IDE to not be aware of the levels of fanaticism that exist in both camps. Sorry Bitt, I think I was a bit heavy handed there and it was not neccessary. I hope you can let me off the hook for allowing myself to pump up my blood pressure .

I'll be honest: there are few differences between IDE and SCSI that are worth arguing about. Occasionaly, one camp (or the other) gets a bit ahead on some aspect of performance, but one thing that a lot of people seem to forget is that IDE and SCSI actually came from the same disk technology! IBM is in fact responsible for both, and they are in the end related at the root of a technology tree spanning nearly 20 years. The earliest forms of SCSI, called SASI (Shugart Associates Small disk Interface) and the ST506/ESDI (Enhanced Small Disk Interface) interface were pretty much the same thing. ST506 has finally evolved into a Disk-only high-performance single threaded disk interface standard, whereas SCSI has turned into a lower performance, multi-device, multi-threading oriented standard for all sorts of hardware. It could be argued that USB has come from the experience of SCSI: there are all sorts of technical connections that could be made to what IDE has become.

I am always suspicious of MarketSpeak, as I have had to work with technical marketing people all my life. What I have always (without fail) found puzzling is that not one single one of them has had an engineering background, yet they are selling engineering products.