Here is the thing about missing firewire. When my mom was in the market for a new laptop to use as her primary computer, she was planning on using it for email, word processing, photo storage, and general web use. She never had any intention or thought of editing video. But then she had to do a project for some kind of certification she was seeking (she is a teacher), and she needed to shoot some video, and turn it in as a DVD. So now all of the sudden her firewire port and iDVD's OneStep DVD feature are really nice. The point is it's hard to know what you will ever use a computer for during it's entire lifetime.