Firewire are USB 2 offer high speed ways to connect to devices, making them ideal ways to connect to external hard drives or digital video cameras.

For Linux Laptops, the Zonet ZUC2700 FireWire/USB2 PCMCIA card is recommended for laptops. In Mark's testing with Mandriva 2006, the card Just Worked by plugging it in, no special drivers or configuration were required. It includes a port plug in an additional power adapter. It's not needed for low-power applications like flash card readers, or when the external drive supplies it's own power, but may be need for an external drive that depends on USB for power. No power supply is included, but ZoNet support reports that the kind that should be used with it is: "a 5v, center positive, DC power adapter".

The Thinkpad T23 is a model which has two PCMCIA slots on top of each other. This card fit in the slot with the recommended 2wire card underneath.