Thumbdrives, keychain drives, memory keys--whatever you call them, tiny flash sticks are indispensable tools. Plug one into your PC, drag and drop files (or photos, MP3s, or videos), then pop the drive out and drop it in your bag or pocket--data storage couldn't be easier or more portable. Until recently, 100 percent of all thumbdrives were USB based. Seeing a hole in the market, Kanguru Solutions debuted a FireWire-based flash drive, appropriately named Fire Flash. (And as far as we know, this is the only company that has such a drive.)

So, is there a need for a FireWire flash drive? To be fair, we've pitted the Kanguru Fire Flash against its kin, the Kanguru Mini Drive, a USB-based thumbdrive. On the one hand, if all of your USB ports are occupied, an open FireWire port and a FireWire flash drive start to look like a match made in heaven. However, while the Fire Flash's write speeds are nearly comparable to those of the Mini drive, they lag behind the top speeds of a bunch of other USB drives. Other considerations also give us pause. For one thing, the FireWire drive is costlier than equivalent USB drives. And the Fire Flash drive requires a six-pin FireWire port for bus power. Unfortunately, many laptops have only a four-pin port, meaning you'll have to use the included FireWire-to-USB adapter to draw power from the USB. But wait, didn't we buy this drive because our USB ports were crowded?

Who's the winner of this head-to-head? The Fire Flash is all smoke and no fire. We'll stick with the USB flash drive.