USB v FireWire

[Colin McDonald]

Folks,

It is likely that every school in my area is going to be provided with 
a dedicated Sound Engineering workstation based on a iMac and ProTools, 
with some decent mics (sorry can't remember which) and Tannoy powered 
monitors.  I saw the set up today and met the new consultant 
(experienced and qualified engineer) who is providing the training. 
This is fantastic news, after years of struggling with really baseline 
PCs (HP eVectras) on a very slow network and almost complete ignorance 
of requirements for audio and MIDI from the contractor.

Just one thing bothers me. The interfaces between the mics etc and the 
Macs are to be M-Audio USB. I would have thought it would be better to 
go FireWire, even if only to future-proof the installations. The 
engineer says she hasn't ever used FireWire audio (external HDs 
excepted).

What do you guys think?

Colin McDonald