Your peripherals could be getting a whole lot quicker as the 1394 Trade Association (the people behind Firewire technology) announced that a new version of Firewire would go all the way up to 3.2Gbps. That's basically a DVD movie-worth of data transferred over the cable every 12 seconds. 

The new specification, know as S3200, is backwardly compatible so it will still use the cables and connectors. Also the trade group promises that the cable will be able to carry enough juice to power your external peripherals (such as external hard drives) without having to resort to plugging in extra AC adaptors.

It said the new speeds are quick enough to carry uncompressed hi-definition video pictures over long distances at much lower cost than such as HDMI.

"The S3200 standard will sustain the position of IEEE 1394 as the absolute performance leader in multi-purpose I/O ports for consumer applications in computer and CE devices," said James Snider, executive director, 1394 Trade Association. "There is a very clear migration path from 800 Mbps to 3.2 Gbps, with no need for modifications to the standard and no requirement for new cables or connectors."

However, Intel is working on the USB 3.0 specs and promises speeds up to 4.8Mbps, but Firewire has alway had less CPU overhead so is still the best performance-wise.

The S3200 specification is expected to be ratified by early February with product appearing soon afterwards.