Sorry, but over here in the land of cheap broadband, I have no problem downloading GB sized files fairly quickly. Plus, my Mac doesn't seem to be worried about sitting there for hours, if necessary, downloading its' brains out!

Firewire has it's uses - my Mac is a pretty old one, stuck with USB1, too - but the Firewire interface is zippy fast!

Actually had one download from a fast server come in at well over 1MB/sec I remember the old dialup 28.8 baud days. Yikes! "And you tell that to the kids of today, and they don't believe you"...