firewire card readers with adapters vs USB card readers

does anybody use firewire card readers? & can they suggest a good one?

through some internet research, it seems they are for downloading alot of images quickly.

Also, is firewire 400 much or any faster than USB 2.0 or 3.0? can anybody tell me their experience with either? as I am debating whether to get myself a firewire card reader. I like firewire 800 as this seems the fastest but is a bit more expensive.

since I have SD cards & Sony memory sticks I would get compact flash adapters for these & use them in the firewire card reader. Would this be a good strategy? or am I better off just staying with USB?

For those who use firewire card readers, for speediness of downloading, do you just download everything off the card 1st, & then add metadata such as keywords, author etc after downloading?

or do you add the metadata to sets of images in the metadata fields of your ingester software & then download.

I ask because i would think that if one adds the metadata to sets of images as they are downloading instead of just downloading 1st & then dong metadata after, would this slow down the downloading process & thus almost defeat the purpose of a fast firewire card reader?

Sossity