1) The theoretical maximum speed of USB is faster than the theoretical maximum speed of ethernet, yes. But there's a lot of system overhead associated with USB, making it much slower than that. So actually ethernet is a tiny bit faster at the current time.

As long as no other ethernet devices try and use the same network.

Does anyone have any real world data transfer figures (minus the overheads)

I'm just glad I paid the extra and bought a dual speed hub (my PC's are 100Mb) so at least I have the choice.

3) Even if Empeg could source the chips and make them work in their design, the other hardware inside the unit isn't fast enough to keep up with the 100mb rate anyway- the drives are linked through an ISA bus that would limit your upload speed anyway.

Ahh! now I see the difficulties. If you look at a new fast ethernet PCI card (like from 3COM) there is basically only 1 IC on there and no real diffence in cost over 10Mb. I thought they could have used an IC like that. But that assumes you have a PCI bus!! Wrong!
So old technology IS the limiting factor.

"Ethernet is cool".
Fast ethernet would be excellent!

CJ.

Mk2 12Gb Green