I know an spanish company: www.citriq.com. They mount computers for music, and sell a laptop that comes with no firewire port, but a firewire express card with TI chip is included. They guarantee that it will work with most FW audio cards that use to have major problems with non TI FW chip. May be that could be the solution for all the non TI based FW chips laptops problems: no firewire chip laptop... The chipset that?s inside is a Intel HM55 Express Chipset. I don?t know if that chipset is built with no firewire chip, but may be could be interesting some research in that direction...:)

CHEERS.