the difference: 12mbps vs 480mbps. that’s a pretty large difference. now ya, adding one song to your ipod, you prolly won’t notice a large difference in transfer time, but just try plopping a few gigs at once. you can get a usb 2.0 pci card for cheap now, i bought one for extra ports, and it was about 15-20 bucks, and i’m sure you can prolly find it cheaper if you look hard enough. the install is easy too, just plug it into a pci port lol. if it was up to me, i’d buy the card, you’ll be happy that you aren’t waiting overnight for the songs to transfer to your ipod, haha.