Ricoh is a component chip used in many computers, which brings the entire machine reputation and value down. If you see it in the Device Manager of any machine don't buy!

Hi, I have to agree with everyone here who say that Ricoh chips suck! Ricoh is the worse reputation destroyer of any build of laptop. It is also found in my HP Elitebook 8440P laptop, which is otherwise a good machine except for over-heating too quickly. The 1394 Firewire chipset is Ricoh, and so is the Card-reader. Someone asked about how to know if the card reader is also Ricoh: Click Start, type "Device Manager" and press enter. In the device manager treeview of components listed for your system, expand items such as or similar to the following: IDE/ATA/ATAPI controlers; Smart Card Readers; IEEE 1394 bus host controlers If you see Ricoh anywhere, never buy that machine. It's the worse machine for Audio/Video or any media-based projects that require Firewire. And yes, to answer the question directly, if the card reader is also Ricoh, you will get even worse performance if using a card reader to firewire adapter. I was so desperate that I bought such an adapter from the U.S and had it shipped to here in South Africa. I paid 10 times the cost of the card in shipping alone! But when I tried it I was thoroughly disappointed.

Someone also mentioned here the life-saving Asio4All software. Yes, I also fully agree. Very brilliant developer that built this thing. Asio4All can turn a cheap Audio card into a low-latency device for midi and audio realtime effects processing. It's quite amazing, really. I have a high-end Motu 896HD Firewire Audio interface, and when I use that through my laptop's built-in Ricoh firewire card, I get all sorts of dropouts from the high-end Motu drivers, even if I put them through Asio4All. That's how badly Ricoh sucks! It far outpaces even the cheap IDT High Definition Audio onboard the laptop through Asio4All. But when I use that Motu 896HD through my PC through the PCI Firewire card, that thing rocks! I can set the latency as low as 92 samples without dropout on an old quad-core motherboard PC which I built in 2011. It is so low in my Sonar DAW that it is difficult to notice that you're not directly playing a hardware synth.

Ok I hope this helps anyone out here.