Comments on: Intel’s Thunderbolt I/O reportedly broadening beyond Mac in 2012

By: marc rockwell

marc rockwell — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:32:00 +0000

bring it on usb 3.0 and thunderbolt i smell new laptop for me Windows or Apple ?

By: TheHinac

TheHinac — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:11:00 +0000

Fire-wire Failure all over again. More over its tech that’s being forced out to help Intel’s stock by forcing people to pay royalties for a tech that most people will never use. I have laptop with fire-wire, never used it. Like the person madcow3417 uses it for one thing. The original plan was to build it in to current usb 3.0 ports. But then Intel knew it wouldn’t get off the ground, because now you have devices that are thunder and usb 3.0 going in the same port but 3.0 is cheap so what are people going to buy? Oh that’s right the cheaper one. So now they have their own port style from my understanding. Which means eventually manufactures are going to be stuck going, crap everyone else is doing it and using it as a selling point now we have to too, to keep up. Problem is a lot of manufactures still chose not to adopt, and all cheaper systems still did not add it. Cheaper system comprise most systems sold. Such is the point. another Fire-wire failure.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:40:00 +0000

My thunderbolt port has been great for hooking up an HDMI adapter… and that’s it. My dream is to one day buy a peripheral to plug into there that’s only twice as expensive as its USB counterpart.

By: DJM

DJM — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:42:00 +0000

Correction – It’s been available on the Vaio Z (which is a notebook) for quite some time now

By: Crunch

Crunch — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:44:00 +0000

I’ve been enjoying multiple Thunderbolt devices since July and I also use eSATA as well as SATA III SSD’s. USB 3.0 will likely be fast enough for most people, but Thunderbolt open up a truckload of possibilities, by carrying PCI-e and DisplayPort signals simultaneously and it’s extremely scalable with the daisy-chaining of up to 6 devices (not including the TB port on your computer). USB 3.0 won’t be able to do ANY of that and Thunderbolt happens to be approx. twice as fast to boot. My personal experience with Thunderbolt is the seamless nature of it all. Daisy-chaining multiple storage devices and then plugging in a 27″ 2560×1440 mini-DisplayPort monitor at the end (of the chain of devices or by itself, for that matter), Thunderbolt makes it seem effortless. Nothing ever slows down either, because it is 10Gbps (twice the bandwidth of USB 3.0) per channel (2; One is PCI-e or “data” and the other is DisplayPort), AND you get the same speed on both channels on every one of the up to 6 devices that you can chain together. It’s also scalable on another front in that it will be able to reach up to 100Gbps, as the technology evolves and Intel has stated that all current computers with Thunderbolt, as well as the current TB cables, will work with future TB tech! That remains to be seen, but from what I’ve seen so far, expect crazy things at crazy speeds………..! ;-)

So if speed is all you need, USB 3.0 will be good enough for most people, like I said, but if you want to expand your options beyond things that we cannot even imagine at this early stage, then it’s Thunderbolt all the way.