Thunderbolt 3

Thunderbolt 3 may be the wunderport of the future, but sometimes it feels like nobody told the peripheral-makers that. While notebooks like the most recent MacBook Pro may have switched entirely to Thunderbolt 3 and the USB Type-C connector, actually finding things to plug into them can be hard going. Enter Belkin's Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock, one of the first to market to take advantage of the connection's 40 Gbps throughput and power/display/data flexibility.

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Yesterday, Intel reveal its big industry push to make Thunderbolt 3 the de facto standard in wired connectivity. It enumerated the benefits of this technology, which is basically a beefed up USB-C connection. One of those is the ability for a single cable to do everything from power to data to display. No where is that going to be more evident than in Elgato's Thunderbolt 3 Dock specifically designed with the new MacBook Pro in mind and finally shipping next month.

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Just when you thought the industry has settled down on adopting USB-C as the one connector to rule them all, Intel comes along using its industry clout to push another thing forward. Unlike its predecessors, however, Thunderbolt 3 is fortunately based on USB-C, making it possible to use the same type of connection for both, just like in the latest MacBook Pros. And if Intel has its way, Thunderbolt 3 will be in every desktop, laptop, or computing device, thanks to its generous but also aggressive campaign.

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Intel is baking Thunderbolt 3 into its new chips and ditching licensing fees, in order to avoid adoption of the high-speed connection stuttering to a halt. The processor company said today that it will make it much easier - particularly more affordable - for third-party hardware companies to embrace Thunderbolt 3, the multi-purpose cable which can deliver data, video, and power over a single connection. The move has already won approval from Apple and Microsoft.

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The LaCie 2big Dock is entirely massive - not necessarily big physically by everyone's standards, but big in its capability to handle big jobs. It's made with "up to 20TB of internal storage" and connects to a wide variety of media to store data in a big way. Inside are Seagate IronWolf Pro enterprise-class drives and RAID optimization as well as a LaCie RAID Manager.

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The slim Compute Card may have been the star of Intel's CES 2017 show, but it is hardly the only big thing it revealed back then. For the more traditional computer users, Intel has also unveiled the next generation of its "Next Unit of Computing", or NUC mini PCs. Aside from naturally running on its next processors of computing, namely the 7th gen Kaby Lake Core chips, these NUCs also signal the return of the Thunderbolt on the small boxes as well as heralding the arrival of ultra fast Optane SSDs.

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Elgato has introduced its soon-to-launch Thunderbolt 3 Dock, a device that supports dual 4K displays, laptop charging, fast data transfers, and more. The dock, like ones before it, is designed for demanding laptop users who need to, at times, use a full workstation comprising external monitors and, perhaps, an external storage drive or two. The dock is designed for both Windows and macOS laptops.

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CES 2017 is almost upon us, and while the annual Consumer Electronics Show will be dominated by vast televisions and, increasingly, car tech, it's the smaller gadgets I'm most looking forward to. If there's one thing 2016 has taught us, it's that we shouldn't get too attached to our favorite celebrities; if there's a second thing, though, it's that the brave new dongle world we live in is surprisingly poorly populated. Yes, Apple, I'm looking at you.

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CES 2017 is still a week away, but Lenovo hasn't been able to contain its ThinkPad excitement, revealing a fresh batch of laptops and accessories ahead of the show. As always, the Lenovo ThinkPad range is of particular interest to business users, but that doesn't stop regular consumers eyeing them up too. This time around, there are some particularly intriguing accessories like USB Type-C and Thunderbolt 3 docks, which might even coax some MacBook Pro owners into opening their wallets.

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AKiTiO has rolled out a new external graphics enclosure that is designed for users of AIO, notebook, and SFF computer systems who want a graphics upgrade. The device is called Node and it connects to your computer or other device via a Thunderbolt 3 port and inside the Node enclosure is a discrete graphics card. The enclosure is large enough to support video cards that have very large cooling solutions.

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Remember when USB-C was a bad word? It wasn’t long after the original 12-inch MacBook landed that we began our love-hate relationship with USB-C. It was universal, which is great, but without the lineup of our favorite ports on the MacBook, many started to consider life a dongled hell. With the new MacBooks Pro, Apple did its best to change all of that, and its famed reality distortion field helped assuage much of our contempt for USB-C.

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It’s pretty fashionable to hate dongles the past year or so. Since Apple introduced its USB-C reliant MacBook (you know, the 12-inch model), people have been lamenting the existence of cable add-ons. It’s a fair criticism, considering we’d gone so long with the spoils of ports donning the side of our MacBooks Pro and Air, but it’s time to turn the corner. In many ways, dongles are better than ports. No, really.

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