Technology, Support, and News Forum

[kanaloa]

Is thunderbolt the future? I'm betting it is. I remember telling my father in the late 90's that something was going to come along that would be 'plug and play' ... and when USB started to emerge, I knew that was it. There was a time when USB wasn't used much, but now the multi-million dollar industry of flash drives, not to mention almost every time of hardware you can think of, all relies on the USB device.

I am going out on a limb and suggesting Thunderbolt, and not USB 3, is the future. Thunderbolt is an amazingly fast I/O device that I think is going to change external devices and how we connect them to our PC's and Mac's. While current devices are in the hundreds of dollars price wise, this will change when it's more widely accepted and produced.

I created a page here at PRO since I believe it is such a big part of the future, hoping to grab some folks out of Google searches looking for information on it.

http://www.pronetworks.org/thunderbolt

What are your thoughts on Thunderbolt? I'd love to hear them.

[yeshuas]

This is the first I have heard of thunderbolt

[shreader]

I have 2 PC's w/ USB 3.0 & a SSD Hdd plugged into a SATA 6 Gb/s connector (+ several large spinner Hdd's too).
They do fly when uploading large files w/ a fast USB 3.0 flash drive, thats all I buy now FAST ones, not the cheapo USB 3.0 flash drives that are not much faster than USB 2.0

NTS one will need a blazing fast Hdd & connector for a Thunderbolt external drive.
I'd be open to trying & testing it

[kanaloa]

I'm eager to get my hands on one myself. I have two Thunderbolt ports on my new retina MBP, plus USB3, so I can test them side by side.

Problem is, most Thunderbolt drives costs a fortune, like $600 for a SSD that's supposed to be twice as fast as USB3 is. Not a big deal with small files, but when transferring a lot of data, it's a bigger issue of course.

Part of me imagines a world (Microsoft's already working on it I think) where 'flash' drives are how we carry our OS and files around with us. We can plug them into any terminal and our customized computer is right there with us. Of course our data will be protected on our drive just in case we loose it.

But until now, the speed didn't exist for such configurations really. But now, it's a whole new ballgame. 10GBs is pretty darn fast.

[shreader]

Ouch, this weeks specials @ my local FRY's electronics is selling a Apple Thunderbolt Cable (2m) + Limit 1 per Household.

For $45.00, seems a bit steep.

I haven't seen any Thunderbolt PCI Express cards yet though.
I suppose one will pay the price for the newest technology.

[kanaloa]

Yeah it's not cheap yet, but man it's fast...

I hope once it starts getting mass produced the prices will drop considerably. My USB3 drives are fast, but I still think Thunderbolt will really make external drives seem almost seamless like internal drives. Especially if the TB drives are SSD's (which I suspect they will be since that seems to also be the growing trend).