News - Thunderbolt heading to Windows

[HEXUS]

No longer an Apple Mac exclusive.

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[RockGod117]

I can't ever see myself using this I/O.

[Roobubba]

I definitely can. If it means not having to wait hours to transfer the 200-500GB of data we routinely collect in 24h at a synchrotron facility (and more if it's a good trip!), this would be really, truly useful. As it is, we end up transferring it over the interweb, which can take the best part of a day.
For home use, I would also find it useful in order to speed up backups. I don't yet have a NAS, though I'm looking at this more seriously now, but I have hundreds of gigabytes of pictures (in RAW and jpeg) which I could really use backing up elsewhere, but the thought of transferring those over a USB connection makes me a little bit sick

Finally, ultra-high res 3- or 5-way monitor set up with only 1 cable to the computer? Sure it's not there yet, but that would be a neat application

[OilSheikh]

I am a bit confused. What exactly is this ?

[crossy]

I am a bit confused. What exactly is this ?

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/...c-just-arrived explains it well (or at least well enough for me to understand!)

Although the mention of being able to daisy chain devices makes me think of good old SCSI for some reason.

[kingpotnoodle]

Best use of this technology I can think of is to finally make the docking station a really useful item.

On your desk you have a 24" monitor, high-res with built in gigabit ethernet, USB 3.0 hub, USB 2.0 hub for your keyboard and mouse, extra storage (for backups etc) and maybe even a more powerful graphics card.

You walk up to your desk with your sleek, sexy lightweight ultrabook or tablet, plug in the 1 single Thunderbolt cable and work like you're on a full size PC, you small device screen becomes a second monitor or perhaps a separate display with email/IM handled in a similar way to how Windows Sideshow was supposed to work.

Sounds great to me, maybe the docking station can include better cooling and power so your small device can clock up when docked.

I would seriously consider this and it would be great in a lot of businesses with mobile workers - would suit the hotdesk scenario as well.

[aidanjt]

It took bloody long enough. I hope the big lump of Apple bribery cash has served you well, Intel.

[TheAnimus]

It took bloody long enough. I hope the big lump of Apple bribery cash has served you well, Intel.

Tbh, its going to take some time before this is really in a useful form, as it stands compared to plugging in a separate USB3 cable and display cable, its not worth the extra cost, as so few devices support it.

However I'd guess that in 3/4 years it will make a great docking solution, as people have said. Things like HDD, I'd imagine will opt for the cheaper USB 3.0 interface, which won't really be noticeably faster, SSDs however might, but how many people dock external SSDs?

I guess what I'm saying is its going to take a lot longer for devices to really utilise this, and I don't think the exclusive deal will have hindered this. Are we going to see USB vs FireWire again?

[Scribe]

Certainly you're better off with a USB 3.0 drive than Thunderbolt at this stage with regards to most support and only for the fastest of solid states would you consider anything else, which if you can afford, you're going to be shelling out on 10Gb Ethernet ports for network access to multiple devices/locations.

[peterb]

It is very useful in real time video production/streaming applications, and a lot of pro and prosumer gear is starting to adopt Thunderbolt. And a lot of video production houses use Apple kit and software written for the Apple platform (Final Cut Pro, Wirecast and the like) so introducing Thunderbolt on the Apple platform made good commercial sense.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So are add-in cards going to be available or is this another closed platform specific standard??

At least USB,Firewire and Ethernet were eventually available for multiple platforms.