Who will use Thunderbolt tech?

0	How common is this technology going to be in laptops? Is it really worth investing in or purchasing now? How do the transfer speeds compare to USB 3.0? thunderbolt usb transferport transfer usb3.0 3.0 displayport gigatransfer asked Feb 25 '11 at 12:45 JacobBracket 11●10●10●12

5 Answers:

oldest newest most voted

I am not really sure on the technology to be exact I know that Apple is thinking about putting it in their next Macbook Pro's I my self will not be investing in the new Thunderbolt yet until it becomes more popular and widespread. It is faster than USB 3.0 for example I read an article about Apple implementing this technology in their new Macbooks and they compared the speeds USB 3.0 transfers at 5.0 GBPS with Thunderbolt the transfer speed can go up to 10 GBPS.

answered Feb 25 '11 at 12:49

Tyler Hunt
541●54●56●62

It is not really too ready for an investment. There is not a lot of peripherals using that technology yet. I would wait to see if it gets adopted by more companies

Also, Thunderbolt can handle 10GB/s and can be easily improved to go faster

answered Feb 25 '11 at 12:50

kevin ♦♦
35.7k●160●317●590

Thunderbolt should be the way forward in terms of an evolution over USB 2.0, 3.0 etc. because it is so much faster.

However USB is pretty universal at the moment so i think it may only be apple devices and external HDs that actually use thunderbolt over other standards like USB 3.0

answered Feb 25 '11 at 13:48

ALIHISGREAT
146●2

Of course USB is universal:

Universal
Serial
Bus

(Feb 25 '11 at 16:27) catchatyou

By universal, he meant that it's everywhere on every device.. It doesn't matter if "universal" is part of the name, that doesn't actually make it universal..

(Feb 25 '11 at 16:32) Giorgio94

It really depends upon the cost for the licensing of the technology & the components cost.

The truth of the matter is the components cost will dissuade many manufacturers from making the switch.

For this reason alone it may not be as popular as some may want it to be, and if the consumer really wants to have it, they will most likely pay a premium price for the technology.

Alas, this is the first version, so the newer one will be even more expensive. We can see why Apple quickly adopted it, their market is those people who have money, so they wanted the best.

It really comes down to cost, popularity I suspect will be rather low in most common computers.

USB 3.0 is 1/2 of the speed (Thunderbolt is 1.25 GB/second) & also much cheaper! I use a lot of USB Flash Drives so USB to me is a much needed technology vs Thunderbolt, which is a newer and untested technology presently.

answered Feb 25 '11 at 17:50

_GTech
1.3k●16●23●43

edited Feb 26 '11 at 00:41

0	If and when it becomes popular, then its time to start adapting to it. Right now it really doesn't matter if you have it or not. answered Feb 26 '11 at 18:07 nso95 406●9●13●19

Your answer

toggle preview

community wiki

Follow this question

By Email:

Once you sign in you will be able to subscribe for any updates here

By RSS:

Answers

Answers and Comments

Markdown Basics

*italic* or __italic__
**bold** or __bold__
link:[text](http://url.com/ "title")
image?![alt text](/path/img.jpg "title")
numbered list: 1. Foo 2. Bar
to add a line break simply add two spaces to where you would like the new line to be.
basic HTML tags are also supported

learn more about Markdown