Acer Dumping Thunderbolt, Sticking with USB 3.0

[James Devenberg]

You can do it with DisplayPort too though, and point-to-point connections are easier to trace than chains. If I want to pull something out of a USB-based system, I just disconnect one end and trace the cable. To remove something from a chain, I have to disconnect one thing, then hope one of the two cables connected to it is long enough to reach the next device.

Besides, how many things have you found with two TB connectors? Almost everything is only one, which sort of breaks it.

True you can do it with displayport (which the S7, the laptop I referenced in my OP also lacks btw), but most monitors that have a displayport out are nearly as expensive as monitors with thunderbolt out, and thunderbolt give you the potential to add in a storage array or external graphics or any number of things. Are all these things available to purchase today? No, but they are on the way and when I'm spending $1,599+ on a laptop and another $800-$1,000 on a display, I'm buying them to use for more than a year or two, so I'd rather have the most future proofed options available. I'm not saying every laptop sold should have Thunderbolt, but on a high end machine like the S7 it is something I want.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

The problem is that any time someone comes along with something that doesn't have two connectors (this could be anything; flash drive, external HDD, or a phone), you have a problem, and can't use your screen.

USB 3.0 can live without thunderbolt (you can use stuff like DP/HDMI/DVI for a display). Thunderbolt can't be the only connector.

Also, USB3.0 has backward compatibility with every system from the last decade, but if you buy a thunderbolt external HDD you're betting on never needing to use it on anything that's not a bleeding edge machine.

 

[James Devenberg]

The problem is that any time someone comes along with something that doesn't have two connectors (this could be anything; flash drive, external HDD, or a phone), you have a problem, and can't use your screen.

USB 3.0 can live without thunderbolt (you can use stuff like DP/HDMI/DVI for a display). Thunderbolt can't be the only connector.

Also, USB3.0 has backward compatibility with every system from the last decade, but if you buy a thunderbolt external HDD you're betting on never needing to use it on anything that's not a bleeding edge machine.

I'm not against USB 3.0. I want both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. I view them as being good for different things. USB is great for inexpensive devices, flash drives, hard drives you want to use across many devices, etc. Thunderbolt is great for displays, hard drives where you will frequently be reading and writing very large files, and (and in my opinion this is the big one) external expandibility. We are getting laptops that are super thin and light, with powerful processors, and great displays, but very limited storage and graphics (among others). There simply isn't the room or cooling in a 1/2" thick sub 3 lbs. notebook for a discrete graphics chip or 4 tb of storage Thunderbolt is the best option to address this. In the not so distant future, you wouldn't need an ultraportable laptop and a big gaming (or whatever GPU intensive activity you do) desktop. Just have the graphics card and extra storage externally, plug in two wires (power and thunderbolt) to your ultrabook when you sit down at your desk and suddenly you've gone from a 13" ultraportable with great battery life to a 27" WQHD gaming machine with desktop level graphics and 4+ TB of storage. You simply cannot do that with USB, or, to my knowledge, any other connector. I've only seen external graphics presented over Thunderbolt, and HDMI won't put out over 1920x1080 on most laptops.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

ePCIe sort of died a few years back, but it was a way better idea than the mess that is TB. Besides, the CPU in your average ultrabook is not that fast - despite being called an i5/i7, it has more in common with a drastically underclocked i3.

You do know you can do DP without TB, right? DisplayPort was around way before Thunderbolt, and removing TB does not require removing DP.

I wait for the day when 10GBASE-T is common. If I have a large amount of storage, I likely want to access it from more than one device.

 

[James Devenberg]

ePCIe sort of died a few years back, but it was a way better idea than the mess that is TB. Besides, the CPU in your average ultrabook is not that fast - despite being called an i5/i7, it has more in common with a drastically underclocked i3.

You do know you can do DP without TB, right? DisplayPort was around way before Thunderbolt, and removing TB does not require removing DP.

I wait for the day when 10GBASE-T is common. If I have a large amount of storage, I likely want to access it from more than one device.

I do understand that you can do DisplayPort without Thunderbolt. Acer (who this article is about) puts neither on their high end ultrabook. If ePCIe had caught on, that would have been great and there would be less need for Thunderbolt. As desktops continue to decline and laptops become even slimmer, we need a port that allows for external expansion, and I don't see a better option than Thunderbolt for that. Once our internet connections are fast enough to not need a direct connection to our storage arrays, I agree that that will be great, but we are a way off from that. Also, most of the Thunderbolt hard drives also have USB 3.0, so you use Thunderbolt where you have it, USB 3.0 where you don't.

 

[Mashuri Lambana]

the problem here is intel licensing that sucks. also chips are overpriced for what they offer. it's a pain to license a thunderbolt product

Licensing licensing licensing kills, I hope new Intel CEO has better vision than the previous more aggressive towards mobile development.

Recently Intel becomes complacent in his own glory, now it is time to wake up

 

[abbadon_34]

Good call.