stevebollinger@...

May 18, 2011 at 9:54pm

Both have value and I am desiring both on my next PC.  USB3 for backward compatibility and Thunderbolt for speed, HDMI, etc.  I see the value in both and say to all the OEMs, load 'em up!!

Engelsstaub

May 16, 2011 at 6:50pm

HP should "look into" giving their customers deserved customer service equal to the amount of money said customers payed them for their products.

Clowns like these and Dell do actually make some decent products. They see their companies consistently and annually rated at the very bottom in customer service/satisfaction yet do nothing to improve. How could they possibly care if their customer-base would like Thunderbolt? My opinion.

jedisamurai

May 16, 2011 at 6:16pm

For what it's worth...I'm not buying a new PC until it comes with both USB 3.0 AND Thunderbolt. Manufacturers are in no hurry to include it because they lose the profit margin they had on the old tech by using new tech. Why should they care about a faster, better experience for their customers? They only care about making money. It's the same reason why cars get 15mpg and coal power plants are still used. Larger profit margins. :)

Marthian

May 16, 2011 at 12:20pm

Anyone else seeing this becoming the new Firewire? sure its faster, but USB has been around for quite awhile (not to mention practically every computer under the sun by now has at least one or two USB ports), not to mention its just extremely universal, whether its video game controllers, hard drives, Engineering devices, speakers, etc. I just don't see why we need something else like it? I don't really think speed is a good enough reason as the common consumer won't really notice much of a difference usually, Firewire is/was? faster than USB, but didn't really become mainstream (sometimes its on a motherboard/case, sometimes its not.)

bloodgain

May 16, 2011 at 12:00pm

I want Thunderbolt (stupid name), or rather something like Thunderbolt to succeed and be picked up as a standard, but I'd much rather it be an OPEN optical fiber data connector standard.  Also, there's no reason for anyone, especially on the consumer end, to use optical fiber connections until it bypasses the copper bus to offer speeds truly worth the switch.  I think we'll need an optical bus with copper connections being translated at the chip (internal optical), which will be followed by an optical external connection standard.

Optical connections for everything that's not wireless will come eventually, and sooner than we might think, but I'm not sure Intel's tech will be "the one."  Even so, I think we'll see USB 3.0 -- and maybe even one more version -- for some time to come.  The backwards compatibility and ease of acceptance and transition are too good.  I'd bet we'll see USB 3.5/4.0 transcoded at the chip to an optical bus before we see it go away.

someuid

May 16, 2011 at 11:25am

Good!  I don't want that proprietary Thunderbolt stuff. I remember the days of IBM trying to corner everyone with royalties.  I don't want to see Intel trying to repeat that.  If there is anyone at Intel thinking "all we have to do is get everyone to move to this new tech, and charge them royalties", they should be shown the door pronto.