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There's a big difference between thunderbolt and thunderbolt 3/usb c. The former was proprietary by Apple/Intel, and very expensive, so no one else added it to
by alvarosevilla95 10y ago
There's a big difference between thunderbolt and thunderbolt 3/usb c. The former was proprietary by Apple/Intel, and very expensive, so no one else added it to their machines, and onlu very high end accessories included it. Usb C is the new standard that is already being adopted by most manufacturers, so I'm very confident it will spread quite fast. Not saying that launching a professional laptop in 2016 with just 4 usb c ports was a good idea though, but I guess they're really pushing for the standard to be adopted as quick as possible.
- chx 10y agoThunderbolt 3 is still insanely expensive. The Akitio Thunder2 PCIe Box is $229.00, the Thunder3 Pcie Expansion Box is $299 and if you wanted to do a go-around by buying a converter, that's also $70 -- the StarTech.com Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt Adapter is $73.99. By economies of scale TB3 ought to be cheaper but it is not. Other docks are even more expensive, the Powercolor Devil Box is $375 and the Razer Core is $399 but only if you buy a Razer laptop otherwise $499. To compare, an M.2 to PCIe DIY solution from a noname company without warranty is roughly $100 so the $229 price is pretty OK. The TB3 box, however, needs to drop to half price and then we are talking. And Thunderbolt of yore was not Apple only by far, HP, Dell, Lenovo all had mobile workstations sporting it. Heck, the Thinkpad T430s had it. Of course, it's all different now, practically all $1000 and over laptops have TB3.