Intel's Thunderbolt demo included several drives hooked up to a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge and an unannounced AOC display.
It’s impressive, it has a lot of promise, simplifies, lots of performance.
Peripherals that use Thunderbolt, the high-speed interconnect developed by Intel and heartily embraced by Apple, have taken their sweet time coming to market. The options so far include a high-end professional RAID from Promise, an expensive portable RAID from LaCie, a pricey display from Apple, and a $50 cable necessary to connect them all. However, a number of companies in attendance at CES had some interesting products to show us, most of which will hit the market this year. Though Apple launched Thunderbolt in full force across most of its products in 2011, 2012 may finally see the standard gaining traction across the industry.
Several products that have been announced but not yet released to the public, including Blackmagic’s Intensity Shuttle video device, Belkin’s long-promised Thunderbolt Express dock, and LaCie’s 2Big Thunderbolt drives.
Unfortunately, Mac users looking for an alternative to Apple’s $999 27″ Thunderbolt Display will have to wait until September for the dock to ship. It will also cost $299—quite a bit more than we expected. Belkin representatives told Ars that existing docking solutions for MacBook users are similarly priced, but aren’t nearly as elegant or easy to use. And, if you want to use a non-Apple display, it may be your only option. (For what it’s worth, Belkin said that it is considering offering a less-expensive dock solution in the future.)
