thunderbolt

Drobo hooks up Thunderbolt with USB 3.0, data cable

The time when you could only use Thunderbolt storage devices with Thunderbolt-enabled computers is about to be over.

Drobo announced today two new Thunderbolt storage drives, its first that, on top of the traditional two Thunderbolt ports, also come with a USB 3.0 port. In fact, these are among the first Thunderbolt storage devices from any vendor that also support USB connectivity. This means you can use the drives with your existing computer, be it a Windows PC or a Mac, and keep them for use with future systems that support the Thunderbolt standard.… Read more

Apple releases fixed Thunderbolt update

On June 11 Apple announced a couple of Thunderbolt adapters to provide Ethernet and FireWire connectivity to Thunderbolt-based systems, and issued a driver update for OS X to provide software support for these adapters; however, for a number of users the update resulted in the inability to boot. Apple has reissued a fixed version of this update, which should install properly without any issues.

The driver update is a small plug-in for a required system kernel extension to give it support for the new adapters, but when installed prevented the system from loading the driver properly, which caused some systems … Read more

Thunderbolt storage roundup: It's a PC world after all

Editors' note: This roundup was originally posted on March 23, 2012, and updated April 16 and June 15. It will be updated on a regular basis as more devices are reviewed.

Those days of the "I am a PC" and "I am a Mac" guys have long gone, mostly because the two have married into one, so to speak. The truth is Mac and PC are now one -- they are both personal computers anyway -- sharing the same Intel chipsets and processors. In fact, you can install Windows on an Intel-based Mac, and, if you … Read more

Where Thunderbolt is smart -- right now

The broad mainstream future of Thunderbolt is in question, but there's no doubt it's already useful for people with heavy computing demands.

With hundreds of gigabytes of high-resolution digital photographs and a smaller but still bulky collection of video, I'm one of them.

To supply fast external storage for my Dell laptop, for a few years now I've relied on eSATA -- an external version of the SATA standard used to connect hard drives inside computer chassis. It's functional but prickly: the external drive must be powered on before the computer, sleep and wake can … Read more

Thunderbolt vs. USB, HDMI, PCIe Cable: How does it compare?

Intel believes Thunderbolt will remake mobile computing by endowing laptops with a high-speed, versatile port.

To match Intel's mainstream ambitions for Thunderbolt, though, Intel will have to prove to hardware designers and to consumers that it's got compelling advantages over the alternatives. Today, those are chiefly USB (Universal Serial Bus) and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface. Tomorrow, another challenger could arrive in the form of PCI Express Cable, and it's got a strong ally in PC giant Hewlett-Packard.

Getting new input-output technologies to catch on is particularly hard because I/O standards only succeed with support from both … Read more

Can Intel's Thunderbolt go mainstream with help from Apple and Acer?

To some, Thunderbolt is just a port on the side of a MacBook, a mere check-box on a feature list.

But to Intel, the high-speed communication technology is an ambitious attempt to do something that only happens every decade or so in the computing industry: rewrite the rules of how people plug stuff into their computers.

Thunderbolt arrived in 2011 with the potential to bring the flexibility of a tower computer to something as compact as an ultrabook. And it's got a bright future in premium and professional products, as events this week show.

First, Apple's new Retina display-equipped MacBook Pro … Read more

Thunderbolt Update plaguing MacBook Pros with kernel panics

Following the announcement of Apple's Thunderbolt Ethernet and FireWire adapters to accompany its latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air offerings, Apple issued a small software update for existing computers that will allow them to properly use Apple's new adapters. Apple made this update available via Software Update so many would automatically install it on their systems, but unfortunately for many people this update has resulted in kernel panics and the inability to boot their systems.

In some cases, at startup the system will appear to boot normally but then issue a gray screen with the instructions to hold … Read more

Apple Thunderbolt adapters arriving in Apple stores

Part of Apple's keynote address at WWDC this morning was a demonstration of its new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro systems, which have not only done away with optical drives but have also streamlined other I/O offerings. In order to save space in its systems, Apple has combined USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections, but has also fallen to relying on its Thunderbolt connections to provide the I/O connectivity from older Mac systems.

As the MacBook line has evolved over the years, Apple has attempted to remove legacy ports from the systems, including the Ethernet port … Read more

Add an extra monitor to your computer

I hesitated writing this How To. Compared with the olden days of installing and configuring video cards and giant CRT displays, the process of adding a secondary monitor to any modern computer is practically plug-and-play.

But when I sat down to write a tutorial on this that included both Mac and PC, I realized there's still a surprising amount of variables to the process, and plenty of details that I hadn't considered before.

"Is VGA video quality inherently worse than HDMI?"

"Will generic Mini DisplayPort cables work in a Mac's Thunderbolt port?"

I … Read more