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Acer ditches Intel's Thunderbolt, will favor USB 3.0 instead

snowComet
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Last year Acer is one of the manufacturers that supports thunderbolt, and pushing out Acer s5 that support thunderbolt. But now Acer decided to ditch thunderbolt for usb 3.0, saying thunderbolt is expensive, and usb 3.0 has a large installed base of accessories and peripherals.

 

http://www.techspot.com/news/53235-acer-ditches-intels-thunderbolt-will-favor-usb-30-instead.html

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Well it IS expensive. A 4 foot thunderbolt cable alone costs something like 50 bucks.

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Even more than that, Thunderbolt requires specialized circuitry on the motherboard that can't be managed through a PCIe interface. It's impossible to upgrade anything to be compatible with Thunderbolt, whereas USB 3.0 can be added with an expansion card. Additionally, USB 3.0 ports are backward compatible with USB 2.0 devices, and in some cases USB 3.0 devices are backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports as well. Thunderbolt may have more bandwidth, but in terms of availability on both the computer and peripherals sides it is way behind.

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Maybe if Apple would have left their grubby paws off of it (Multi Year Exclusivity), Thanks.  

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We just need a new standard for USB. The problem is Intel was trying to introduce a new standard that appealed to a niche audience. USB will be king for a long time because it's cheap and backwards compatible. Almost all of our phones use it or some form of it and with everything slowly progressing toward mobile there's just no room for specialized hardware in those markets. 

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I like thunderbolt. It's function are quite impressive. USB 3.0 is ok. I don't own anything that uses 3.0 so I don't get to see the data speed improvements. I would like to see though for 3.0 to shrink its mobo connector. The dern thing is near bigger than an intel chip!

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Well I guess for acer it's a simple case of counting the beans, if it costs a lot and won't help sales then it's not worth keeping.

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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Switching to USB 3.0 would attract more consumers since not many people know about Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 is more popular imo.

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