Pretty worthless. It offers very little. Where is the Firewire, eSATA, and others? For that price it should include much more. It doesn't save much time for most users.
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Matrox Launches DS1 Thunderbolt Docking Station for $249
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The big deal here is that you can just leave your peripherals plugged into this and only plug in one cable at your desk, rather than however many. Docking solutions are common on professional notebooks from PC manufacturers (the HP 8560w I'm typing this on is connected to a dock that offers pretty much every type of connection you may want (including serial, parallel, eSATA, ethernet, vga, dvi, full size display port) it also has a slot for an additional hard drive.
Wha..?
Like as a Thunderbolt port or just as a Mini-DisplayPort to some other video output?
What the hell is up with the price. You can get a netbook with all those ports and more for less money.
Would this device mean you could hook an Xbox up to your iMac and use the screen? Even if the answer is yes it looks overpriced for what it is.
Thunderbolt serves solely as a revenue stream for Apple. No one really needed Firewire but as long as that port was on there, people were going to buy the accessories anyway.
"Thunderbolt sounds so cool I have to buy stuff to use it!"
"Thunderbolt sounds so cool I have to buy stuff to use it!"
Professionals needed Firewire, just as professionals need Thunderbolt. Not every technology is for every demographic.
If I am not mistaken, Thunderbolt is still exclusive to Macs? THAT is the reason it is a total failure. There are so few people using them, relatively speaking, that there is not a potential to reach hundreds of millions of users you could target if this went to PC. It's good technology, but it is essentially proprietary.
It's the same reason that many laptops that also have all of the above ports also have a docking connector.
Connecting one cable at home and work to dock your notebook into your keyboard/monitor/mouse/speakers/network can be very convenient.
TB was introduced in a product on Feb 24, 2011, which would be about 20 months. As a docking system on the 27 inch TB display, it has been very well received, and hardly a failure.
Haswell gives equal status to Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, and TB components for peripheral makers have or will get a die shrink to lower cost.
Once you factor in the roadmap for TB, more channels and optical up to 100m, and the existing advantages of low latency, isochronous channels, and Displayport compatibility it becomes obvious that TB will be the choice over USB 3.0 for video and audio professional, and any others that required high quality data streaming.
I just don't understand why these Thunderbolt docking stations have been either delayed or been the biggest pieces of crap.
Not exclusive by any stretch. Apple got a head start.
Total failure is not using your fave Google for the correct answer.
can you connect a games console in the HDMI port and have a thunderbolt cable connecting to a 27" imac and get output on the imac on it?
Besides what you listed, so much space in the back left and only 2 USB slots?
While still pricey, this is at least feasible for me. A docking station like this is exactly what I'd want. Instead of plugging in 5 cables every time I sit at my desk with my laptop, I'd plug in 1.