So the general consensus of this thread is we want all the legacy ports, eSATA, and a extra TB port or two and it needs to be $99..
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CES 2013: Belkin Drops eSATA Support for Upcoming Thunderbolt Express Dock, Cuts Price Back to $299
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So the general consensus of this thread is we want all the legacy ports, eSATA, and a extra TB port or two and it needs to be $99..
I think the general consensus of this thread is that no one really sees how this thing can even begin to justify its 299$ pricetag as it is.
I said it earlier, for me, 299$ here makes me plug-in 2 cables into my Mac vs 4 right now. Would you spend 299$ to have to plug in 2 less cables each time you set your Mac on your desk ?
I know plenty of stuff I'd rather spend 299$ on personally.
...provided that doesn't extract both display signals from the Thunderbolt and prevent you from connecting a Thunderbolt display. The complexity is whether you can add a display output that only peels a display signal off the TB bus if a display is actually connected.
The Belkin hub was originally going to have a HDMI port. The Matrox hub has a DVI or HDMI port but no Thunderbolt-out. They've both changed their specs, which suggests to me that there is a problem with that.
Have you seen this: http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/dh2go/digital_se/ ?
Edit: also, external Thunderbolt GPU announced at CES: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12...gpu_henge_docks_gain_macbook_air_support.html
Displays
Let me get this straight, assuming you have:
Doesn't that mean that you can either connect your external monitor to the downstream port on this dock or you can have your Thunderbolt drive connected to downstream port on the dock. You cannot have your external monitor and your Thunderbolt drive plugged in at the same time? Which would kind of suck... doesn't anybody make a straight forward Thunderbolt/DVI port splitter?
Let me get this straight, assuming you have:
- A MacBook Air where the DVI port doubles as the Thunderbolt port.
- An external monitor that does not have a built in Thunderbolt hub.
- One of them Seagate Thunderbolt drive adaptors that does not support Thunderbolt daisy chaining.
Doesn't that mean that you can either connect your external monitor to the downstream port on this dock or you can have your Thunderbolt drive connected to downstream port on the dock. You cannot have your external monitor and your Thunderbolt drive plugged in at the same time? Which would kind of suck... doesn't anybody make a straight forward Thunderbolt/DVI port splitter?
Too bad though :
So you'd have to buy an overpriced graphics card from Apple on top of this break out box in order to get it to work on OS X.
(currently, the only one I can see for sale from Apple is a Radeon 5870 for 479$ or a Radeon 5770).
If your computer/graphic card can only support two external displays, you would expect that after connecting two external displays, connecting an additional one, even though their might still be a port open to plug one in, won't work.
And this is of course possible, just look at Apple's TB display.
Of course this does not seem as straightforward and cheaply as we would hope for. But the Apple TB display shows that it is possible.
Yeah, but the Matrox solutions use the trick of presenting two displays as one large display to OS and thus require two displays with the same resolution. It is the best/only solution so far but with that just-mentioned limitation.
KnightWRX answered this already above and his quote is what I had in mind when I said that there currently are no reports of any graphic card working in such a setup under OS X.
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Which is why one should avoid any TB device that does not two TB ports.
Could I still run a DVI monitor off the Thunderbolt connector off the Thunderbolt port on this thing?
The Matrox dock, is cheaper but then I'd have to lay out $50 for an USB3 hub so no real price advantage there. I can still use a TB drive on my MacMini media center and there I have no daisy-chaining issues since it is connected to a TV via HDMI and I have a huge amount of video.
Somebody mentioned a new Henge dock that 'out-ports' the one from Belkin... is it this one?:
http://www.hengedocks.com/order_horizontal_dock.php
If what I have seen in this thread so far is true, the only really killer use for TB is with SSD drives where it really puts USB in a pipe and smokes it. If your TB drive does not support chaining you are SOL because the chain is terminated, if you have a DVI display you are SOL for the same reason. Everybody has DVI displays and if the display terminates the daisy-chain and rules out using the DVI display and a TB drive at the same time (since most TB drives I have seen don't support chaining) TB kind of sucks. Even if you have a bunch of chain-able devices you'd have to stick your DVI monitor to the end of the chain which I, quite frankly do not want to do.The last thing I need is a bunch of devices on my desktop chained up with a bunch of $50, 2m long Thunderbolt cables. Plus, apparently the Apple Thunderbolt display will not be able to daisy-chain to a regular DVI display.
Yes, according to the TB specs, any TB chain can be capped off with a DP device (and I think a mDP-to-DVI adaptor would qualify as DP device).
Seems to be, though, it is unclear whether those three video ports can also carry a TB signal.
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That is why most recent Macs have two TB ports (the 13 and 15" rMBP and the iMac) and the Mac mini and the rMBPs additionally have a HDMI port to connect a monitor.
If you click on the pre-order button you'll see that there are two versions, regular and Thunderbolt, the regular one costs $250 the Thunderbolt one another $100. They could have put that on the intro page.
And it's also why I am SOL with my 1 year old MacBook Air with it's two USB2 ports and it's single Thunderbolt/DVI connector... wonderful
Fine if you're specifically making a dual head adapter.
If you're making a general-purpose dock, however, people might want to connect a thunderbolt display rather than the internal ports, might not want to lose two of their max. 5 (?) daisy-chainable devices to a dock, or might not want to pay for two Thunderbolt controllers.
Pretty unclear at the moment.
It looks like a 'port replicator' dock that automatically sticks cables in all the rMBP's orifices and routes them to sockets at the back. The rMBP can support 3 displays (2x DisplayPort + 1 x HDMI) so I assume that's where they're getting the 3 display outputs. Extra USB ports just need a USB hub.
Since they're saying that it will be available Q3 and a 'Thunderbolt enabled' version is promised for Q4, I'd assume that they are using USB rather than Thunderbolt to provide sound, Firewire and Ethernet (since the last two don't exist on a rMBP). 'Thunderbolt Enabled' could turn out to mean that 1-2 of the 3 display outputs is replaced by a Thunderbolt port.
The thing about the Belkin/Matrox thunderbolt hubs is that they contain 'fully fledged' Ethernet/Firewire controllers which should certainly out-perform USB2-based controllers and possibly offer lower CPU load than USB3-based ones. Same for USB3 - a thunderbolt-driven USB3 controller will be better than using a hub to hang more devices off the existing 2 USBs.
Maybe for the MBA, but for the MBP, it's only for the Retina one. The Retina one already has triple external monitor support natively, so it doesn't need anything external. The ones that need the support are the older ones, but they probably (correctly) assume that the Retina owners are the ones with the money to blow on something like a custom Apple-esque dock.
...but mine does eSATA, GbE, dual DVI/DP/VGA, audio in/out, half a dozen USB ports,...
...And power, without connecting a single cable to the system.
T-Bolt seems to be a way to spend more and get less....
Sure. But if you want the expansion capabilities that an external PCIe port provides (which is what thunderbolt is) you're screwed.
Dont expect too much from the firewire port
If the firewire port works anything like the Apple tb/FW adapter, dont expect the full FW capabilties. Peripherals powered by the FW cable are unlikely to work and speeds are down.
If the firewire port works anything like the Apple tb/FW adapter, dont expect the full FW capabilties. Peripherals powered by the FW cable are unlikely to work and speeds are down.
Well nothing shows up on a quick google, certainly, but is it impossible? I know that last time I looked for USB3-to-1GBEthernet there were no consumer devices but someone was offering a chipset. Does FW800 need to connect to a PCI bus?
I'm also not clear how (what looked like) 3xDisplayPort video outputs was going to work either - while there are plenty of reports about successfully connect 3 external displays to a rMBP, the third one connects via HDMI which, AFAIK, couldn't be converted back to fully-fledged DP
(Unless, of course, the illustrations are the 'Thunderbolt enabled' model rather than the model described in the release).
However, I was giving this product the benefit of the doubt, because nobody would show a non-working model of a device at CES that wasn't technically feasible and due to be released on time and as specified... right
My office docks doesn't require me to connect any cables at all. I just drop the laptop on it. It also adds a 2nd video out port that the laptop doesn't have, provides eSATA, and a Kensington lock with a laptop locking mecanism to deter theft.
It's also 199$, not 299$ :
http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product/sku/10445822/mfg_partno/A9B77AA
So again.... sorry. No. You're not convincing me.
Well, based on the pictures, the Belkin hub has 12v DC-in which suggests it might be able to deliver more power the USB and FW ports than it draws from Thunderbolt.
I just bought 3 MiniDP/TB to HDMI adapters for $3 each with free shipping off Amazon. They took a month to get delivered, but I'm using one now for one of my dual displays on my new Mac Mini Server and it works fine. I've got two more in case there's a problem or I need to use one with someone else's Macbook or whatever (just got my mother a Macboook Pro 13" recently).
Be careful with those as I've read a lot about the cheap adapters actually shorting out and burning your port and sometimes even the MB. It gets very expensive very quickly and you really wish you bought a 30 dollar adapter instead of 3. Not that it happens to everyone, just a risk you should be willing to take to save 27 dollars.