CES 2013: Belkin Drops eSATA Support for Upcoming Thunderbolt Express Dock, Cuts Price Back to $299

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Originally Posted by aloshka

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.

This one had nothing but glowing reviews on Amazon. What bugs me is reading in this thread about USB 3.0 hubs not working right with Macs. My Mini has 4-ports, but I have to use one for my USB 2.0 hub and with all my devices, I need ANOTHER hub (at least 2.0) and I already have three USB 3.0 devices (two hard drives and a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD burner). In short, I need a USB 3.0 hub (that works).

[manu chao]

Originally Posted by MagnusVonMagnum

This one had nothing but glowing reviews on Amazon. What bugs me is reading in this thread about USB 3.0 hubs not working right with Macs. My Mini has 4-ports, but I have to use one for my USB 2.0 hub and with all my devices, I need ANOTHER hub (at least 2.0) and I already have three USB 3.0 devices (two hard drives and a Blu-Ray/DVD/CD burner). In short, I need a USB 3.0 hub (that works).

I think the Bluray burner wouldn't suffer much on a USB 2 port.

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Originally Posted by manu chao

I think the Bluray burner wouldn't suffer much on a USB 2 port.

Yeah, only about 2.5x from what I've read (i.e. turns a 12x burner into a 4.8x one). See review: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1CSJCL...wasThisHelpful

Yeah, I kind of prefer to use USB 3.0 on my Mac Mini than buy a 2.0 hub for 3.0 devices. Surely, someone can make a Mac compatible one and make a few bucks in the process since they'd more or less corner the entire Mac market for USB 3.0 hubs.

As it is now, I just unplug the burner or a sync cable or whatever temporarily if I need to backup my 3TB USB 3.0 drive (i.e. the only time I'm out of ports at the moment). The second 3TB (backup) drive is in a fire safe the rest of the time and the 3rd is normally off-site save for the occasional backup update.

[SuperDogPort]

Why does eSata cost $100?
You can buy a USB 3.0 to eSata converter for less than $22. If the idea about making a dock that will illuminate the need for extra cables, how can they remove the $100 eSata port that so man devices can connect to?

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by SuperDogPort

Why does eSata cost $100?
You can buy a USB 3.0 to eSata converter for less than $22. If the idea about making a dock that will illuminate the need for extra cables, how can they remove the $100 eSata port that so man devices can connect to?

...because you need a PCIe SATA controller chip with T-Bolt. And you need a PCIe SATA controller kernel driver.

The USB converter doesn't need a kernel driver in the host, and has a simpler task (mapping USB storage commands to a subset of SATA commands).

On the other hand, people would expect PM support, and NCQ support, and FIS support from the T-Bolt device - but would never expect it from the $22 USB gadget.

[toke lahti]

Originally Posted by btbeme

But, without hacking an iMac or mini, I'd be interested in hearing just how many iMac, mini, Air, or Macbook Pro owners actually use eSATA on a daily basis. And, how they use it so that eSATA is mission critical.

Esata is "native" connection for sata drive, so they usually offer optimal speed and ability to monitor drive's health (SMART etc.). It is and will be optimal way to connect a peripheral which has sata connection. Not many mac users use it, because Apple somehow hates it, but if Apple would have adopted it when it came and used it ever since, I guess at least most power users would use esata enclosures also with macs.
Esata enclosures are also very cost efficient, since there's minimal additional electronics in the enclosures. I've seen too many LaCies with burned controllers...

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

...because you need a PCIe SATA controller chip with T-Bolt. And you need a PCIe SATA controller kernel driver.

The USB converter doesn't need a kernel driver in the host, and has a simpler task (mapping USB storage commands to a subset of SATA commands).

On the other hand, people would expect PM support, and NCQ support, and FIS support from the T-Bolt device - but would never expect it from the $22 USB gadget.

Funny that you can get all those ports and a lot more in any motherboard with quarter of this dock's price. So you can't justify the price because of components even with magical tb controller. It's all about production volumes. Same thing when you add tb to a motherboard, its cost rises about 3 times more than what controller costs.

Lots of people here justifies the cost of tb, because it is "so capable of so much" which either almost no-one need and the rest of us doesn't want to pay. I use almost daily an AJA box that is connected via tb to imac and has ATBD as second screen. Tb is very nice for this, but I still hate the reflections of both screens!
I'd guess that most of those few that really uses tb for something, it is just for ATBD and nothing else. Those really few that use it for something else, use mostly just hdd/ssd enclosures and dongles. All these are very expensive for what they use and there would be much more cost efficient solutions if Apple just offered any options.

We all know that multigigabit interconnections are very high tech and therefore very expensive. The only way to bring costs down is through huge volumes of mass markets. This was the original idea of Light Peak. To bring optical connection to affordable level and then start increasing the speed. There's nothing revolutionary in tb as speedwise, we have had infinibands and fibrechannels for years. External PCI Express is also nothing new. The revolution would have been the cost of optical interconnection.

When Apple picked Light Peak with exclusivity and turned it to Copper Peak just for one product ATBD, that pretty much sealed tb's fate. And I guess that cost efficiency was not in mind at that time. Why short cables can't be passive? They can with every other similar connection (dp, hdmi, 10GbE, what else?).

Right now tb-products cost something like 2-10x what other similar cost. How many times the price is higher if they try to make even faster tb2?

Copper was chosen to tb since optical would have been even more expensive, although I think tb is so overpriced already that optical path wouldn't have made any difference. The tradeoff of this cheaper choice is that now optical connection does not get cheap (or it will became so a decade later when usb5 turns to optical) so this might be dead end for tb2. Anyway we will see a lot more very expensive active adapters...

Everybody is chanting that Apple's products are made for "average users". When this dude does not need ODD every week, it is taken away, but nothing will come in it's place. When Mr. Average needs cheap fast connection to hard drive, Apple keeps selling fw800 with huge premium, doesn't offer usb3 for 3 years more and focuses on magically expensive tb, that still offers nothing to this mister.

Seems to be that Apple's design goals are getting further away from practical benefits. If this Joe A. Verage could choose from a desktop computer that had expandability, upgradeability and maybe even user switchable storage/multiuse-slots or another one without all of those, but magical anorectic body, which one would be the sane and rational choice of Mr. Joe?

With double-glassy reflection please?

Could retina display and 2 storages live in a same mac?
Could IPS screen and 2 storages live in a same mac?
Could retina be matte?
Could there be matte retina in macbook with dual storage (ssd+hdd or fast ssd + huge ssd)?
Could macbookPRO had more storage devices than AIR?
Could someone ask Ive?

[MacMojo1]

I have '11 mbp with a non TB 27 Cinema Display. This will clean things up for without dropping another $1g

[Chippy99]

God knows how awful support for this will be if you ever have a problem. It's about a year late, which tells you all you need to know about how committed to this product Belkin are. i.e. could not really give a toss.

This could have been released early 2012 had they actually bothered trying. I wonder how many people they had working on this, and what his name is.

One of the most frustrating devices ever announced IMHO and now it doesnt even have the esata port I was waiting for. Yet another straw on the broken back of the Thunderbolt camel. The whole technology has been one big disaappointment from start to finish. Overpriced, unavailable, over-engineered and underwhelming. There's a single word that embodies the whole saga perfectly. Crap.

And don't get me started on active $50 cables. What cretin thought that was a good idea? Why put the expensive active bits in the actual devices when you can stuff them in every single cable? Great idea. Not.

And worse still, Apple's stubborn insistence on Thunderbolt has caused it to neglect USB3 which is perfect (and dirt cheap) for most use-cases. Only relectantly after dragging its heals for as long as it could, have they added USB3 to some latest products. The Mac should have had USB3 in 2011 like every other computer on the 2011 planet. $2 for a USB bridge chip was no excuse for not adopting it back then. It was ALL to do with Apple trying to drive Thunderbolt adoption... Of overpriced devices that did not, and still do not, exist.

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Originally Posted by Chippy99

The whole technology has been one big disaappointment from start to finish. Overpriced, unavailable, over-engineered and underwhelming. There's a single word that embodies the whole saga perfectly. Crap.

And don't get me started on active $50 cables. What cretin thought that was a good idea? Why put the expensive active bits in the actual devices when you can stuff them in every single cable? Great idea. Not.

And worse still, Apple's stubborn insistence on Thunderbolt has caused it to neglect USB3 which is perfect (and dirt cheap) for most use-cases. Only relectantly after dragging its heals for as long as it could, have they added USB3 to some latest products. The Mac should have had USB3 in 2011 like every other computer on the 2011 planet. $2 for a USB bridge chip was no excuse for not adopting it back then. It was ALL to do with Apple trying to drive Thunderbolt adoption... Of overpriced devices that did not, and still do not, exist.

I wouldn't say USB3 is "perfect", at least in the sense that there seems to be a plethora of trouble with many if not most of the current model hubs (I can't find a 7-port USB3 one yet that is reported to work 100% correctly with my Mac Mini). But it IS cheap by comparison.

Light Peak promised some insane amount of speed in early reports. THEN, they said that the first generation will not use fiber and be a tiny fraction of that ultimate capability (at some far future Jetons-era century or something) and with that bitter disappointment set in, but hey, it's still better than USB3...except that it'll cost a fortune, get hardly any support in any reasonable length of time and cause Apple (like with USB2) to delay their implementation, making Macs once again a joke next to readily available dirt cheap PCs. You pay more you should at least get more, but this is rarely the case these days with Macs. You get OSX, which is nice, but it has problems too (like total crap support for gaming companies, but that hardly matters when there's no good GPUs available for Macs except the top of the line iMac and it's only decent, not great).

I will say my 2008-era Macbook Pro did deliver on features, at least, but that was five years ago and things have been sketchy at best since then. For example, the loss of replaceable batteries, changes to basic matte screen option, loss of dedicated FW400 port (which matters when the darn adapters can cost $50 at most stores), switch to those awful flat-keys (IMO), loss of Ethernet/FW ports on Retina models, etc. etc. while moving to slower GPUs in most cases (hello Mac Mini update and standardized crap lines of 13" Macbook "Pros" using Intel 4000).

Macs should be cutting edge, not cutting features. Sadly, Apple only cares about keeping the iPad and iPhone cutting edge and they've got their work cut out for them with the entire planet trying to beat them to the punch now (hence no time for Macs).

[chrisblackstone]

I'm debating whether to upgrade to a new iMac or stay with the 2011 MBP I have. The only thing I really care about on the new iMac is USB3 and the large display. I can buy this dock, get USB3, then buy the new monoprice 2560x1400 monitor for $600 total and save having to buy a whole new iMac or laptop. Worth it.

Also, the Matrox box won't drive 2560x1400. I'm sure hoping the Belkin one does, or it's a non-starter for me.

[dma550]

Wow, that henge is very nice - I just preordered the TB one, sucks to wait until q3 2013!

[dyn]

Originally Posted by toke lahti

Why short cables can't be passive? They can with every other similar connection (dp, hdmi, 10GbE, what else?).

For a very simple fact that you already pointed out yourself: TB was about getting something on the market now and expending its capabilities later on. If you'd use a normal passive adapter you are going to limit yourself tremendously up to a point where you can not guarantee backwards compatibility making TB a very expensive and a very unattractive protocol. It uses active connectors because you can then use copper and switch to fibre later on as Intel intended it when they announced TB. Added bonus with using copper: you can power devices which you can't when using fibre.

Also there are various technical issues with high speed connections where it is wise to add some intelligence to the system. One of them being active connectors. There are some articles discussing the TB connectors:

1. The technology inside Apple's $50 Thunderbolt cable
2. Why Thunderbolt cables will be expensive until 2013.

Everybody is chanting that Apple's products are made for "average users".

8<

Seems to be that Apple's design goals are getting further away from practical benefits. If this Joe A. Verage could choose from a desktop computer that had expandability, upgradeability and maybe even user switchable storage/multiuse-slots or another one without all of those, but magical anorectic body, which one would be the sane and rational choice of Mr. Joe?

Average Joe can benefit from Thunderbolt as well as the professional who requires it for his specific setup. This way the average Joe isn't stuck with a machine that is useless because he advanced. It grows along with his knwoledge. The main benefit for the average Joe are the docks. It makes going from laptop to a more desktop kind of setup much easier. Hengedocks has even thought about software that also resizes the windows for you when docking/undocking when using an external display. The only problem at the moment is pricing.

However, if we look at USB3 we see something similar. It has been on the market for 5 years and it is only since mid to late 2012 we are seeing more computer with proper USB3 ports because Intel finally supports it in their chips. The USB3 devices are a different story. A properly working USB3 device that doesn't have consistent problems is almost impossible to find. Most of the issues go away when plugging it in with a USB2 cord. USB3 wasn't a pretty picture 5 years ago and it still isn't now I'm hoping Thunderbolt doesn't go along this line because that would indeed kill it. Belkin keeping postponing this dock also doesn't help very much.

[aloshka]

Originally Posted by chrisblackstone

I'm debating whether to upgrade to a new iMac or stay with the 2011 MBP I have. The only thing I really care about on the new iMac is USB3 and the large display. I can buy this dock, get USB3, then buy the new monoprice 2560x1400 monitor for $600 total and save having to buy a whole new iMac or laptop. Worth it.

Also, the Matrox box won't drive 2560x1400. I'm sure hoping the Belkin one does, or it's a non-starter for me.

Pretty positive that the dock will not support Dual DVI. No monitor yet supports high-speed DVI, anything that runs past 1080p. And the DVI cable (looking at the dock) doesn't have all the pins, so I'd assume it's single DVI.

[chapinbk]

my 2 cents

Ever since buying the rMBP, I've planned to buy the Belkin. It peeves me that this is still an issue, a re-occurring source of consternation.

Matrox DS1 DVI-D has the same maximum resolution as my NEC P241W (1920x1200), so that's a fine option. Will miss the FireWire port, but I'd survive w/ a dongle.

Heck with the horizontal Henge Dock, Mini DisplayPort model. I have one DVI-D monitor, and an HDTV. Using the rMBP's built-in HDMI port for the TV, the Matrox or Belkin are both adequate.

Show me a reasonable TB accessory that duplicates the S/PDIF TOSLINK functionality of the 3.5mm audio out port on the rMBP, so I can dock the darned thing w/ HiFi audio support.

Yep, I'll buy the Belkin, because it's sexy.

--
rMBP 2.3Ghz, 16gb ram, 256gb ssd
NEC MultiSync P241W monitor (lower color-gamut, but well-refined feature set)
various other present/formerly premium devices

[terriyaki]

Looks like Belkin is taking pre-orders.

Finally!

[chapinbk]

Originally Posted by terriyaki

Looks like Belkin is taking pre-orders.

Finally!

So they are, thanks for the heads up! Odd they didn't send out a bulk mailing on the "notify us" mailing list, perhaps that'll arrive tomorrow, and *pre* pre-orderers will be first in line

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by terriyaki

Looks like Belkin is taking pre-orders.

Finally!

So the thread second in line to "PowerBook G5 next Tuesday" may finally be closed?

[chapinbk]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

So the thread second in line to "PowerBook G5 next Tuesday" may finally be closed?

Yah, point taken, not a fair comparison though. Despite Apple's politics (screw Tim Cook for waffling on Jobs' "thermonuclear war first" stance on Samsung's patent advances), nobody really believes they're going to take another nose dive (as they did from '86-'97, Wikipedia) over something like TB, do they? Sure, its insidious propagation of TB is deplorable, but it's undeniable, and we should still embrace it -- even by default.

[chapinbk]

Heh, Apple reduced the price of its MBP line. That may help bolster its TB love affair...

[toke lahti]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

So the thread second in line to "PowerBook G5 next Tuesday" may finally be closed?

Remember the greatest blu-ray thread of all times?

[chapinbk]

Don't remember, but generally don't buy movies, so BluRay is a lost cause for me anyway

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by chapinbk

Don't remember, but generally don't buy movies, so BluRay is a lost cause for me anyway

So, you have very few movies.

OK, fair enough - high bandwidth 1080p isn't a need for you.

[chapinbk]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

So, you have very few movies.

OK, fair enough - high bandwidth 1080p isn't a need for you.

I'm not sure if I gather your meaning AidenShaw, but you're probably correct that isn't a need for me. I do edit/deliver video periodically, and high bandwidth ports are important to me, but that probably wouldn't be a deal-breaker, for me -- I was just making idle remarks. I followed the BluRay HD-DVD saga for its duration, but I never NEEDED that much quality to enjoy my Hollywood movies, and now that video streaming is so reliable (at least where I live), owning movies at all has really become moot for me. At least for now.

IN OTHER... ***HIGHLY ANTICIPATED*** NEWS
So, Belkin's site had a pre-order button for the dock for all of what, three days? Maybe they didn't manufacture enough in the first run, for fear they'd exceed demand. There were more rabid enthusiasts ready to pre-order it than they'd expected, so they stalled additional pre-orders, rather than mark it as backordered? Who knows.

I pre-ordered on Tue, got an e-mail this morning that it'll ship the first week in March.

2m TB cable from Apple arrived. At $39+shipping, it's obviously a better deal than the $45 1m cable from Belkin. They package it in a 4-inch diameter coil -- guess that's about as much as you'd want to flex it, without causing any damage?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ta1pkgwnu8...e-2m-Apple.jpg

[righteye]

Originally Posted by charlieegan3

Even now it's been reduced I still can't get over the price, It's a dock?!

$100 every TB port

[netdog]

I'll say it again for those who weren't listening.

Thunderbolt is a bag of hurt.