<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Last February, Apple announced Thunderbolt, an Intel-designed standard for connecting displays, hard drives, and other high performance peripherals to Macs and PCs at superfast speeds: a max of 10 gigabits per second, up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and 12 times faster than Firewire 800. The company promised a host of third party gadgets would be soon to follow. But by the end of the year, aside from Apple&amp;#039;s own Cinema Display and a handful of drives from makers like LaCie, Thunderbolt options were scarce. If you bought a Mac in 2011, there&amp;#039;s a good chance your Thunderbolt port has gone completely untouched. CES has already seen a smattering of Thunderbolt action, including, crucially, a handful of non-Apple laptops that will support the protocol. But the bad news is that they, along with the most enticing Thunderbolt peripheral we&amp;#039;ve seen at the show so far, won&amp;#039;t be around until this summer... or later. The first sign that Thunderbolt&amp;#039;s on its way to a healthier existence in 2012 is its appearance on a wider range of PCs. So far, Lenovo has announced Thunderbolt support in its 14&amp;quot; Edge S430 laptop, and Acer says it has managed to squeeze a Thunderbolt port on its Aspire S5 ultrabook, which they claim to be the world&amp;#039;s thinnest. But Thunderbolt really lives and dies with the peripherals that support it. At CES, Belkin&amp;#039;s showing off a sleek Thunderbolt dock ($299) that will give MacBook Airs (and presumably other port-deficient Ultrabooks) Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire, HDMI, 3.5mm audio, three USB 2.0 ports, and an additional pair of Thunderbolt connections, all from a single Thunderbolt cable. It&amp;#039;s just the type of heavy usage Thunderbolt was designed for, and it&amp;#039;s one of the most unique, consumer-relevant Thunderbolt products we&amp;#039;ve seen yet. Then there are the drives: Elgato announced a pair of compact Thunderbolt SSDs at 128GB and 256GB ($400 and $600, respectively), the first to be powered entirely by the Thunderbolt connection itself, and OCZ has announced a series of Thunderbolt drives ranging from 128GB through 1TB. LaCie&amp;#039;s updated a few of its lines with Thunderbolt, too, including the 2big RAID drives and an eSATA Thunderbolt hub. Of course, a CES announcement doesn&amp;#039;t mean these products will see the light of day anytime soon. Lenovo&amp;#039;s laptop is slated for arrival in June, and Acer&amp;#039;s Thunderbolt-equipped ultrabook currently has a nebulous Q2 release date. Elgato and LaCie&amp;#039;s drives are slated for the next few months, though Belkin&amp;#039;s dock, arguably the most exciting device of the lot, won&amp;#039;t be around until September. The dearth of peripherals available so far isn&amp;#039;t altogether surprising. Apple is notoriously hard to work with in these matters. AirPlay, the company&amp;#039;s wireless media streaming protocol, was announced in late 2010, and it has taken until now for a steady stream of compelling AirPlay gadgets to start showing up\u2014and now that PC makers are getting into the fray, more hard drives, displays, and docks will likely follow. For now, Thunderbolt largely remains the province of audio/visual professionals\u2014those who need to move serious amounts of data on and off their machines every day, and for whom latency is a serious concern. Is 2012 the year of Thunderbolt? Not quite. But the uptick in activity\u2014both in PCs and peripherals supporting the standard\u2014suggests that next year&amp;#039;s show might see Thunderbolt&amp;#039;s true debut as a consumer standard. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a7375/is-2012-the-year-of-thunderbolt-ces-analysis-6635545/>