Fact: No USB 3.0 in Upcoming ThinkPads

Shame… so it looks like I’ll need to wait another year before buying a new ThinkPad.


From http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/44493-nvidia-our-nforce-chipsets-are-qbetterq-than-intels:

"We [have also] learned that Intel is postponing USB 3 introduction until 2011. With no competition in chipsets, it seems Intel has decided that innovation is not needed for USB any time soon," said Burke. "With no one to push Intel to innovate, PC enthusiasts are left with Intel chipsets and the features and performance they deliver, or lack there of."

 

There is a small chance they could use a dedicated USB 3.0 controller. It's still a probability, though a small one.

 

Fail!!!!!!!!!!

 

I feel like Intel decided to do this in order to keep USB3 from becoming too established so that their pet project Light Peak will have a fighting chance at being adopted when it finally hits the market, possibly at the behest of Apple.

Anyone have any insight into this?

 

Honestly nothing new here, USB 3.0 has been discussed a lot more in the hardware forum. The major players (Intel, nVidia, WD, etc.) don't care to support it until at least 2011, so you won't see devices that can support USB 3.0 or devices that can actually utilize it's bandwidth in the near future. Kind of a shame, USB 2.0 is simply lagging behind as it is easily capped, FW never really picked up, and most eSATA implementations don't have power through it.

 

usb 3.0 sounds so good, but without the market momentum and product range that supports it, no one is going to be vanguard for this technology.

 

I'm not too surprised, really. Would have been nice to see it implemented though, although I don't have any USB 3.0 devices anyway

 

USB 3 doesn't seem necessary right now, though. Yeah it's fast, but right now eSATA does 3 Gbps. USB 2 is compatible with virtually everything, so right now, USB 2 + eSATA seems perfect. I had high hopes for USB 3, but it looks better to hold out for Light Peak and in the meantime eSATA+USB 2 will meet all of my needs. Also someone mentioned eSATA's disadvantage is that it doesn't have power. Well it appears to me that most of the drives with eSATA have their own power supplies anyway so it's not so bad. Though I think eSATA flash drives will be impractical because of this, but they are a niche anyway.

 

thats exactly what i think is happening.

what thinkpad do you own that uses eSATA? even if you have one, 99% of laptops dont. eSATA is a standard very few use while the majority is stuck with usb 2.0, old tech thats should have been replaced years ago.

 

Most current laptops have eSATA now. Lenovo hasn't released a new notebook in a while, but their latest releases such as the T400s have it. I would bet that all the Q1 2010 Lenovos will have eSATA in them.