Thunderbolt vs. USB, HDMI, PCIe Cable: How does it compare?

lkgriffith said:

At least the manufacturer of the system no longer has to spend $0.69 for an extra SATA port. That means they can save $69.00 of the reduction in profit that represents. After all, the customer doesn't know they have a times ten multiplier on the cost of materials added to the final price. The interesting thing is that this will work until the competition discovers they can more than make up for the difference by charging the end customer $40.00 less. Soon the savings will become negative because the customer base will discover value delivered can be had at a much lower price.

That is how it is possible that we can buy a four pound portable battery powered super computer for under $500 that can blow away a multi mega dollar super computer of a decade ago.

The moral to this story is to wait a generation of technology and then buy a second level system. Leave the top of the line on the table. You don't need it. If your ego does, be prepared to spend through the nose for equipment that will become obsolete in less than six months.

This message is created on an eight year old computer with expanded memory taken from old and burned out computer equipment, a for year old low cost graphics card plugged into its second system, and a three year low cost 500 gig ATA drive also plugged into its second system. Running a $50 Windows 7 Home Premium OS also on its second system. The last out of pocket expense was the $50 for Windows 7 at introduction. It works great for my purposes.

Viva la competition!

PS: Windows 8 release preview won't install on my hardware. No problem. I don't want it clogging my system and wouldn't use it if I were able to. I do have it installed as a second partition OS on a four year old laptop for evaluation. It won't be used as a production system.

Hi there

true to a point -- but why not get the best of BOTH worlds
shell out for a 120 GB SSD which you can move to another machine when you need it -- and that old clonker of yours will race again !!.

SSD's will improve almost ANY system --often the improvement is dramatic on OLDER equipment --it's very rarely lack of processing power that causes poor performance on home computers.

Cheers
jimbo