Sonnet Thunderbolt Dock announced

[nst7]

This thing looks really cool.

A Thunderbolt docking station that has space for an optical drive (including Blu Ray drives) and hard drive, in addition to USB 3.0 ports, Esata ports, Firewire 800 and Ethernet ports, and more.

Best of all, two Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/ec...rboltdock.html

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by nst7

This thing looks really cool.

A Thunderbolt docking station that has space for an optical drive (including Blu Ray drives) and hard drive, in addition to USB 3.0 ports, Esata ports, Firewire 800 and Ethernet ports, and more.

Best of all, two Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/ec...rboltdock.html

Nice - and not too expensive. $550 pre-order with the blur-ray and 2 TB drives installed. Looks like the same basic form factor as a Mac Mini but taller.

[Southsidemusic]

$399 empty.. A bit pricey seeing that you need an xtra 400-500 for a SSD and TaDa!! Now it's a $1000! Thanx but No thanx.

[nst7]

You don't have to use an SSD. You can use a regular hard drive, much cheaper.

And, that regular hard drive will have the fast access speed of 6 Gb/s.

For many people, they would need to buy these things separately anyway, such as an optical drive, an external hard drive enclosure, and even a basic USB hub. Factor that in, plus the other ports and the speed of Thunderbolt, and it's not a bad deal at all. Plus the benefit of one small box instead of a clutter of devices and cables.

[morristyson]

Since this device interfaces with the computer by TB only, is it conceivable that a Firewire audio interface could be used with this dock on a computer that does not have a FW card/driver? Or a USB audio interface that on a computer that doesn't have USB card/driver?
Mo

[nst7]

Yes. You can already use a firewire device on a computer that doesn't have firewire by using the Apple Thunderbolt to firewire adapter.

This will be the same type of thing, but also let you hook up something via Esata, ethernet, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, as well as house a CD/DVD/BluRay drive, and a regular hard drive or SSD hard drive.

As for USB, I don't know of any computer in existence that doesn't have USB ports, unless it's many years old.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by nst7

Yes. You can already use a firewire device on a computer that doesn't have firewire by using the Apple Thunderbolt to firewire adapter.

This will be the same type of thing, but also let you hook up something via Esata, ethernet, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, as well as house a CD/DVD/BluRay drive, and a regular hard drive or SSD hard drive.

As for USB, I don't know of any computer in existence that doesn't have USB ports, unless it's many years old.

Said computer without USB ports would have to be a Win95 or earlier machine. And that's way old.

[John_Toolbox]

As cool as this is, like most thunderbolt peripherals it just doesn't seem cost effective to me. For $50 more, you can buy a whole mac mini.

It seems like when you factor in all of these expensive boxes and cables, that computers still cost the same and take up the same amount of space with these setups, the only difference is there are a lot of small boxes and cables connecting them together vs. one big box that all of the cables run to.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by John_Toolbox

As cool as this is, like most thunderbolt peripherals it just doesn't seem cost effective to me. For $50 more, you can buy a whole mac mini.

It seems like when you factor in all of these expensive boxes and cables, that computers still cost the same and take up the same amount of space with these setups, the only difference is there are a lot of small boxes and cables connecting them together vs. one big box that all of the cables run to.

Agreed.

If this thing were $150-200 without drives, then it would be worth looking at. For $400, You could easily assemble an mATX with all of those connections and just network it to your main computer.

[nst7]

It depends on which configuration you're comparing it to. The base price with a DVD/CD drive, and no internal drive, is $399.

For an apples to apples comparison, consider that just to get a decent external hard drive enclosure, an external optical drive, and even a basic USB hub, you'd be looking at $150 or more just with that. With any of these newer Macs, you're going to need that stuff, at least one external hard drive, and for most, an optical drive.

So figure for $250, you're getting a great hub with Thunderbolt speed that serves about everything you can think of. And don't forget the connection for the hard drive is 6 Gb/s.

I don't quite understand when you're talking about networking computers, how you would hook them up, unless you're assuming the person is using VE Pro, which again, is an extra cost.