“Hewlett-Packard considered using Intel’s Thunderbolt interconnect in new desktop PCs announced Monday, but is sticking with USB 3.0 because of wider support, a company official said,” Agam Shah reports for IDG News. “‘We did look at [Thunderbolt]. We’re still looking into it. Haven’t found a value proposition yet,’ said Xavier Lauwaert, worldwide marketing manager for desktops at HP.”
Advertisement: The new iMac. With ultrafast and ultraflexible Thunderbolt I/O. From $1199. Fast, free shipping at the Apple Online Store.
“Thunderbolt is a high-speed interconnect that can transfer data between host computers and external devices such as displays and storage devices at speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second,” Shah reports. “HP announced three new series of desktop PCs on Monday, including one that can be configured to include USB 3.0 ports, the Pavilion HPE H8 series. Lauwaert said HP didn’t see value in including Thunderbolt in desktops. ‘On the PC side, everybody seems to be content with the expansion of USB 3.0. Do we need to go into more fancy solutions? Not convinced yet,’ Lauwaert said.”
MacDailyNews Take: HP. Invent (reasons to keep customers behind the curve).
Shah reports, “Intel developed Thunderbolt with Apple, which is offering the interface in a few Macintosh models [so far]… Thunderbolt currently supports the PCI Express and DisplayPort protocols, which helps reduce the number of connectors needed to attach peripherals to computers.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s a reason why HP is again cutting their outlook and warning of sluggish PC sales: Their PCs suck compared to Apple’s.
Related articles:
HP cuts outlook again citing Windows PC slump, services weakness – May 17, 2011
Thunderbolt-equipped Mac: You’re so going to want this – May 5, 2011
Apple’s new 27-inch iMacs support dual-monitor out via dual Thunderbolt ports – May 3, 2011
5 Reasons why Thunderbolt is a big deal – May 3, 2011
Apple unveils new iMac with next-gen quad-core processors, graphics and Thunderbolt I/O technology – May 3, 2011
Typical HP…dream small…get even smaller.
I looked at HP.
Haven’t found a value proposition yet.
That is probably what every power user is saying to themselves; no Thunderbolt? It’s not for me.
HP’s customer base: Thunderbolt? We don’t need no steenking thunderbolt!
intel doesnt use thunderbult becouse they cant apple have the exclusivity for a full year.
According to a statement made Feb. 25, 2011 by Dave Salvator, senior communications manager of Intel’s global communications group, that is NOT the case.
Ref: http://goo.gl/bOH25
the point of thunderbolt is that it’s fast enough so that peripherals aren’t peripheral.
Isn’t that what we said 20-odd years ago about SCSI? 🙂
Industrial strength SCSI has never been something to sneeze at. But it was not available for consumer equipment. It continued to develop even when many thought it was defunct.
In comparison, Thunderbolt offers twice the peak speed and two independent buses. In theory, a single Thunderbolt port thus has four times the throughput of a USB 3.0 port.
HP likes USB3.0 because they like moving at half speed.
yeah… not even half the speed….
*sigh* had Apple not pushed for (relatively) high royalties on the original Firewire – it would be the standard instead of USB. And FireWire 3200 would already have been here like a couple years ago.. THAT would have been about half the speed of ThunderBolt – Again 2 years ago.
stucktrader, you not what you speak!
FireWire is freely licensed and is a IEEE1394 standard.
Jason, YOU know not what you speak!
IEEE1394 was a standard long ago, but it was NOT free. In 1999 Apple started charging a small amount for others to include Firewire ports in their computers and devices. This was of course before iPods were around, and USB2 was still in development.
It was $1 per port. Trivial amount, but that would be marked up and passed on to the consumer, in a time when PCs were trying to save pennies per system.
Apple had the right to try capitalizing on its co-creation (Sony called it i-Link), but it was the wrong move. The only two things USB2 had going for it were a higher theoretical speed (which in practice was always lower than the original Firewire, but you know how marketing is), and it eventually came free with Intel motherboards.
When the iPod came around, Firewire blew all the other MP3 players out of the water in part because the others used the agonizingly slow USB1, but iPod competitors quickly adopted USB2, helping it skyrocket and displace Firewire, and we’ve been stuck with a completely inferior technology ever since. Even Apple conceded this when they stopped shipping iPods with Firewire ports.
I knew Apple had shot themselves in the foot the moment I read about the new licensing fee. It is one of the few truly idiotic mis-steps they’ve done since Jobs’ return.
Maybe even “eight speed” since Thunderbold provides total 40 Gbit/s bandwidth.
Do HP engineers hang onions on their belts next to the slide rules?
Because that was the fashion back then….”
altho modern hp is so absolutely disappointing, slide rules are the /wrong/ thing to put in that picture. Hp did (does?) make the /coolest/ calculators. they were kind of like the apple of the calculator world. gosh I love rpn, I have an hp 32s sitting on my desk that I still use to this day. You also have to remember that steve Wozniak worked for hp up to the time he and jobs founded apple. They used to make pretty good ibm pc clones (many came even with fire wire) right up until they bought compaq, and all there products went into the toilet.
So those engineers would be hanging good old rpn calcs next to those onions, not slide rules.
Budgerigars calling ‘cheep cheep’
As Travis McGee said, “You want guarantees in life, you live small.”
Man, I really loved that series and John D. McDonald. Some of the most enjoyable fiction I ever read. Thanks for the reminder.
“‘We did look at [Thunderbolt]. We’re still looking into it. Haven’t found a value proposition yet,’ said Xavier Lauwaert, worldwide marketing manager for desktops at HP.”
“value proposition”
Right. I’m sure HP knows much better than Apple when it comes to technology and what consumers want.
I mean, really, I don’t need my computer to be all fancy. Technology. It just doesn’t belong in computers.
I agree. Nothing fancy for me, pleeeze. None of this newfangled touch screen stuff or them fancy accelerogizometers. And nobody is ever going to need more than 32 megs of RAM.
It’s this kind of thinking that produces these results:
Apple got 1 year exclusivity From Intel… So no HP for a year…
already disproved.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380954,00.asp
“‘We did look at [Thunderbolt]. We’re still looking into it. Haven’t found a value proposition yet,’ said Xavier Lauwaert, worldwide marketing manager for desktops at HP.”
Yeah DUH, when you’re a fracking MARKETING MANAGER!!!
Down goes another company into the HELL that is Marketing-As-Management.
R.I.P. HP!
I knew ye well. 😥
HP just needs to close up shop. If you can’t innovate get out
Looks like a strategic move to me, and bottom dollar the other PC venders will follow. In turn creating a slow down or even halt production of Thunderbolt products and adapters except maybe in the niche video/SSD space.
It’s just tit for tat bullshit for lack of innovation.
If HP were put in charge of Apple production you would have ADB and SCSI ports on a MacBook Pro i7.
Correction: If HP MARKETING were put in charge of [whatever] you would see [last century’s technology] on [whatever].
Never, ever, let marketing be your R&D department. Good gawd, the world of biznizz has gone insane! Sorry kids, but when it comes to innovation, you schmooze, you lose.
That is incorrect. You know there are good marketing people (hard to find) and good engineers (hard to find). Bad engineers are probably worse than bad marketing people because bad engineers do not understand the value of good marketing, and vice-versa. Bad engineers = Linux/Android. Good marketing = Apple.
You’d have a nice shiny BIG DB9 Serial and DB25 Parallel port on your new Macbook Pro 😉
This is shockingly stupid! HP seems to not want to include it because they don’t want to be like Apple. When in fact, they’ve been ripping Apple off for years.
Translation. We (HP) aren’t making enough profit in PCs. We can’t afford to put a “fancy” new port on our PCs and lose even more profit per sale.
HP is absolutely right—those Windoze dullards don’t need anything fancy. In fact, HP could probably save a few cents on production costs by reverting to USB 1.0 in their next batch of Windoze boxes. Their customers might not even notice.
Translation: Our marketing department ran focus groups. Participants tell us “Hey man I’d like an HP cause I heard they’re pretty good, but come on man you charge more. My brother-in-law’s kid brother says Asus are the way to go unless I can front him the money and wait a week while he makes me a custom rig in the basement for even less”. So if our customers aren’t interested in premium computer why would they ever need a premium peripheral.
good analysis
Thunderbolt is far away from mass adoption, but Apple has enough market share in professional video and music production to bring critical mass to the peripheral ecosystem. It will start at high-end and need 2 years to come down to mass market and finally spread to Windows PC and even to HP if its still there.
Apple will bring Thunderbolt to every MacOS model before the end of 2011 and will keep their premium approach, other companies decide for the low-end and have to fight for their profits.
That was probably their thinking about Firewire in the late 90s/early 2000s (see my reply to another poster higher up). Problem then was that a “good enough” and cheaper/free alternative (USB2) came along.
Here, it’s Thunderbolt (aka “Light Peak”) vs. USB3. They’re not even competing in the same ballpark, but most people probably don’t care about Thunderbolt’s capabilities–remember PC users and makers are pretty damn conservative and less likely to embrace new things, even if it’s decidedly better than what others are offering (no this was NOT a political jab, do not take it as such).
HP has myopia. They can’t see the value because corporate customers aren’t asking for it. I use an HP laptop for work and it’s like working in slow motion compared to my iPad, Air or iMac at home.
I can see HP’s point. Why implement something they’ve determined few people might use when USB 3.0 and a $60 enclosure will suit the needs of most of their users. It may be that HP took a look at FireWire… saw its dismal adoption rate… and views the same fate with Thunderbolt. If TB does make inroads, nothing prevents its adoption down the road.
most users don’t see any difference between USB 1 and USB 2. They don’t even know there are different interface speeds.
But wouldn’t TB make all those GB of porn on HP computers so much easier to back up to external drives (when more come out)?
HP still ships some of their computers with PS2 mice and keyboards, no words…
good – another way for apple to differentiate from the low end.