Thunderbolt Interface for PC Question

After reading about thunderbolt coming to PC's last fall I haven't come across any recent updates. I know those articles mentioned a few manufactures, like Asus and Lenovo, were going to put it in the 2012 models, but has anyone heard any more?

Perhaps there's an NDA for this? I know some of the upcoming laptops seem to have displayport, but is this just displayport or could it be thunderbolt? Is there a way to tell by just looking at the picture of the port like you can with usb 3.0?

 

the Viao Z2 has had thunderbolt as long as Apple, the difference is theirs is USB/TB combo versus miniDP/TB. I have read that Asus, and others should be putting it in the next refresh but as to which port config they use who knows. you would need to see a spec sheet and not a visual comparison I think

 

You will see more of them in 2013. They are still adopting it. The ports has a sort of thunder icon on it, the port itself looks like regular DP port. As for the combination, it's always DP/TB. If you see a regular DP, it's a regular DP.

On the economic side, OEMs would still want to make the most out of their "today's tech" products. Think about the wide range of possibility with Thunderbolt, why would you want to stick with a notebook with a fixed GPU (even MXM, it's expensive to upgrade) whilst you can upgrade an external card along the way. Obviously a few get the port now, a year or two, it will be everywhere. By the time Intel releases Thunderbolt sucessor -50Gbps- (2015-2017), I wonder what the future of notebook will be


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Given the price of Thundrbolt, I think it'll take longer than a year or two to trickle down to the mainstream. A Thunderbolt cable may not cost the $50 Apple is asking for, but it won't be 50¢ either due to the need for chips on both ends of the cable.

Improvements in technology and economies of scale should eventually mean much cheaper Thunderbolt - perhaps as cheap as USB 2.0 is today - but that takes time. Even if everyone in the world will have Thunderbolt on their next computer, it'll still be 3-5 years before Thunderbolt is ubiquitous.

 

It's not about the production of the chipset. Intel admits the chipset costs only 15$. The thing in my belief is that OEMs know they can make more money by selling laptops that the part customers desire to upgrade the most is fixed/ cannot be upgraded. So they can introduce and reintroduce notebooks with better but FIXED GPU and go on forever like that. With the introduction of Thunderbolt and such innovation, I'm sure that trend will die soon. Because you literally can carry a 4 lbs ultrabook with 2 lbs external GPU (performance of "near" desktop).