This one was pretty low key but AOC had their own Thunderbolt display at Intel's booth. No word on pricing or availability but hopefully we'll see more Thunderbolt equipped panels later this year, after Ivy Bridge systems start shipping with Cactus Ridge.

 

Comments Locked

13 Comments

View All Comments

  • jabber - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link

    And USB3.0 dominates the world.
  • JonnyDough - Monday, January 16, 2012 - link

    I want a single, standardized, powered cable to connect all my devices. Why is this so hard? Why can't I connect my monitor to either a power strip or to a port on my PC? (use cords with the same interface, but two different ends)

    Why can't I connect an external Blu-ray player on the same port? I want a video card that can power my monitor, or at least have a split cord that supplies power from a port on my PC and also connects to the video card.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 - link

    Way back in the day (think AT era); power supplies with an AC passthrough for your monitor were common. I'm not sure why they never made it to ATX units.

    The problem with a universal power cable is that there's too much variation in the amount of power a device needs. A universal one would need to be about the size and thickness of a current wall cable to support high end desktops with 1000+W power draws.

    Even just dropping down to laptops you've got a huge spread between ultraportables that only need 40W when charging their battery, performance laptops with big batteries that can charge at 100W, and extreme gaming laptops that can suck through 200W while gaming on SLI/xFire GPUs.

    I suspect USB charging of small devices is as far as we'll ever see a universal power adapter get (possibly with a bump from 10 to 15 or 20W to allow faster tablet charges); because once you start getting higher power levels your connectors minimum size to handle the load gets larger than needed for stuff like phones.

    Also, mini barrel type power connectors are easier to insert blind on the back of devices and because they can freely rotate deliver much lower levels of mechanical stress on devices where use while plugged in isn't unreasonable.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now