Thunderbolt accessories are still far more expensive than usb 3.0 / usb 2.0 accessories, there is a big price tag just to be able to use the extra afforded bandwidth.
I got Belkin TB dock 1.0, it is a nice piece of kit, and allows me to get three USB 3.0 ports, as I have only USB 2.0 on mid-2011 Macbook Air.
My gripe, I cannot boot from them, as the driver is not in the firmware and only loads after the Mac boot process.
I also noticed it is not hot swappable within other OSes, only within the native Mac OSes, i.e. OS X and Windows through bootcamp.
If I want say to use Linux, I have to switch on the dock and connect it before I boot into Linux (or Android for that matter).
Now to boot from thunderbolt, there is 2 solutions, one is a SATA hard disk dock which is from Seagate I think, and the other is dedicated external thunderbolt hard drives, and all these are priced over 120 UK Pounds (around over 180 US Dollars), too pricey in my view.
Booting from USB 2.0 is OK but slow.
Having a post 2013 Macbook Air gets you USB 3.0, but again too expensive just to get the privilege of USB 3.0.
I wonder when will Thunderbolt accessories drop down to a more affordable price bracket, such as less than 100 pounds, maybe when USB 3.1 is finally released?
Published by me on Hackintosh Forum.
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