14 DAY TRIAL // The Thunderbolt connectivity technology hasn't spread too far outside of the Apple Mac market, and probably won't.
Still, Apple has a fairly large supply chain and customer base, so it's not like the technology needs anything more to survive.
That said, in addition to the Mac systems and MacBooks sold by Apple, there are products made by third parties.
Sonnet is one such third party, and has released the Echo 15.
We aren't sure what to call the product, except a particularly elaborate Thunderbolt dock. The product provides MacBook laptops with an optical drive (DVR writer or Blu-ray), two eSATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a 3.5-inch SATA 6 Gb/s internal drive bay (2 TB max) and FireWire 800.
The data come to and from the MacBook via 10 Gbps Thunderbolt links. There are two of them, so that other items may be daisy-chained.
The starting price is of $399.95 / 310-399.95 Euro.
