We first suggested that a new VAIO series would feature Thunderbolt back in March, at the time details were scarce, however recently a photo showed up on Engadget which showed us our first glimpse of the port.

The image we have seen has been embedded below, as you can see that the arrow points to a port which we have not seen before, Engadget believe that this is Sony’s Thunderbolt port, although it does look like a USB port with a blue stripe running through the middle. This could mean a few things, maybe it is just a USB 3.0 port, maybe it is Sony’s Thunderbolt port, or maybe Sony has developed a port which allows you to use both Thunderbolt devices and USB 3.0 devices via a single port.

We are not sure what to believe, if you check out the comments section on Engadget you will see that there has been a huge response, the main argument seems to be if this is a Thunderbolt port why did Sony not use the same Mini DisplayPort as Apple, surely this is going to make finding universal products which work with both ports a pain.

Do you think the new port in the photo is Thunderbolt?

Obviously Apple are going to push Thunderbolt technology now, however we expect compliant devices to be pretty expensive, whilst PC users will be able to buy more affordable USB 3.0 compatible devices.

A lot of USB 3.0 peripherals will probably be USB 2.0 compliant, but it will be much slower and there will undoubtedly be some devices which will require a USB 3.0 connection to work well. We think that there would have been no harm in Apple giving the new iMacs on or two less USB 2.0 ports and putting a single USB 3.0 port there instead.

To us it looks like Apple have no plans to ever support USB 3.0 on any of their devices, obviously Thunderbolt is a faster and more advanced technology, however for consumer ease it would have made sense not to snub the new USB tech.

Imagine you are working on video project in a few years time and you for some reason need to move large video files from your PC to your Mac at a different location, if you own a USB 3.0 external HDD you will have to endure USB 2.0 speeds when plugged into your Mac . Also if you buy yourself an external HDD which uses Thunderbolt there will be no way to plug it into your PC.

Obviously most Mac users don’t care about PC compatibility and vice versa PC users don’t care about Mac users, but by adding a USB 3.0 port they could have catered for everyone’s needs.

Does the lack of USB 3.0 connectivity put you off the new iMac?

Gareth Halfacree over at thinq is reporting that a spokesperson for the company’s storage and memory division, has said that Corsair has no plans at present to make devices which support Thunderbolt. Intel’s Light Peak technology combines both PCI Express and DisplayPort technologies onto one high speed cable.

This is capable for transferring up to 10GB/s bi-directionally, which is about twice that of USB 3.0. Corsair have confirmed that they will be focusing on USB 3.0 for its range of external storage devices, and SATA for its internal storage devices, this is despite the speed advantages with Intel’s Thunderbolt.

They are also to continue in focusing on the high-end consumer sector, and have no plans to launch enterprise grade of storage products. Corsair is looking at the possibility of launching PCI Express based SSDs, but no final decision will be made until later in the year.

The company’s SSD range is a favorite amongst high-end system builders, and has received a boost thanks to the company’s decision to make it more clearer which models have 25nm flash NAND technology. Corsair has done this by adding ‘A’ to the low-end models, and by lowing the stated storage capacity from 120GB to 115GB on the top end models.