Intel Working On Thunderbolt Dock For Ultrabooks, Say Reports

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Interesting news for those of you who favor the PC over the Mac, yet still wish you’d see more Mac hardware moves make it onto your favorite platform: some reports are suggesting that Intel may be looking to bring the Thunderbolt docking technology to their lineup of Ultrabooks.

Considering that Intel worked with Apple to get the Thunderbolt port onto Apple’s lineup of notebooks in the first place, this isn’t exactly a huge surprise, but it is going to make the competitions between the Mac and Intel lines of laptops a very interesting one indeed. We all know that Thunderbolt connectivity offers some amazing speeds (well past USB 3.0, at last report) and even provides several different connectivity options. Now the word is that Intel wants to put Thunderbolt ports on their Ultrabook line, even with a docking station included.

It’s not going to be a cut-and-dried transfer, naturally. Intel is a chip maker, not a hardware maker, so they’ll have to get the individual laptop makers on board with this concept. And Intel’s good will balance is likely in short supply considering the affairs that got us this far in the first place, with hardware makers crying foul at the low amounts of support Intel was providing for the creation of the Ultrabook line, and then getting involved in pricing beside to the detriment of profits for the hardware makers.

See, the down side here is that these Thunderbolt connectors reportedly wouldn’t be the ones you may already know. No, this time around, the idea is to offer up a combination dock connector port and a mini DisplayPort connector, providing an interesting sort of combination effect. It looks pretty unwieldy overall, and it’s easy to see where some manufacturers wouldn’t want to get involved. But I can imagine that, were Intel willing to offer up another round of support to the builders, they might have a much better shot at getting Thunderbolt included.

So what do you guys think about this one? Think that Intel’s desperately searching for differentiation from the Mac lineup and the various–less expensive–laptops already on the market? Or do you think that Intel’s on to something here, something that will give them some extra ammunition in the highly competitive laptop market? No matter what you think, we love hearing from you, so head on down to the comments section and let’s talk Ultrabooks!