The battle between Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 has only recently begun in earnest, what with motherboards finally emerging to give non-Mac computers access to the 10Gbps interface.
While USB 3.0 can’t match Thunderbolt in terms of data throughput, it now has the upper hand in power capabilities, as last week the 100W Power Delivery spec was approved for both USB 2.0 and 3.0. That’s ten times what Thunderbolt can do, and it means that you can charge up your laptop or power most any peripheral via Universal Serial Bus.
Naturally, the new specification relies on beefier cables to deliver maximum juice, but we won’t have to go replacing all our old wires it includes a means to check attached cables and devices and set the voltage and amperage accordingly.
Perfect, that means we won’t have to carry around bundle of proprietary power cords when we travel, and we get peace of mind that charging via USB won’t have any, ahem, unpleasant side effects.
