Price drop on eSATA for MacBook Pro

Sonnet just dropped the price on the Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard/34 for the MacBook Pro (see my review).

This only way to achieve high external disk performance on a MacBook Pro is with eSATA by means of an eSATA card inserted into the ExpressCard/34 slot. I just advised a consulting client on this very topic, saving him the huge expense of buying a Mac Pro, allowing him to move his external eSATA enclosure from his PowerMac G5 to his new MacBook Pro.

Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro for ExpressCard/34 for MacBook Pro

While less expensive eSATA cards easily outperform sluggish Firewire 800, only the Tempo SATA Pro with its Marvell chipset offers the highest performance for a dual-drive RAID stripe as used in Optimizing Photoshop.

Apple’s ill-advised elimination of the ExpressCard/34 slot in the latest 13" and 15" MacBook Pro means you can’t use eSATA in those models (and nudges those models towards consumer-grade status, unsuitable for a desktop replacement). See my June 9 comments. Stick with the previous generation models (refurbished) or the current 17" model, all of which have the ExpressCard/34 slot.