upgrades/storage/memory

01/04/2006, 12:40pm, EST

Wednesday, January 4th

LaCie unveils six products for MWSF

LaCie today unveiled six new storage solutions, announced that it will offer MacWorld show specials with a daily prize drawing, and touted the impending launch of a new customer profiles website to showcase its best customers. The new products will make their debut at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco from January 9-13th, and LaCie has said it will offer special MacWorld pricing on its most popular hard drive models via its online store. New devices to debut include the "Little Big Disk" ($400-800), "Rugged Hard Drive" ($170-400), "Skwarim" ($150-200), "Two Big" ($500-1,000), "mini Hard Drive and Hub" ($200-430), and "Slim DVD RW Design by FA Porsche" ($220).

Little Big Disk

The LaCie Little Big Disk offers portable storage in capacities of 160GB (5,400RPM, $400), 200GB (7,200RPM, $650), 240GB (5,400RPM, $650), and 320GB (5,400RPM, $800) with 16MB of cache. The drives offer throughput of up to 80MB per second over FireWire 800 (burst transfer rate). Little Big Disk drives tout LaCie's "Triple Interface" with FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 connectivity. The drives are powered by and bootable over FireWire, and feature a signature design by Neil Poulton.



Rugged Hard Drive

The Rugged Hard Drive is designed to be a tough and speedy portable hard drive featuring LaCie's "Triple Interface" that provides FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 connectivity for users on-the-go. A unique aluminum shell and rubber bumper protects the device from table-height drops while also boasting a design by Neil Poulton. Rugged Hard Drives are available with the "Triple Interface" in 80GB (5,400RPM, $200), 100GB (7,200RPM, $400), and 120GB (5,400RPM, $360) capacities. Single-interface drives are also available in 80GB ($170) and 120GB ($330) capacities, both spinning at 5,400RPM.



Skwarim

The Skwarim is a handheld hard drive in a 3.3-inch perfect square shape with a unique textured feel, designed by Karim Rashid. The drive will be offered in blue 60GB ($200) or pink 30GB ($150) versions with an integrated USB 2.0 cable for plug-and-play use, negating the need to carry an AC adapter.



Two Big

LaCie's Two Big is a SATA II RAID storage solution with two hot-swappable drives in capacities of 500GB ($500) and 1TB ($1,000). The drives deliver a maximum speed of up to 115MB per second in RAID 0, and simple setup allows plug-and-play with hot-swappable expandability.



Mini Hard Drive and Hub

LaCie's mini Hard Drive and Hub is designed to expand the use of Apple's Mac mini system, offering up to 500GB of storage via FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 to accommodate a variety of additional peripherals. The device is designed to look good with a Mac mini with a brushed aluminum casing and matching form factor. LaCie mini Hard Drive and Hub drives are available in 250GB ($200), 300GB ($230), 400GB ($370), and 500GB ($430) capacities.

Slim DVD RW Design by FA Porsche

The Slim DVD RW Design by FA Porsche ($220) is a fully portable FireWire bus-powered DVD burner with Toast 7 Titanium CD/DVD burning software. The bundled software includes a new set of multimedia-specific features such as converting DivX downloads to DVD in one step, creating HD slideshows, and burning over 50 hours of music onto a single layer DVD with Dolby Digital sound. The device has the ability to etch silkscreen-quality labels onto special discs using LightScribe technology, and can write to all CD/DVD media formats.


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Dated, Clunky Designs?
0
01/04, 2:51pm, EST
Is it just me or do LaCie's new designs seem ill conceived? I love Karim Rashid designs, modernism, and playful industrial design, but what Macs (or PCs for that matter) are these devices going to match, other than a late 1990s iMac? The candy-colored, rubber-edged design wave seems pretty dated, to me. Unless there's some new design trend that's managed to go over my head, what is LaCie thinking?
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The French...
0
01/04, 6:28pm, EST
Stiupid Frog.
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I agree...
0
01/04, 6:31pm, EST
Don't care for their new designs either.

Maybe LaCie is going after the 2-10 year old demographic. I don't think anybody would take me seriously if I had a pink or orange baby rattle hanging off my G5 or Powerbook.

...but I won't drive a Miata either...that just me.

J.Treehorn
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substance over style
0
01/08, 2:25pm, EST
LaCie! would do well to solve the functional design problems with their drives rather than putting "cute" cases on them...like providing adequate cooling to their Big Disk line of drives. We bought 4 of them and they ran hot enough to fry an egg on the surface. 3 of 4 failed within three months. And I agree with the earlier posters...who wants a drive that looks like a giant lego block or a baby toy? What are they smokin? Want a nice drive? Try macsales.com instead of LaCie.
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No Extern Raid 5 solution
0
01/09, 12:53pm, EST
Still no external 3 disk Raid 5 solutions available.

I want reliability - all that is on offer is Raid 0 and Raid 1 OK Raid 1 is good reliability wise, but not as good capacity wise as RAID 5 - I continue to be suprpised that LaCie offer no external 3 disk raid 5 solution.
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