Here’s something that you might not have thought of as something you need, but once you think about it, maybe you do. LaCie has introduced the LaPlug, a network-attached box that gives you wireless access to your USB devices. Or just think of it as a wireless USB hub. A really handy one that lets you wirelessly stream multimedia from a USB drive to your Wi-fi devices, give you wireless access to an attached printer, or turn your simple USB drive into your personal cloud-based storage bin.
A mobile hard drive that has a compact, rugged shell and a fast interface? Can’t get any more awesome than that. Well, maybe you can if you replace the mechanical innards with a solid state drive, but an SSD that packs 500GB to 1GB would be so expensive, it won’t even be funny. So here’s a nice solution: LaCie has announced the Rugged Mini, which is basically the mini-fied version of their existing LaCie Rugged, giving you the same levels of protection, the same fast USB 3.0 interface, but in a smaller form factor.
External drives are external drives, right? They’re shiny plastic boxes that you use to store your digital stuff. But while companies strive to make them look pretty (or at least presentable, usually with plain, glossy colored shells), they’re rarely something you’d show off to your buddies. They sit in the background, they store and backup your data, and that’s it. Here’s something that’s clearly designed to be seen: LaCie just tag-teamed up with Porsche Design to come out with a pair of external hard drives that actually looks awesome: the LaCie Porsche Design Mobile Hard Drive P’9220 and the LaCie Porsche Design Desktop Hard Drive P’9230.
LaCie and silver design house Christofle teamed up to come out with this shiny thing. Called the Galet, it’s basically a 4GB USB flash drive packed inside a silver-plated pebble-like thing. And that’s pretty much it—it’s a drive that’ll look good beside your other shiny silver stuff, in case you’re the type of person who likes shiny silver accessories. The drive itself supports the USB 3.0 interface for faster file transfers and comes with 4GBs of Wuala online storage and built-in encryption.
It looks like a tank (well, a tank’s treads, anyway), is named the ‘LaCie Tank,’ and is meant to be as tough as one. Designed by Neil Poulton, this interesting box of popypropylene, foam and rubber is basically a protective case that can fit anything from 2.5-inch hard drives, digital cameras and other mobile devices (including the Nintendo DS or DSi) that can fit into a 1 x 4.2 x 6-inch space from the elements.
