LaCie's USB Hard Drive - Black Marble Slab of Doom

We've been staring at the specs for and pictures of LaCie's newest hard drive for five minutes now, and we can't figure out if we're impressed or irritated by LaCie's chutzpah for marketing a backup drive like this one. With its pretentious name - "LaCie Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton," and no, we're not kidding - and mirrored black exterior with the single blue LED flaring out from the drive's underside, Poulton's design looks like something that belongs in a museum, not next to a computer, USB 2.0 connection and internal capacities from 320 GB to 1 TB notwithstanding. We suspect that's the point, though: the only place we've ever seen LaCie drives in use is in the hands of artists, who will no doubt appreciate Poulton's minimalist style far more than the general public. Also, making your design sound like a mini-monolith of pure evil is pretty cool, too.

Design aside, one feature of this drive (or lack thereof) surprises us considerably: where's the FireWire connection? Sure, USB is far more ubiquitous, and is a necessary evil if you want to keep your Windows-using customers happy, but with double the transfer speed and full Apple support, FireWire 800 seems like the logical second connection.