LaCie on Thursday introduced the LaCie 321 Monitor, a 21.3-inch LCD display that provides a color gamut equivalent to a CRT. The company also introduced the 800GB LaCie Ethernet Disk and new external hard disk drives that use Serial ATA (SATA).
The display also features 500:1 contrast ratio, 250 cd/m2 brightness, and viewing angles of up to 176 degrees. With native 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution, the 321 features a Digital Visual Interface (DVI) and a 15-pin d-sub analog video connector. LaCie claims the monitor displays 72 percent of NTSC video standards gamut and features 10-bit gamma correction. It will be available in November 2004 for US$1,699.
The 800GB LaCie Ethernet Disk is a Web-administrable Network Attached Storage (NAS) system that uses Microsoft’s Windows XP Embedded operating system to provide network-based file storage for Mac, Windows, Linux and Unix computers. It can operate in a standard 19-inch equipment rack or can work on a desktop and can be stacked with other LaCie d2 devices. The Ethernet Disk sports a single 10/100baseT Ethernet connection, 2 USB 1.1 interfaces, 1 FireWire 400 interface, a 15-pin d-sub analog display connection and a 7200RPM hard disk drive mechanism. It can also be expanded with additional storage capacity using built-in USB and FireWire ports. The 800GB model costs US$1,499, while 500GB, 250GB and 160GB models cost $999, $799 and $599 respectively.
LaCie is also introducing new d2 SATA Hard Drives. The external hard disk drives are clad in aluminum, like LaCie’s other d2 external drives, but are bundled with a Serial ATA (SATA) PCI expansion card which has two SATA ports enabling two separate drives to operate at the same speed. LaCie plans to ship the new d2 drives this winter — prices range from $269 to $549 for storage capacities ranging from 160GB – 400GB using 7200RPM mechanisms. LaCie also plans to ship a 74GB, 10,000RPM mechanism for $449. LaCie’s Web site had not been updated with information about the new drives as MacCentral posted this article.