back to article Seagate's LaCie whips out bonkers posh silver-plated storage ball

You can see yourself reflected in the bright shiny, mirror-smooth surface of La Cie's Sphère - a storage ball - and you'll pay a lot of cash for the privilege. LaCie Sphère LaCie's mirrored storage ball - see the keyboard reflected in it. In this case mirroring doesn't mean data protection but the device's surface …

COMMENTS

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  1. g e

    Phantasm

    Does it fly and have two spikes and a drill bit ?

    1. Dave 126

      Re: Phantasm

      Looks more like the Orgasmatron from Woody Allen's The Sleeper, to me: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4sZPaKqYvos/TgRE2OM1K-I/AAAAAAAADB0/jG53z6aLf6s/s640/Sleeper_560x330_MSDSLEE_EC030_H-thumb-560xauto-28566.jpg

      The above image is Safe For Work, though not all the pictures I saw whilst searching for it were.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just FYI

    LaCie has had design nous for YEARS... it's not like Apple suddenly made design sexy... LaCie and Iomega were there before...

    1. Dave 126

      Re: Just FYI

      That's the first time I've heard of Iomega being held up as a posterchild for design... and we used a lot of ZIP disks in our c2000 design campus.

      LaCie's history has been tied to that of Apple's... but Apple's emphasis on design pre-dates that. It was Apple that led Hartmut Esslinger's design agency (clients including Wega and Sony Trinitron) to become Frog Design in 1982. Since then they've designed products for NeXT and SPARCstation. Even the grooves on the original Playstation were an acknowledged and deliberate homage by Sony's internal design studio to Esslinger's Mac design.

      Lacie started out as two companies, one started in 1987 and the other in 1989. They tend to bring in 'star' product designers, such as Neil Poulson, Philipe Starck or Porsche Design to make an oblong box less boxy.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just FYI

        Dave, the Zip and Jaz drives were beautifully designed. They could've looked like every other crap external drive (i.e. oblong beige box), but they didn't. They might not have been Starcked or Poulsoned, but they did look sexier than the norm. And their external housings still look pretty dishy…

        1. Dave 126

          Re: Just FYI

          Fair dooes, I vaguely remember the external ZIP drives, though mine was an internal unit, all stamped mild steel with a beige plastic face!

          T'was a strange time: CDRW drives were still rare, and flash memory was still very expensive even if you wanted to shunt data over slow USB 1.1 (which I couldn't cos NT 4.0 wouldn't play ball). Home internet was still dial-up, so files couldn't be shunted around very easily by that method. And some fruity company released a desktop PC without a floppy drive... Strange thing is, I had a portable MD recorder at the time, a format that could have been a suitable alternative to ZIP disks had Sony not been asleep at the wheel.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Just FYI

            The lack of storage space and the portability was my first reason to buy a PP version of the external Zip drive. Then Iomega brought out the 2GB Jaz drive, and I was smitten. It worked over PCMCIA and SCSI, which at the time worked for me on my laptop and desktop.

            Yes, the internal versions didn't have the cute green and purple fascias (in keeping with the external housings)… but nonetheless they were good. :-)

            The MD would've been fabulous, and yes, if Sony hadn't been so boneheaded, it could've gone the other way. :-)

      2. Interceptor

        Re: Just FYI

        Funny; I've got 3 LaCie Porsche HDs here and they're pretty much standard black USB boxes to me. Oh, brushed aluminum, whee. Still, $69.99 for 2tb drives; couldn't pass on that.

  3. tony72

    Shiny!

    I'd put it next to my magic 8-ball, but the magic 8-ball says don't buy it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Shiny!

      I'd put it next to my magic 8-ball, but the magic 8-ball says don't buy it.

      I'll tell you why: it fears competition!

  4. E 2

    Lacie has never heard of networked storage?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes but network storage for this market usually means gigabit ethernet (at best) and around 110 meg a second maximum.

  5. Horridbloke

    Too tasteful...

    I want a USB backup device embedded in an life-size Elvis statue.

    1. Dave 126

      Re: Too tasteful...

      The shaking of the hips is a way of increasing airflow over the disk array without using fans!

      1. Havin_it

        Re: Too tasteful...

        >[...] without using fans

        Oh... there'll be fans.

        /wave,cheer,throwknickers

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Too tasteful...

      > I want a USB backup device embedded in an life-size Elvis statue.

      It would have to have built-in off-site backup software that announces "Your backup has left the building" when it's done!

  6. Dave_Muk

    Still and expensive 1tb

    1tb WD HDD going for £56.99 if you get a current model not last years left over stock

    WD My Passport Ultra 1TB

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-Ultra-Portable-Drive-Backup/dp/B00CRZ2BKS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389022012&sr=8-1&keywords=WD+passport

    1. Steve Foster
      Holmes

      Re: Still and expensive 1tb

      LaCie always was expensive.

  7. Steve Foster
    Joke

    Get two

    ...and you can spend all day polishing your balls.

    1. Mike Moyle

      Re: Get two

      ...and stand them together in front of your Mac Pro.

  8. Azzy

    This wasn't what I had in mind

    when I said I was willing to pay extra for an external drive with hardware mirroring...

  9. Alan Esworthy

    ugh

    Christ. Awful.

  10. Dave 126

    Photoshopped!

    There is no reflection of a camera in that image. The techniques for removing the camera's reflection from spherical images are fairly mature though, cos it's a quick and dirty way of generating environment maps without using specialist lenses.

    1. Natalie Gritpants

      Re: Photoshopped!

      They had to, the photographer is a reflectopornophile as you'll see if you zoom in on the reflection in the glass vase on the window.

      1. Dave 126

        Re: Photoshopped!

        You tease!

        1. frank ly

          Re: Photoshopped!

          My take: In the centre of the image is a distant wall that has a strange colouring. That would have been a good place to have set up a tripod with a long lens camera to take the picture. Whoever 'shopped the tripod out didn't do a very good job of it in that case.

          Looking at the left edge of the ball, I'm sure that's someone holding their arms up high with a flash unit in their hands. If so, that would have been easy to obfuscate, so why didn't they do it? I dunno ......

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dear Seagate

    Please store all my data on a single disk so that it is lost on disk failure. Yours sincerely A Consumer.

    1. Dave 126

      Re: Dear Seagate

      Most people have a disk of some sort in their computer, so that would make this external HDD a *second* disk. True, it would be better if it contained more disks, and itself was duplicated to other devices in different buildings and postcodes...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    never fails to turn heads and spark conversation

    as any quality "storage" should.

    p.s. they'd better make it display "fuck me honey", ticker tape style, THIS would turn heads and spark conversation. After all, it's only office Monday...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it's not

    hairy

    won't fit into your...

    it might electrocute you...

    I can choose lots of better shapes for this money...

    no sale.

  14. Roger Gann
    Trollface

    Yeah, maybe ..

    ... but does it work with a Chromebook?

  15. JD M

    Re Re: Dear Seagate

    I'd be concerned about a knock rolling it off a desk and on to the floor. It doesn't seem to be using SSD.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Looks like...

    It's sitting on an Apple ButtPlug doesnt it?

    Or perhaps it's the BauHaus version of a baby's arm holding an Apple?

  17. Mark 85
    Thumb Down

    And in the real world offices

    Looks like Marketing, Sales, and Exec types everywhere will want one and probably buy it with their own dosh. IT will then get banged about for not supporting it. Mid-Level Execs upon seeing them with this status symbol will then bang IT for not providing them one also. The geeks down in the basement will get their own, remove the ball and hang it from the ceiling. The guts will then decorate their desk and soon become the envy of the semi-geek group.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Heat red hot? Drop on things and see what happens?

    Or should we try dropping the red-hot nickel ball on it and see what happens?

    1. Martin-73 Silver badge

      Re: Heat red hot? Drop on things and see what happens?

      Upvote because I recently just found that guy. The velveeta made me feel sick

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Heat red hot? Drop on things and see what happens?

        I love the way it doesn't burn through a stack of paper!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I like devices to be flat or at least rectangular. I want to pile them up, put stuff on them, slip them into my laptop bag etc. I don't want to spend time polishing or even admiring it! If you need decoration buy flowers and other plants ffs

    1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      That's because

      you're a full desk kind of person. This is intended for the empty desk kind of person.

  20. Joe Gurman

    Give me a break

    The author's just having us on, right? Anyone who can see or feel a computer knows the difference between industrial design and just design for art's sake. La Cie's design buys me nothing in terms of storage performance or ease of use (except perhaps for throwing if the thing goes south because sit has a typical La Cie power supply embedded in it), whereas Apple's, like them or hate them, are at least nominally aimed at improving user performance (as well as cash-flow-inducing sexiness). Aluminum (as we spell it here) makes for a more rigid and less frangible laptop than plastic, even the first-yen iPad was thin enough to hold (vs. the first gen version of almost all other tablets) while using, and since the c. 1996 Power Macs, Apple's larger desktop boxes were always easier to work on than basic PC XT kit, particularly as measured by hand lacerations. Cost, of course, is an entirely different issue.

  21. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    For the real geek

    buy five and build a newton's cradle.

  22. mormon20
    Joke

    A Title

    All that's left is to find the mod to make it glow with a fiery eyeball inside and I'll totally buy one....

  23. CJ Hinke

    Why settle for so little?!?

    You guys missed the boat on this one. Bragging rights go to LaCie's 20TB 5big Thunderbolt drive or 15TB 5big USB 3.0 NAS using RAID-5.

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