LaCie is a company which has its goals set on delivering good looking and high performance backup solutions. The company states that keyboards and CPUs can be easily replaced, but storage devices contain your work and data. This is a critical fact when choosing your backup solution and LaCie is sure to provide you with easy to use devices which (conforming to the company's high quality standards) will keep your data safe and secure.



Since in the world of IT storage doesn't always mean that things will collect dust, LaCie recently announced a new multimedia storage unit labeled LaCinema Rugged. Why Rugged? Because this is not your average don't-drop-it-or-you'll-damage-it disk drive. Designed by the world-famous Neil Poulton (for those who have never heard of him, Neil Poulton is a leading industrial designer), the drive comes encased in an scratch-resistant aluminum enclosure which is complemented by the shock-proof rubber that circles the case. Although I can't really imagine people hooking their laptops with the drive on top of a mountain while rain and wind have their way, I guess LaCie has its reasons for making such a device. In fact my point is that you should be careful when moving a backup or multimedia drive.



Moving on to the tech side of the device we find a 500GB (with 250GB and 320GB alternatives) hard drive with a high speed USB 2.0 connector for file transfers. For multimedia fans, LaCie outfitted the thing with an HDMI interface so you can enjoy both high definition audio and video with no more cable clutter. While lack of an HDMI interface can be solved by using the supplied AV cable, only composite video and stereo audio is supported over the old interface. The company also placed an optical video connector at the back of the drive.



Among supported video formats we have: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (AVI, VOB, IFO, ISO), MPEG-4 (AVI and XviD). The audio side also looks pretty good with support for the most wide spread audio formats out there: MP3, WMA, AC3, Ogg Vorbis and AAC. Subtitles and photos (up to 8Mpixels) are also on the specs list.



The product comes packed with HDMI, USB 2.0 and composite AV cable, a remote control, power adapter, SCART out adapter, quick install guide and a software CD. The price tag is set at approx. 357$ for the 500GB model.