LaCie’s amazing new USB hub
By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
It’s the most unusual and striking USB and Firewire hub we’ve ever seen. Take a look for yourself!
Looking like a cross between an alien from outer space and the spherical cousin of Spiderman’s nemesis ‘Doctor Octopus’, LaCie have released the ‘huby’, pronounced ‘hub-ee’, an very funky looking USB and Firewire hub with an intriguing design that’s almost Apple-esque in terms of cool, although naturally, people’s opinion will vary.
It seems everyone wants to win in the design stakes these days, but LaCie are a company that has always understood ‘cool’ and has a string of design hits to its name. Well known products include hard drives and external DVD burners designed by the likes of F.A. Porsche while designer Karim Rashid created the striking look and rubberized feel of the ‘Skwarim’ which came in two slimline pocket sizes with the pink 30Gb and the blue 60Gb portable hard disk drives.
There’s also their line of hard drives called the ‘Brick’ that look like giant Lego blocks which can even be stacked in the same way. The designer trend continues with ‘Ora-Ïto’ exclusively designing the LaCie huby, as a round object with a glossy white polycarbonate finish and a series of fully flexible USB and Firewire cables.
huby comes with a USB fan, USB light, USB extension cable and a Firewire 400 extension cable, with the extension cables designed to make it easier to connect hard drives, printers, keyboards, scanners and more. But smaller devices like USB Flash drives, Bluetooth adapters or small mp3 players like the original iPod Shuffle can conceivably just plug straight in and appear as the digital equivalent of flowers.
LaCie in component pieces
Each port has its own glowing LED to indicate when a device is plugged in, with a different 8 colours in total: white, violet, green, red, yellow, orange, blue and pink. You can also daisy-chain additional LaCie Hubys via FireWire or USB for extra connectivity options.
The tech specs are: 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Firewire 400 6-to-6 pin ports and 1 Firewire 400 4-to-6 pin port, full plug&play and hot swappable capability, 8 flexible cables, 8 colourful LEDs, a USB light and a USB fan. It works with Windows, Mac and Linux PCs.
The RRP price in the US is US $79.99 while the Australian price is AUD $129, although a quick look on the Internet saw it priced at AUD $109 so instore and online prices will naturally vary.
The LaCie huby is certainly a contender for the most unique gadget design of 2006! Visit LaCie’s site for more information.
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