Leading external storage manufacturer LaCie and renowned quiet cooling specialist Noctua today announced their cooperation on the development of acoustically optimized storage solutions. The recently announced LaCie 4big Quadra and LaCie 5big Network, designed by Neil Poulton, are the first LaCie four and five-bay RAID external storage solutions to feature Noctua cooling technology. Thanks to the use of Noctua's NF-P12 fan, their noise emission is reduced, on average, by 40% compared to their predecessors.

Whether you're a graphics designer, computer professional or just a person like me who wants to know everything, it's good to know about the immediate existence of these new LaCie professional LCD monitors. It's a whole new 700 series of monitors actually, consisting of the 20-inch LaCie 720, 24-inch LaCie 724, and the 30-inch LaCie 730. Time to get to the cool stuff, the whole new line-up is capable of offering ultra-wide gamut of up to 123 percent of Adobe RGB colourspace that furthers for the reachnes of the colors that are being reproduced. Moreover all 700 LaCies have LED backlight that offers just about the perfect screen uniformity and black levels you'd ever want. "The cutting edge technology embedded in LaCie's new 700 series Monitors supports the colour-critical workflow of prepress operators, photographers and graphic designers by enabling the most-precise on-screen proofing yet," said Daniel Mayer, LaCie's Colour Business Unit Manager. All 700 Series Monitors are also bundled with LaCie's blue eye pro Proof Edition calibration software package. This software allows the ability to calibrate and profile displays, verify profile accuracy and maintain display uniformity. The LaCie 720, 724, and 730 monitors are available now from LaCie's specialised dealer network starting at £949. For more information on the monitors, you'll have to wait a little bit because LaCie's site is still not aware that these monitors exist. Once they update their page, you'll have all the information you need.

LaCie announced today that is has doubled Blu-ray burn speeds to 4x and has updated the aluminum alloy case and software suite for its external d2 Blu-ray drive. Coming with a shape designed by Neil Poulton, the drive records, rewrites and reads 25GB or 50GB BD-R (recordable) and BD-RE (rewritable), as well as DVD±RW DL and CD±RW media. The 4x Blu-ray burner ships with a full-featured Roxio software package and dual FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connection options. The drive also boasts 8MB of buffer memory. "In early 2007, LaCie was the first vendor to ship worldwide an external solution for professional Hi-Def video recording for both Mac and Windows. Since that time, Blu-ray technology has proven to be the dominant source for video recording and playback," said Patrick Salin, LaCie Business Development Manager. LaCie d2 Blu-ray drives are available now via LaCie's specialized dealer network with a suggested retail price of $649.99 and 2 year warranty. For more product information, visit this page.

LaCie has gotten hold of Samsung's 1.3" HDDs, and by adding a rather convenient USB interface, they have created a truly pocket size HDD capable of storing up to 40GB of data. The LaCie Little Disk is available in both 30 and 40GB versions, costing $130 and $160 respectively, and comes with a 2 year guarantee.The second Spinpoint A1-boasting product from LaCie is the USB Key Max, which is even smaller and more portable. These advantages do come at a cost though, as it is slower. The 30GB Orange Key Max costs $120 while the 40GB Black version has a price tag of $150.

LaCie has announced the shipping of its new portable DVD±RW drive with LightScribe labeling technology. The sleek, slim and stylish portable burner was designed exclusively for LaCie by designer Sam Hecht. The FireWire or USB 2.0 bus-powered LaCie portable DVD writer offers mobility for Mac, Windows or Linux operating systems. The USB 2.0 version of the drive comes bundled with Easy Media Creator Suite 9 for Windows, while the FireWire version comes with Toast 8 Titanium. The LaCie portable DVD±RW drive with LightScribe is available now at the suggested retail price of $99.99 for the USB 2.0 and $149.99 for the FireWire version.

LaCie today announced the "Biggest Quadra", a 4-disk RAID enclosure with up to 4TB of storage space. The device is designed for professionals and supports RAID 0, 0+1, 5 or 5+hot spare with automatic background rebuilding. The four SATA II drives are removable, hot-swappable and even lockable. The Biggest Quadra comes with 1 eSATA port, 2 FireWire 800 ports (FireWire 400-compatible), and 1 USB 2.0 port for complete universality with any PC or Mac. The LaCie Biggest Quadra will be available in September for 2TB and October for the 3TB and 4TB versions. Suggested retail price will be $1099 for 2TB, $1599 for 3TB and $2199 for 4TB. Drives ship with 3 year limited warranty.

LaCie has begun taking orders for the 2TB version of its newest external HDD. The Big Disk Extreme+ features FireWire 400 and 800 ports a USB 2.0 connection , aluminum alloy casing, and a smart fan system which adjusts cooling as needed. Like all LaCie drives the front blue button activates the backup software. The 2TB Extreme+ should ship later this month for 849$ the smaller 1.5TB version will cost 599$ and finally the 1TB version will cost 350$.