BIOS: Technology Means Business

LaCie has revealed a series of unusual portable 4200rpm USB hard disk drives (HDDs). The new Skwarim (pronounced skware-im) is designed by the world-renowned Karim Rashid, who has worked with clients ranging from Umbra to Prada.

The Skwarim comes in 60GB electric blue (£115/$199) or 30GB dazzling pink (£85/$149) versions and has a 3.3-inch square shape (85x85x13mm, 99g) with a unique textured feel.

It was made to be carried in a purse or backpack and has an integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0 cable for instant plug-and-play use without the need to carry around a cumbersome AC adapter.

‘LaCie is well known for creating high-end external storage devices that aren’t only functional, but elegantly designed,’ says Olivier Mirloup, LaCie Senior Product Manager. ‘LaCie Skwarim is another original: a simple, functional and fun hard drive for people who want to personalise their tech look with a complementary external storage device. It’s far different from anything else out on the market today.’ No kiddin’!

The Skwarim lets you store hundreds of photos, MP3s, office files or a handful of videos and comes with LaCie’s backup software for Macs and PCs. The Skwarim’s case is sturdy enough for travel and a USB extension cable is included for hard-to-reach USB ports.

Karim Rashid on the design of Skwarim: ‘The hard drives I have designed for LaCie are perfect squares, plutonic sacred boxes that are rubberised, tactile, and vibrant capable of containing a wealth of information. The embossed morphing grid is an extension of my philosophy called Infostethiks. I try to capture a new form that is symbolic and metaphorical of the age of information.

‘Decoration always historically communicated the time in which we lived, and spoke of civility, process, religious, cultural, or spiritual significance. Today the new spiritualism is the digital age, our global tool of communication. If we could put on a pair of eyeglasses that could capture information in space and all the data that is perpetually streaming around us, it would be a beautiful morphing grid of infinite undulating streams.

‘The world has become an infinite flux of data and information that grows and spreads eternally inseparable from our daily lives. The morphing gird is a metaphor for data and energy - where one cannot exist without the other. The bulging illusion is the abundance of information that can be stored in such a perfect little box.

‘Denying technology is denying a path to a future and a new way of life, a belief in one's own capacity and possibility of self- achievement by the replacement of the value of money by the one of knowledge. Here you can store a wealth of it.

[Best HDD Pricing UK]
[Best HDD Pricing US]

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