LaCie Skwarim 30GB pocket hard drive
By Tony Smith
23rd March 2006 16:50 GMT
Don't ask me what the word 'skwarim' actually means - I don't know and neither, I suspect, does LaCie. It's pronounced 'square-im', and it's meant to suggest of the hard drive's shape, which is indeed square. Though with its fluorescent pink hue and eyestrain-inviting pattern, this certainly isn't a square product, in the other sense of the word. But has LaCie gone too far to try to make storage funky?
What we have here is an 8.5 x 8.5 x 1.3cm box weighing 99g and containing 30GB of raw, unformatted storage capacity. The casing has a slightly rubbery feel and, of course, that colour and pattern. In outdoor lighting, it doesn't look so but but under electric light it's a shock to the eye and possibly the brain - this is not, perhaps, a product for folk susceptible to migraine headaches.
The case has a built in USB cable and connector that dock into a perfectly sized bay in the side of the drive. Pull out the cable and you'll see a small red LED that lights up when the Skwarim draws power from the bus, though it's not an activity light. I found the USB cable to be too small to be useful. While the connector itself leaves ample room for other devices in adjacent ports, the short cable means the drive itself gets in the way. And if you've a desktop system with USB ports half way up the front or back of the case, the drive just dangles down.
LaCie bundles a colour-coordinated USB extension cable, but I'd have rather it just shipped a standard mini USB cable and shaved a centimeter off the Skwarim's case.