Reprinted from a LaCie press release:
Hillsboro, OR (July 13, 2001) Leveraging its 3-month lead as the first to ship a 24x10x40x CD-RW drive with both USB and FireWire connectivity, LaCie announced today that the volume of drives being sold has enabled the company to slash the price of the drive to an unprecedented $299 after the mail-in rebate. In addition to its blazing-fast write speed, LaCie’s new CD-RW incorporates advanced “BURN-Proof (Buffer Under RuN) technology and provides users with the convenience of being able to easily transfer the drive between FireWire and USB-equipped computers. LaCie will feature the drive at Macworld, Booth 1913, next week in New York City.
With the ability to write CD-Rs at 3.6 MB/s (24X) the industry’s highest CD recording speed– the LaCie 24x10x40 CD-RW can burn a complete 650MB CD in about 3 minutes. The same drive can be used to rewrite CD-RW discs at 1.5 MB/s (10X)–the industry’s fastest rewrite speed. The LaCie CD-RW drive also provides 40x playback and fast, 150ms access.
LaCie includes advanced BURN-Proof technology with the drive to eliminate the possibility of buffer overruns and ensure error-free recording at 24x speeds–even when lower-performance PCs are used. The advanced BURN-Proof technology also allows users to burn CDs in the background while working on other applications.
To achieve USB and IEEE 1394 (U&I) functionality, LaCie incorporates both a FireWire controller and a USB controller in the new 24x10x40x CD-RW drives. When the drive is connected to a FireWire interface, performance is more than 12 Mbytes/second. When the USB interface is used, the LaCie hard drives deliver a sustained performance of up to 750Kbytes/second. Designed with true plug-and-play capabilities, the FireWire and USB buses make the LaCie drives hot-pluggable–they can be removed or swapped without having to shutdown or reboot the system. The drives mount automatically as soon as they are connected, giving users the convenience of being able to add, remove or swap the drive without having to restart the computer.
With iTunes support, the LaCie 24x10x40x drive can be used to create custom audio CDs for that can be played back in a car or home stereo system. LaCie’s FireWire 16x10x40x CD-RW and 8x4x32x PocketDrive CD-RW have also been certified for iTunes support
LaCie’s 24x10x40x CD-RW can be used with most types of CD-R and CD-RW media, including the latest 16x 700MB CD-R discs which provide 6 additional minutes of audio storage or 50MB of data storage, compared to standard 650MB/74-minute CD-R discs. When quality 16X CD-R media is used, it will be checked by the drive and burned at 24X, when possible. If media is not 24X-capable, the drive will automatically downshift to 16X. All LaCie-branded 16X media is 24X compatible and higher-performance media has already been introduced by LaCie and other manufacturers.
The LaCie 24x10x40x CD-RW is available through LaCie’s accredited resellers and mail order partners at an incredible $299 after manufacturer’s $30 mail-in rebate. The 24x CD-RW drive comes in LaCie’s new SE2100 casing and includes BURN-Proof technology, FireWire and USB cables, international power supply, LaCie Recording Utilities and three CD-R discs. An ultra-SCSI version is also available.
The LaCie Recording Utilities CD package includes all the necessary software on a single CD-ROM for both PC and Macintosh environments: Adaptec Toast (with BURN-Proof support) for Macintosh systems, and Adaptec Easy CD Creator for Windows 98SE/NT/2000/Me. With the release of Linux 2.4, FireWire is supported in the Linux operating system. Other Linux users may download X-CD-Roast from the Internet.
