Partnership between LaCie and Intego

LaCie and Intego announce a new and interesting partnership: all LaCie HD will now ship bundle with Intego Backup Assistant for models dedicated to customer market, and Backup Manager Pro for models targeting Pro market. Both software are derived from Intego Personal Backup X5.
In the future such bundled products should become more common, as margins on the HD market are rather small, and competition high, all HD manufacturers have now their own external storage solutions, and designers of external models such as LaCie have to find other innovations to maintain their leadership.
Another factor should also be considered too. While FireWire and USB2 require a dedicated printed circuit/controller for being used in an external enclosure, the eSATA (external SATA) format does not. So, performance level will not be linked to a defined bridge, but only defined by the performance of the HD itself. So, one only needs to get a power adaptor in the box. Of course, for the time being, external HDs still feature FireWire, USB2 and eSATA, but in the future we could get only eSATA external drive, and manufacturers will have to come up with new innovations to offer a product able to come out from the mass, such as power adaptor, design, bundled software, cooling system...