LaCie is primarily known for quality portable hard drives and displays, but I guess the Franco-American company is looking to diversify its product lineup and are now offering a minimalistic two-piece speaker system.

As far as appearance goes, the speakers could resemble the air ventilation outlets sitting atop of modern skyscrapers. According to Everything USB, the surface of each of the 2" drivers has a rather rough finish. The bottom of each speaker is fitted with a rubber ring to keep it in place. The black-and-white scheme will go nicely with most laptops.

Being USB-powered, these speakers won’t require any AC adapter. However, you need to have them connected to your laptop through a USB port if you want to hear anything coming from them. LaCie also has a FireWire version, but it might prove to be too much for many notebooks, as it requires a 6W FireWire port that is quite rare on mainstream notebooks, (only MacBooks and a select few other models come standard with this connector).

LaCie offers the USB speaker system for only $59.99 while the FireWire is available $99.99. Presumably, the price difference is based on the higher output power of the FireWire connector.