back to article LaCie showcases hella-expensive display

Storage and display vendor LaCie showcased its recently released 730 LCD Monitor at this week's Macworld Expo, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous 30in display with an equally jaw-dropping price of $4240 (about £2785). Who on God's green earth would pay well over four-thousand bucks for an LCD display, even one as lovely as this one? …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Is the author of this article brave, or just suicidal?

    "This is not a display to be used for spreadsheets or by sysadmins." eh?

    I suspect it is, if the coloured pencil department want all the insulating on their lovely aluminium-cased machines to be intact, and those cases not live... BOFHs like their FPSsen nice and crisp, you know.

  2. Adam
    Coat

    Really?

    viewing angles of 178 degrees both horizontally and vertically - surley that hood will get in the way a bit???

  3. Murray Pearson
    Coat

    The colour of God's green Earth...

    ...is a pretty good approximation of Pantone 348C.

    However, I no longer need that sort of accuracy; alsom I don't have five friggin' grand burning a hole in my pockets.

    However, many many moons ago, I once approximated the effect of that hood by placing a big black keyboard case over my head to overcome hideous glare on a bright winter day in Edmonton, Canada.

    Mine's the one with four Pantone books (regular, metallic, pastel, and tinted varnish) in the back pocket. And not $5,000 with nowhere to go.

  4. Hate2Register

    Yes But..

    None of which changes the fact that this diamond-plated turd will break after 13 months, like every other Lacie product I've owned..

  5. Jeremy
    Joke

    Not for sysadmins?

    Yeah, right... I look forward to hearing how the BOFH is going to wangle one out of his newest Boss sometime soon.

  6. Adrian Esdaile
    Jobs Horns

    Just for the pointy-haired boss, and cushion-tossers.

    I think you will find this is vital equipment for every corporate manager with his salt, for looking at porn all day, er, ahem, conducting vital first-line business maximisation enterprise decision management making.. er... stuff. Like choosing the new PAs and business card colours, and which country to outsource to. You know, imporant stuff.

    The cushion tossers will need it too, as pink iPods are ONLY compatible with screens over 29" and +$4500. It's impossible to select the right shade of burnt-umber-fuscia-delight for the bosses wife's borfriend's sleazy cousin's Mercedes SLK seat covers.

    Mac users: c'aint shewt 'em, and c'aint bludgeon them to death with old Apple Studio Displays with proprietory ADC cables. Hurry up and DIE already, Steve.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    and then

    The photos from those cameras get printed out on a less than 14-bit printer.

  8. Frank

    @Adrian Esdaile re. Just for.....

    Adrian, are you feeling bitter and cynical about something?

  9. Ben Park

    @Adrian Esdaile

    Surely the old proprietary cables were done during the non-Jobsian era? Steve's not the one to blame - he's the one who standardized them now.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Thanks..

    but no thanks.. i'll stick with my 30" dell monitor which only cost £600..

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "You may not be able to afford it, but you probably don't need it"

    Oh, I dunno - if it had HDMI, and I can't see any mention of it in the writeup, it's the sort of thing I could imagine hooking my 360 up to ... sadly, at least for LaCie but not for my bank account, I've already got my eye on a dual input (VGA/HDMI) 28" TFT which costs 250 quid, including VAT.

    Still, congratulations to LaCie for not only flaying Apple on price but also making something so goddamned ugly.

  12. Scott Broukell
    Stop

    @ Murray Pearson

    Well those four Pantone(TM) colour swatches are going to set you back quite a bit already aren't they.

    There are more expensive monitors available than this. The highest price I have seen is c. £7000 (but sadly I have mislaid the details of this).

  13. Craig

    Monitor = drinks

    For that price I would hope that it supports a refresh rate of 120Hz to ensure compatibility with the next generation of 3D display hardware from nVidia.

    Am I tempted by this overpriced monitor? Well I wouldn't object if I got one for free, which I'd then sell for half its retail value, then I'd go to the pub.

  14. John Bayly
    Boffin

    @Adam

    Damn it, I've got to get onto The Register earlier.

    It's be amusing if you weren't able to remove the hood either: I can view it at 178° from all angles, but I can't with this bloody hood.

  15. Scott Broukell
    Stop

    Cost benefit analysis

    I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard, but I find the best bang for your buck is to use kit that is 2 -3 years old. I love to read the reviews on new stuff and gasp at the prices knowing that the bits I choose will be mine for a lot less in two years or so (mostly). That's all I can afford to do. Of course you have to be sharp and get it at the lowest price before it's pulled off the shelves completely, as happens frequently. This way my (new) old stuff works fine, for me, and I haven't been suckered into the 'must have' 'gimme gimme' life style choice scenario whatsit all that much.

    "more coal from the bunker dear, I'm going to write a letter to our MP using the steam-powered Babbage typo-matic....."

  16. Another Anonymous Coward

    All 30" monitors are overpriced

    Compared to the very nice 24" 1920x1200 screens out these days. You can get them for £200 these days, and spend the £800 saved on something more useful (cintiq tablet, or graphics card + 2 extra 24" displays).

    I mostly work at 3840 x 2160 anyway (and then shrink for a sharper image), so will save my money for whenever a monitor company can produce something stupidly hi-res and gigantic.

    Alternatively, maybe one day seamless multi-monitor displays will finally become something other than vapourware product demos. *fingers crossed*

  17. Mr Grumblefish

    It's an LCD

    It'd be overpriced if they were giving it away.

    Mine's the one made from flexible OLED panels.

  18. Bad Beaver
    Dead Vulture

    Re: Adrian Esdaile's comment

    Why exactly are the comments moderated when we can get away with wishing death upon a person due to us disliking their choice of... display connectors? Irritating.

    Regarding the product: Whee, nice! I'm not even a color pro and I'd still love to have something with this kind of performance just to look at photos. Yet, as already said, too bad it's a LaCie.

  19. Maryland, USA
    Thumb Up

    Buy it when the model is 2-3 years old

    Scott Broukell posted Friday 9th January 2009 10:26 GMT"

    "I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard, but I find the best bang for your buck is to use kit that is 2 -3 years old. I love to read the reviews on new stuff and gasp at the prices knowing that the bits I choose will be mine for a lot less in two years or so (mostly)."

    I'm completely with you, Scott. Whenever possible, I buy second-hand, reconditioned, B-stock--be it a car, a camera, a display, or even a hard drive. Hell, I even acquired my first and second wives second-hand! But back in 1993, I "needed" a large display with 1600 x 1200 resolution at a refresh rate of 75 Hz or higher so I could do technical publishing. The only offerings were Nokia's new 445X 21-inch color CRT (102 kHz scan rate) at $2550 U.S. and Matrox's 4GB graphics board at $930 U.S. I had to take out a 3-year loan to buy them. Now, thankfully, one can buy a monitor and board with specs that put these to shame, without breaking the bank. By the way, my family still uses that Nokia monitor on one of its PCs!

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