VISUAL COMPUTING INDUSTRY LEADERS LINE UP TO SPONSOR NVISION 08Christie, EVGA, HP, Microsoft, and PNY Technologies Head Up Key Sponsorships of First-Ever Visual Computing Mega-Event SANTA CLARA, CA–JULY 22, 2008–NVIDIA today announced the key sponsors for NVISION 08, the premier event for visual computing professionals and enthusiasts. Leading the list of sponsors and key contributors for the conference are Christie Digital Systems, EVGA, HP, Microsoft, and PNY Technologies. NVISION 08 will be held August 25-27,

Apple Computer has nearly always kept its Mac computer platform an in-house-only proposition. Other than a few sanctioned (and unsanctioned) clones in the platform’s early days and a two-year span in the mid-1990’s, legitimate Apple computers have only come from Apple. That’s not to say others haven’t tried (for an interesting look at the history of Mac clones, see the Wikipedia entry here). The OSx86 Project has been providing knowledge resources and has built a sizeable community for do-it-yourself hackintoshes.

The latest Catalyst driver suite, version 8.7, is available for download from the AMD website.  In addition to a number of big fixes for both Windows XP and Vista, these drivers add official support for the recently release Radeon HD series of graphics cards and a handful of performance enhancements for single-card and CrossFire configurations.   Here’s a snip from the release notes… Performance Improvements: The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst. 3DMark Vantage:

The latest Catalyst driver suite, version 8.7, is available for download from the AMD website.  In addition to a number of big fixes for both Windows XP and Vista, these drivers add official support for the recently release Radeon HD series of graphics cards and a handful of performance enhancements for single-card and CrossFire configurations.   Here’s a snip from the release notes… Performance Improvements: The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst. 3DMark Vantage:

OCZ Technology has announced the first memory modules available in their Fatal1ty Series after the partnership was announced last month. These high-performance memory kits were co-developed with the expertise of Johnathan Fatal1ty Wendel, 12-time World champion, to meet the specific needs of fellow gamers. OCZ Fatal1ty Professional Series kits are the official memory modules of Championship Gaming Series (CGS), and feature incredible performance to power through the latest PC titles and contribute to the success of professionals and everyday gamers.

OCZ worked closely with Fatal1ty and his team to design new memory kits that pair perfectly with the top selling motherboards for a superior gaming experience, commented Alex Mei, Chief Marketing Officer of the OCZ Technology Group. Fatal1ty knows what it takes to win at the highest level of eSports, and these new kits deliver superior stability and performance to gamers whether you are a professional player on the Championship Gaming Series, or a weekend warrior looking to dominate when playing the latest titles.

Lancool must be launching a dozen new cases as it seems I get a press release from them at least twice a week. This time around they have announced the K12 Midi-Tower Chassis. We asked Lancool when these would be available and they informed us that they would start shipping them from Taiwan at the end of July. When it comes to pricing the MSRP is $160, so start saving now if you want one in the coming weeks.

This is a Midi-Tower case with 9x 5.25 bays giving you plenty of options and tonnes of room. The strength of the Lancool series lies not only in the structure, but also in the features, which include support for the modular patented anti-vibration HDD cage, supporting 3x HDDs. Each HDD is mounted with a special thumbscrew and rubber grommet to ensure that HDDs are secure and vibration free. The modular cage can be secured as you see fit within the roomy interior of the case. It has a120mm fan mounted into the bracket, making sure that the HDDs are cooled and that air flow is optimal according to your needs. Incorporating outstanding quality and craftsmanship; the Lancool series have a steel inner-core, making them stronger than all-aluminum chassis, but also considerably cheaper.

Any and all ATI graphics cards owners should take note that a new driver dropped late yesterday from the crew over at AMD. The latest driver is Catalyst 8.7 and there is a version for both Windows and Linux users that has a good number of fixes and improvements as well as some CCC enhancements. This version does include ATI's Folding@Home information, so if you are folding be sure to check it out and be sure to support Team #38296, which is the Legit Reviews Folding team!

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst:

• 3DMark Vantage: Performance increases of up to 20% is noticed in the Performance Preset on single card configured systems when using ATI Radeon™ HD 36xx or ATI Radeon HD 34xx products
• Company of Heroes DX10: Performance increases of 3% to 12% is noticed in specific maps on single card configured systems when using either an ATI Radeon HD 48xx, ATI Radeon HD 38xx, or an ATI Radeon HD 36xx product
• Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases of 4% to 15% is noticed in specific maps on single card configured systems when using either an ATI Radeon HD 48xx, ATI Radeon HD 38xx, or an ATI Radeon HD 36xx product
• <all Of Duty 4 DX9: Performance increases of up to 4% in specific maps is noticed on single card configured systems when using an ATI Radeon HD 48xx product
• Lost Planet DX9: CrossFire scaling improves up to 1.7x and performance increases up to 80% across all Radeon products when AA and AF is enabled

Super Talent Technology recently announced that the company has dramatically improved the write speeds of its MasterDrive DX, MasterDrive KX and MasterDrive MX solid state drives (SSDs) thanks to a minor firmware update. These three series of SSDs already boast exceptionally fast read speeds of up to 120 MB/sec. But, fast write speeds are important in applications such as video editing and encoding, image processing, compressing and extracting files, installing applications and copying files to the drive. These newly revised SSDs categorically outpace the fastest hard drives in the world.

Our expert engineering team is constantly discovering new ways to improve our products, and this is one improvement that will be well received by power laptop users, commented Super Talent Director of Marketing, Joe James. We continue our relentless drive to add performance, features and value to our SSDs while driving the price down, Mr. James added.

While there is no shortage of low-power, inexpensive, Linux-based desktop PCs on the market today, few seem to offer a compelling enough solution to make the modest investment worth it. Either the processing power is too little, storage capacity is too meager, or the operating system is too onerous for newbies. New kid on the block, CherryPal, however, might have figured out how to make the low-cost PC actually work right with its $249 CherryPal C100 Desktop “cloud computer.” As PC form factors go, it doesn’t

In case you don’t know, an upskirt photo is one taken surreptitiously by pointing a camera upwards and … well, we’re hoping you can figure it out on your own, as well as the analogous downblouse photo.For some reason, with the advent of high-resolution camera phones, the practice of upskirt and downblouse photos have become very popular in Japan.  According to freelancer Nobuyuki Hayashi, the iPhone omitted this “feature,” possibly explaining its wild popularity in that country.  All right, all right,