In today’s world of digital photography and digital presentation methods, it’s not hard to imagine that the old cut and glue method of scrapbooking and photo collages would soon need to go digital. Let’s be honest, who wants to dust off the old scrap book to show relatives your creativity when you can just point visitors to a 15” Digital Photo Frame hanging on the wall scrolling through your work?

The advent of such technologies is great. For too long, people have been required to have a steady hand and oodles of time to be considered creative. With software like FotoFusion from LumaPix, any old Joe can give the illusion of being a pro.

Before I go any further, I have to make a confession. I have never scrap-booked. While many may see this as missing out on a great experience in life, I have just never had the time. I have, however, used programs like Photoshop to create collages in the past. I am an avid amateur photographer, and I shoot with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi. I probably take more pictures in a week than most people do in a year.

When first introduced to FotoFusion, I admit that I was skeptical about the practical application for such a software to the normal home Digital Camera / PC user. Even as a “photography enthusiast” I didn’t see much of a need for this kind of software.

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If you missed the latest round of format wars, consider yourself lucky. Similar to the competing formats of VHS -vs- Betamax, there was recent confusion over the hi-definition format that’s going to replace DVDs. The competing formats were Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. Toshiba was the primary backer of HD-DVD, and recently conceded defeat in the high-definition DVD battle to Sony backed Blu-Ray.

However, this time almost everyone who bought a player is a loser. People who purchased HD-DVD players will still be able to use them as up-converting DVD players, but HD-DVDs will soon be as hard to find as Betamax tapes. Many early adopters of Blu-Ray also have discovered they won’t be able to enjoy the new features of Blu-Ray’s 2.0 spec, as their players aren’t upgradeable. A notable exception is the PlayStation 3. In fact, if you’re in the market for a Blu-Ray player in the immediate future, the PS3 is easily the best bargain.

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Motherboard
GIGABYTE GA-MA770-DS3
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Motherboard review by James_8970
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As technology continues to progress, our present demands continue to outgrow our pasts. Over the past few months we have seen many new chipsets released: Intel’s P35/X38/X48, nVidia’s 7x0i series, and now it’s AMD’s turn with the 770 (AM2+) and 790fx series chipsets. With our budget constraints we were not able to leap for a $200+ motherboard, but overall we believe this board is a great compromise between performance and dollar value.

As time moves on, new CPU’s are released and their performance is greatly affected by the features on the motherboard. AMD has just recently released some new products, the Phenom series CPU’s. While they aren’t quite as good as their Intel counterparts, they do have a great number of innovative features that set them apart from Intel’s current offerings. That aside, many of the current motherboards are Phenom compatible – after a BIOS update. This motherboard, on the other hand, is compatible with this CPU out of the box. It also has a higher hyper transport speed then other traditional AM2 motherboards, which could ultimately affect future upgrades. This motherboard comes fully equipped with native DDR2 1066MHz, PCIe 2.0 – a first for an AMD motherboard – and up to 16GB of RAM to keep you on the leading edge of technology and give you an unprecedented upgradability path for the future.

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Why are there so many people down on Vista? Especially media people? I am so tired of hearing Vista failure! Vista disaster! Vista sux!

I think every one of these people have a very short memory. I have been doing computer support for over 15 years, most of it supporting end users at the consumer level and enterprise level. My first enterprise/corporate task was to upgrade Windows 3.1 computers to Windows 95 for “Outlook” email. I have deployed Windows 2000 and Windows XP as major projects to help corporations standardize their hardware and software platforms. I know the ins-and-outs of the operating systems pretty well.

There are some basic truths to be had. It doesn’t matter how well an OS is designed, tested, and maintained, the user will find a way to break it. The user will always find something doesn’t work (OS compatibility) no matter how much time is spent making sure that compatibility issues are worked out. Lastly, you will not be able to satisfy everyone.

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Some of our more “chronologically enhanced” readers might remember a time in their childhood when dad decided that the family should pile into the trusty station wagon (sans seatbelts of course) and see the country (for you younger readers, this time should be referred to as “back in the day”). You might have gone to drive the famed Route 66 or traveled countless hours with your thighs sticking to the vinyl seats to ride a smelly burro through the Grand Canyon. Wherever your ill fated journey’s final destination was supposed to be, there was always one part of every trip that was guaranteed to be ever present, the giant multifold map (or if your dad was particularly adventurous, the full sized road atlas of the lower 48 plus Alaska and Hawaii). Have you ever used a standard multifold map? Probably. Have you ever successfully re-folded one back to its original form? I seriously doubt it, unless you’ve got a doctorate in “map-folding-ology”.

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