The latest beta drivers and the first in the 290 series have been released by NVIDIA today, supporting all graphics cards since the venerable 6-series. Their main new feature are official support for enabling ambient occlusion settings in the control panel separately for specific games and enabling NVIDIA Surround on the new X79 SLI-certified motherboards. Ambient occlusion (AO) is settable for uber-popular games The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. So, what does AO do? We'll let Andrew Burns of NVIDIA explain:

If you're unfamiliar with Ambient Occlusion, it is most easily described as a way to make in-game shadowing more realistic, and therefore better.

What he doesn't say of course, is how it kills your frame rate, especially on lower end hardware. Anyway, there's all the usual goodies in this release: 3D Vision game profiles for games such as MW3, Diablo 3 & LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (yes really). There's a HD audio update and nine fixes too, including one for random flickering of the Windows boot logo as it's loading or fading away and a fix for the mouse cursor flickering and shaking in games such as Crysis 2 & Deus Ex when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play. The NVIDIA product release page is here and they have a snazzy-looking driver selector here. The release notes follow.

For years Apple Mac users have felt smug that their computers didn't need any security software installed, unlike their poor Windows counterparts which were always coming down with a cold. This they believed is because their beloved operating system is inherently more secure than leaky old Windows (which it used to be). This smug feeling has been especially strong over the last decade, since the release of Mac OS X in 2001, as it's based on Unix which has always had security baked into it. They therefore felt safe from the multitude of viruses, keyloggers, trojans and various other nasties that the bad guys like to infect operating systems with. However, there have been successful attacks in the past on every Apple Mac operating system since the first one in 1984, just nowhere near the number of attacks as on Windows. Of course, what Windows users, Linux users and other OS users have also been saying for years is that Apple's operating systems simply weren't popular enough to bother with and aren't particularly secure. After all, the hackers do this for fun and financial profit, so why aim for a little teeny tiny target, when you can aim for a big, fat one like Windows?

Western Digital, a leader in the desktop, mobile, high-capacity enterprise and consumer markets for hard drives, today announced that it has commenced volume shipments of its WD Scorpio Blue 9.5 mm, 2.5-inch mobile hard drive with 1 TB capacity. Designed for mainstream notebook computers, the new WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB hard drive utilizes 500 GB-per-platter areal density and is now available in the highest capacity for 2.5-inch hard drives in the industry-standard 9.5 mm, two-platter (2-disk) form factor.

WD Scorpio Blue mobile hard drives are designed with ruggedness, reliability and data-protection features that actively watch over valuable data. The WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB mobile hard drive also achieves excellent power and performance, making it an ideal solution for notebook computers and other portable devices that require extended battery life and cool, ultra quiet operation.

NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, announced today the addition of the 23-inch PVA panel MultiSync EX231Wp, which joins the 23-inch TN panel MultiSync EX231W. This sleek desktop monitor offers a premium-grade, performance-driven PVA panel that allows for increased viewing angle, sharp contrast ratio and ease in transporting between different locations. Ideal for multiple monitor setups, the MultiSync EX231Wp is designed for financial and corporate environments, business users on-the-go, small-scale digital signage, small-to-medium-sized business client meetings and presentations.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9, in its stable RTM form, nearly an year after it first released "Platform Previews", followed by Betas and Release Candidates. With its latest release, Microsoft's still popular web-browser underwent a major overhaul in terms of features and browser-engine. The new browser is backed by a faster Javascript engine, a faster rendering engine that makes use of GPU hardware acceleration for drawing, and redesigned user interface elements that make day to day web browsing experience snappier.

With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft also took a bold step in not supporting Windows XP, which still holds a large chunk of the operating system market share, the new browser only supports Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows 2008/2008-R2 series operating systems. The user interface is far more minimalistic, uses simple icons, the status and menu bars are hidden by default, with tooltips doing the job of a status bar, and the browser continues to support a large number of ActiveX components. The browser also underwent a security overhaul. For 64-bit versions of Windows, the installer also packs a 64-bit version of the browser. Oracle already has a stable 64-bit Java ActiveX plugin, while Adobe Labs has a beta 64-bit Flash player for Windows, two big steps in porting the web-browser to x86-64.DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 9

SAPPHIRE Technology, the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of graphics systems based on technology from AMD has just announced its first mainboard based on the exciting new APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) architecture from AMD. As a result of close collaboration with AMD, SAPPHIRE will introduce the SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W mainboard through its Global channel - heralding a new generation of low-power, fully featured PC solutions.

The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W is a mini-ITX mainboard featuring the E350 (Zacate) APU from AMD. Zacate is the first generation of APU - a combination of CPU and GPU computing technologies onto a single die to improve the performance of both visual and data-intensive tasks. For the first time it combines high-performance serial computing and parallel graphics processing cores on a single chip. The SAPPHIRE Pure White Fusion E350M1W also uses the companion Hudson-M1 (A50M) Chip from AMD.

Gigabyte's elusive G1-Killer X58 motherboard has quite some task ahead of it, to compete in a nearly-saturated socket LGA1366 motherboard market, including its high-end segment. Merely sporting a black PCB (new and rare for Gigabyte), and an ammo-clip shaped heatsink, and a handful of PCI-E slots isn't going to cut it, well...much. So Gigabyte decided to load the G1-Killer X58 with a Creative X-Fi CA20K2 PCI-Express audio processor, and Bigfoot Networks Killer E2100 network processor with 1 GB of dedicated DDR2 memory.

The CA20K2 from Creative sits at the heart of sound-cards such as the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium series, X-Fi Titanium HD, and Auzentech X-Fi Forte. It features 128 hardware channels, and handles the audio stack on-chip when applications and games use OpenAL in Windows Vista or Windows 7. Apart from X-Fi regulars such as CMSS-3D and Crystalizer, the CA20K2 gives you EAX 5.0 HD support. The audio processor is backed by Nighicon high-end audio capacitors which can be found in premium sound-cards. The Killer E2100 ASIC is Bigfoot's high-end PCI-Express network processor that can completely offload the network stack from the CPU. The G1-Killer X58 is expected to be unveiled at CES.

WD, the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its new My Passport Essential portable hard drive (photo), My Passport Essential SE portable hard drive (photo), and My Book Essential external hard drive (photo). All three drive families come in a variety of capacities and offer lightning-fast USB 3.0 connectivity. Highest industry capacity is another key feature for the My Book Essential drive, which is now available in 3 TB capacity, in addition to 1 and 2 TB capacities. Equipped with WD SmartWare visual backup software for automatic, continuous backup, these drives provide users the extra space they need to store or back up all of their digital memories, such as high-resolution photos and videos, along with music and other critical files, all in one place.

The drives not only take advantage of the latest blazing-fast USB 3.0 technology, but are also fully compatible with USB 2.0 connections for those who have yet to upgrade their computers to USB 3.0. When connected to a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port, consumers can transfer data at speeds up to 150 MB/s. At that rate, a two-hour HD video will transfer in as little as three minutes. The same two-hour video would take approximately 13 minutes to transfer on a USB 2.0 port.

Microsoft released the first public beta of its sceptically-anticipated web-browser, the Windows Internet Explorer 9 (or IE9). Sceptical, because the previous two versions did not really shine compared to other web-browsers in performance, and anticipated, because it promised revolutionary changes in the rendering engine and the way it works. IE9 is one of the first browsers that uses GPU (graphics processors) for rendering almost every page element, including text and layout. It features a new Javascript engine codenamed "Chakra" that has higher JS performance, and supports HTML5 web standards. The UI itself looks very lean and modelled along the lines of Google Chrome, with just the bare-essential controls, and menus. The address bar doubles up as a search bar. There are loads of functionality improvements, including detachable tabs, Windows Aero Snap tabs, and the ability to pin favourite websites to the Windows 7 taskbar. A performance manager monitors plugins and advices you to disable those which are slowing down the browser.DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 9 beta

Please note, the software works only on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

AMD released the latest version of the ATI Catalyst software suite. Version 10.9 WHQL comes rather early for this time of the month, when normally it's out towards the end or last week. ATI Catalyst installs drivers and system software for ATI Radeon graphics processors (HD 2000 series and above), AMD chipset integrated graphics, and other ATI multimedia products. Although Catalyst 10.9 does not mention any notable feature changes, it does offer some game-specific performance improvements across the board, as well as CrossFireX profiles that make the graphics driver take advantage of CrossFireX specific to games. Notable improvements include up to 20% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark on Radeon HD 5800 series, and up to 6% on The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, when running Radeon HD 5970 single or CrossFireX. A usual load of bug fixes goes with this version.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.9 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

A complete list of changes follows.

AMD released an untimely Catalyst 10.8b Hotfix driver specifically targeted at users of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and HD 4850 X2 graphics cards on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The new driver claims to improve multi-GPU performance scaling, and improves image-quality in Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. 2 by forcing anisotropic filtering from ATI Catalyst Control Center.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.8b Hotfix

Lexar Media, a leading global provider of memory products for digital media, today announced the addition of the 128GB Echo SE backup drive to the popular Echo line of portable backup solutions. Designed to protect valuable data on netbook and notebook computers, the Echo SE drive now offers up to 128GB of storage, allowing users to automatically back up more essential files - anytime, anywhere. Once backup is complete, the Echo SE drive easily slips into a pocket or bag for portability with the knowledge that critical files are backed up if a laptop is lost or stolen. More than 15 percent shorter than other 128GB backup drives, the high-performance Echo SE provides a way to easily backup data, with the reduced risk of accidental in-drive damage.

High-performance Echo SE is an ultra-portable drive that easily plugs into a computer's USB port to perform automatic backup of files, at read speeds up to 28 MB/s and write speeds up to 10 MB/s. The drive is interoperable between Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as well as Mac OS X operating systems, allowing data to be seamlessly accessible whether using a PC or Mac computer. The Echo SE backup drive is available in capacities of 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB.

Dell today announced the highly adaptable OptiPlex XE desktop PC for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and retail environments. Designed to withstand challenging conditions such as high heat, dust and 24x7 operations, the OptiPlex XE delivers on Dell's commitment to purpose-built solutions more directly connected with customer needs. The system is easily placed within medical carts, video rental kiosks, retail point-of-sale (POS) solutions and other custom deployments that require easy remote management and long-term system stability options.

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA M'SERV S2100: a compact and versatile server system suitable for a range of applications for SOHO and SMB customers. Available to OEM customers, the VIA M'SERV S2100 is a mere 10.2" long by 4.7" high and provides up to four terabytes of storage in a stylish, compact, low power and low noise system.

The VIA M'SERV S2100 is the first product of its kind to offer the unique advantages of the high-performance, 64-bit VIA Nano processor. This makes the VIA M'SERV S2100 capable of addressing many traditional and next-generation server applications including sophisticated backup, cloud-intermediary service roles along with other storage oriented server applications such as NVR (Network Video Recorder) systems and Log servers.

Flash memory manufacturer leader, Silicon Power debut their flagship USB flash drive earlier this year, the LuxMini 920. It featured ultra fast read (maximum 200x) and write speed. Straight out of the gate, Silicon Power's LuxMini 920 received rave reviews and was awarded "Original Design" from iXBT Labs and won the top honor ~ Product of the Month, a five-star review from PC Magazine, Russia. To continue its success, Silicon Power announced today (11/4), the LuxMini 920 storage capacity will be boosted up to 64GB. Retaining its elegant looks and the 200X high speed transfer rate, it is currently one of the most attractive and the fastest USB flash drives in its class.

The maximum 200X read (30MB/sec) transfer rate is a feature accomplished only by a few USB flash drives in the market. With modern day high definition digital devices, the captured data capacity have increased daramtically. Whether it be recorded audio or pictures, the 200x speed can signigicantly reduce the time it takes to copy data. Apart from LuxMini 920's ultra fast read speed, its write speed is no slow either. When compared with most USB flash drives on the market, it is roughly 3~6x faster at a maximum speed of 20MB/sec.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the release of the Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Accelerator Drive, the latest addition to its SSDNow V 'Value' family of solid-state drives (SSD). The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40 GB Accelerator Drive is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to accelerate any desktop's start up, shutdown and application load times.

"The SSDNow V Series 40GB Accelerator Drive offers instant performance enhancement and lower power consumption on existing systems at a fraction of the cost of a new system," said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston Digital. "In real-world numbers this means that by upgrading with an SSDNow 40GB drive, you can speed up open and close times of web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, and programs like iTunes or Photoshop by almost 4 times over existing regular desktops hard-disk drives*".

Flash memory manufacturer Silicon Power, follows their success of the Armor A10, a silicon rubber protected portable hard disk drive with an ultra protected portable hard disk drive that derived from similar concepts, the Armor A50. Set to be unleashed on Oct. 21, the Armor A50 further expands the concept of the A10. The result is a shock proof and ultra rugged portable hard disk drive with an elegant aluminum construction. It adds more option to the existing portable hard disk drive lineup.

In compliance with US MIL-STD-810F (transit drop test), it was tested for product dropped directly onto a concrete floor (or harder surface); on a drop-test machine, the product freefalls from a height of 122cm and from the freefall; there are 26 contact points (8 corners, 12 cut surfaces and 6 major surfaces) that were tested.

For NVIDIA's PhysX technology, it has been a roller-coaster ride since NVIDIA's acquisition of the technology, and its makers. As much as PhysX quickly became one of the important selling-points of NVIDIA's consumer graphics line GeForce, it also had its small share of controversy, linked to market dynamics more than anything. With the technology's port to the GeForce GPU, enthusiasts fancied having the freedom of choice with a primary GPU that is dedicated to rendering 3D graphics, and a second GPU that is just about powerful to assign as a dedicated PhysX GPU.

Although having a powerful ATI Radeon GPU aided by a less-powerful NVIDIA GeForce GPU for PhysX was possible on Windows XP, the succeeding Windows Vista restricted this, by making sure two active display drivers couldn't coexist. Windows 7 removed this restriction, but before you could rejoice, NVIDIA quickly released a driver-level code with its 186 series drivers, that disables NVIDIA PhysX altogether when a GPU from another vendor is coexisting and enabled, even an IGP for that matter. If that wasn't bizarre enough, with the latest drivers, you can't even pair an Ageia PhysX PPU card with an ATI Radeon GPU going about its business. To the rescue comes a soft-modder's nifty bit of software that overrides this restriction from NVIDIA's drivers, so you can use dedicated GeForce PhysX cards on machines with ATI Radeon primary GPUs again. The corrective driver patch comes from tech portal NGOHQ.com community member GenL.

NVIDIA Corp. today introduced NVIDIA Nexus, the industry's first development environment for massively parallel computing that is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio, the world's most popular development environment for Windows-based solutions and Web applications and services.

"NVIDIA Nexus is going to improve programmer productivity immediately," said Tarek El Dokor at Edge 3 Technologies. "An integrated GPU and CPU development solution is something Edge 3 has needed for a long time. The fact that it's integrated into the Visual Studio development environment drastically reduces the learning curve."

ASUS, the leader in computer-based Hi-Fi solutions and acclaimed producer of CES award-winning Xonar audio products, today launched its innovative HP-100U personal Dolby home theater set. Comprising a gorgeous, lab-tuned pair of headphones, a Xonar U1 external audio device and a high quality array microphone, the HP-100U is the total audio solution for discerning listeners who brook no compromise when it comes to PC or Mac audio.

The HP-100U comes with the lauded Xonar U1, a uniquely-styled external audio device that harnesses the power of four major Dolby technologies to deliver high fidelity, interference-free PC audio. Furthermore, it supports DirectSound, EAX 2.0 and Open AL acceleration for the best audio experience in Windows Vista / Windows XP and also on Mac platforms. It is even equipped with a Hi-Fi headphone amplifier for improved clarity when driving headphones.

Acer, the world's third largest vendor in the PC market, today announced the new Acer Veriton Z280G-EA271CP all-in-one PC for the U.S. commercial market. It delivers energy-efficient performance in a picture-perfect design. It's available via Acer's authorized resellers with prices beginning at just $499.

Boasting a brilliant 18.5-inch widescreen LCD monitor and measuring just 19-inches (W) by 15-inches (H) by 2.14-inches (D), this sleek all-in-one is perfect for reception areas, hotel lobbies, executive suites, cube environments and any office that requires an integrated, space-saving design.

A-DATA Technology Co., Ltd., a worldwide leading manufacturer in high-performance DRAM modules and Flash application products, today introduced its new 64 GB capacity XPG Xupreme 200X flash drive, which is the first flash drive compatible with Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit). Coated with an elegant dark grey aluminum color, the XPG Xupreme 200X flash drive presents the high-performance USB flash drive in a simple yet stylish design of XPG product line. It offers capacity from 8GB to incredible 64GB, and supports up to 30MB/s (200X) read speed.

The XPG Xupreme 200X flash drive also certified for Windows Vist and Windows ReadyBoost, offering the high performance advantages to this operation system. Moreover, the XPG Xupreme 200X flash drive also comes with a practical leather strap and provides true "Plug and Play" function to make your storage utilization more convenient.

Matrox Graphics Inc., the leading manufacturer of specialized graphics solutions, today announced the availability of the Matrox M9138 and Matrox M9148 DisplayPort graphics cards. Expanding the M-Series product line, these new triple- and quad-monitor cards offer a remarkable 1 GB of memory, and with support for independent or stretched mode at resolutions up to 2560x1600 per output, users can drive business, industrial, and government applications on an exceptional multi-monitor platform.

"The first generation of Matrox DisplayPort graphics cards bring a tremendous amount of flexibility to today's DisplayPort users," says Samuel Recine, Director of Business Development, Matrox Graphics. "Not only can users choose any combination of pivoted, independent, or stretched displays, but also have the opportunity to combine two M9148 cards in a single system to drive up to eight DisplayPort or DVI monitors."

Acer America announced U.S. availability of new Acer Aspire notebooks offering exceptional price/performance and cinematic high-definition entertainment to anyone on-the-go, including students and small business professionals.

These systems boast a dynamic multimedia experience with cinematic HD, 16:9 widescreens and Dolby surround sound audio in a visually appealing sapphire design known as Gemstone Blue. The Aspire notebooks are engineered to suit the needs of users desiring an affordable mobile workhorse for being productive and enjoying digital life at school, on the road or at home.

Silicon Power, the leading brand among Solid State Disk (SSD) Manufacturers lifts the benchmark another notch with their new Portable eSATA / USB SSD II. It is the world's first eSATA (eSATA; External Serial ATA) /USB dual interface portable SSD drive. The new drive emphasis the convenience of USB connection and the ultra fast performance of eSATA interface as an external drive. Overall, the drive has excellent aesthetics and the performance to match.

Having won rave reviews with their 64GB eSATA /USB SSD, Silicon Power releases the new lidless and portable eSATA/USB SSD II. Through the eSATA interface, maximum read speed reaches 90MB/Sec and maximum write reaches 50 MB/Sec. Maximum read through the USB connection is rated at 30MB/Sec and 20MB/sec for write. It is the perfect solution for professional multimedia enthusiasts or users that often carry and transfer large capacity files.