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• One of the things I heard at almost every booth I visited at PMA was usually whispered. "People are less and less interested in printed photos. What can we do to encourage pro photographers and their customers to demand photographic prints?" A wide range of vendors at PMA had answers. These ranged from "put photos in my junk jewelry" to "print on unusual media such as sheet plastic for shower curtains, tempered glass for cutting boards and flat rubber blanks for welcome mats" to "sell customers RIPed photo books of special events." Pro printer makers featured displays of beautiful pro quality images on a variety of media from glossy to satin to matte paper to canvas. Some of the prints on canvas were of painted masterworks. The canvas surface combined with the ability of digital cameras and scanners to capture brushstrokes in fine detail created a kind of surreal real imagery that in the end was quite pleasing in itself. But no one is going to get rich and buy lots of printers making these kinds of prints. From what I could tell, the demand for pro printers comes from wedding, event, portrait and environmental (mostly architectural) photographers. Each of these produces images that someone wants to hang up somewhere or keep forever in a nicely bound book. In addition, it appears that the amateur, special event photo book market continues to thrive. This market is based mostly on people uploading their images by way of the Internet to a commercial site. Then the customer lays out their images, page-by-page, in RIP-like fashion. Once layouts are completed, the customer pays for the book and it's printed and mailed to out. In the next section, I'll talk a bit about a massive and impressive system HP has built to allow large photo book businesses to produce amateur photo books as well as books for the professional photographic market. While all of the above was in full bloom at PMA, the trade show also featured products designed to replace printed images. Digital picture frames were all the rage. My favorite was Kodak's new frames that produce very good color on relatively high res displays, can show movies as well as photos and can accept input through their built in WiFi links. Another digital "picture frame" that caught my eye was a small keychain device that held tens of images and displayed them in a slide show at the push of a button. In addition to picture frames, I saw software packages from the likes of Corel and Nero designed to turn photos into compelling slide shows with great transitions that are synced with MP3 musical selections. These packages also produce DVDs so the images (some can handle high def images) can be viewed on a TV set. Also in evidence were memory card readers that can connect to a TV and display digital photos, as well as those network based image and sound streaming devices that seem to be everywhere today. On one side, I heard arguments supporting producing traditional printed images from digital sources. On the other side, advocates lobbied for presenting digital images using non-traditional, non-printed methods. While I love digital presentation, including right on the LCD of a digital camera, I don't think printed images are going to disappear all that soon. Unlike the film vs. digital controversy where most people have chosen their favored weapon, print vs. direct digital is a battle still taking place on a field where both sides are fairly strong and can make a compelling case for their favored technologies. Epson Stylus R2400 Inkjet Printer... (10 offers) Online shop Price See more products

• Getting Up to Speed: XP-TMC Adapter Socket from Upgradeware Unlocks...

  Sooner or later, everyone has to face the problem that their computer is not fast enough. The conventional way to solve this by buying a new one or upgrading the current one quickly becomes expensive and is only seldom justifiable. However, home users have the option of tuning their systems using all the tricks in the books. Yes indeed, we're talking about traditional overclocking. During the days of the AMD K5 and the Pentium MMX, this was still child's play because the multiplier could be freely selected most of the time. It wasn't seldom that a Pentium 166 MMX could be run at 200 MHz or even 233 MHz, because ultimately, the chips came from the same production line and were labeled according to the demand, and it's the same with chips today. Because this tuning method was unproblematic, it quickly became a popular sport, and it cost the manufacturers a pretty penny - even if AMD used this "freedom" as a way of gaining market shares. This is the reason why Intel has been burning a fixed multiplier into its processors since the Pentium III, so that overclocking is only possible by increasing the system clock. With the higher speed, however, you risk having an unstable system because the processor, its bus and, depending on the system, the system memory, the AGP bus and the IDE controller are all overclocked. With the Pentium 4, nothing can be done with the multiplier, while AMD's Athlon XP always gives you possibilities . These vary with the Thunderbird and Barton cores, though. Upgradeware now offers a small adapter that lets you freely select the multiplier with all Athlon XP models - and it's only limited by the multipliers that the processor recognizes.

• When a new product comes to the marketplace that replaces a previous generation, it is in the best interest of that company to enhance it with features, value-added additions and improvements over the previous version. In some cases, it is good to keep the changes of a product to a minimum as some consumers like the original, such as Coca-Cola or the Ford Mustang. In the technological arena, consumers demand improvements with a sense of familiarity. Vista in many regards is XP with a facelift with enhancements and series of new tools. Using gadgets in your sidebar menu, you can get the latest news... even if it is a headline like "Snakes on Planes." For those looking for better productivity or more gizmos, the sidebar has a place with which you can download more things to fill your space, such as stock tickers, address books, calculators and even games like pong. Aside from the desktop, windows can become transparent, translucent or whatever you want them to be. Operating in a 3D space allows the user to customize the OS to look as he or she pleases. The greatest desktop feature I found is the option that allows you to view the contents of a tab without going to it. A small thumbnail of the window will appear above the tab as you mouse over it. The other is the option to stack windows within 3D space and see a piece of each window.