Oh Windows Vista... really? Lock up on me because you were doing the incredibly intensive task of playing the logoff sound?!

No wonder I upgraded to Windows 7 as soon as humanly possible.

NVIDIA has released version 270.51 BETA of their GeForce/ION driver package, adding support for the GTX 590, GTX 560 Ti, and GTX 550 Ti, increasing performance in several games, adding a driver update notification system, among many other changes.

Here are a sampling of the new features and fixes available in v270.51 BETA:

• Adds support for GTX 590, GTX 560 Ti, and GTX 550 Ti based video cards
• Adds the NVIDIA Update feature that notifies you of newly available drivers.
• Improves performance in several games across several GPUs
• Updates HD Audio driver to v1.2.22.1
• Updates PhysX System Software to 9.10.0514

Several 3D Vision specific updates are included as well, as are updates to NVIDIA Surround.

You can see the complete list of changes and fixes included in this update in the Release Notes (v270.51) PDF available under the Additional Information tab on the NVIDIA download page for your operating system. Here's a direct link to the PDF.

You can download the 32-bit version for Windows 7 and Windows Vista here. Versions of the 270.51 BETA driver for 64-bit Windows, as well as for other operating systems, are available here.

Important: This is a beta driver release. I do not recommend you install this update unless you're experiencing an issue that v270.51 BETA corrects or you're interested in one of the new features that this release enables. The most recent WHQL release for GeForce/ION is version 266.58.

Related Topics:

• What is a Driver?
• How to Update Drivers
• How to Roll Back a Driver
• Am I Running a 32-bit or 64-bit Version of Windows?

AMD has released v11.3 of their ATI Radeon video card drivers. The 11.3 update corrects a number of issues in Windows 7, Windows Vista, and in Windows XP.

Here are more details on the changes in v11.3:

• Now supports seamless GPU compute support.
• Corrects 3D BluRay playback frame loss issue in Windows 7, plus 3 more fixes.
• Fixes hanging issues in 3DMark2011 and World of Warcraft in Windows Vista.
• Fixes crashes during Need for Speed Shift in Windows XP.
• Updates ATI Radeon display driver to v8.831
• Updates ATI Catalyst Control Center to v8.831

You can see all the details on the game performance improvements, corrected issues, new features, and a full list of compatible AMD/ATI GPUs in the Catalyst 11.3 Release Notes.

You can download the 32-bit driver version for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP at the respective links. Drivers compatible with 64-bit versions of Windows, and other ATI related drivers like ATI TV Wonder, ATI integrated video, etc., can be downloaded here.

Note: The Catalyst Driver Suite contains the actual ATI Radeon display driver, the Southbridge/IXP driver, HydraVision, and the ATI Catalyst Control Center.

Related Topics:

• What is a Driver?
• How to Update Drivers
• How to Roll Back a Driver
• Am I Running a 32-bit or 64-bit Version of Windows?
• What Version of This Driver Do I Have Installed?

Firefox 4 was released on March 22nd, right on the heels of IE9. It's a big update, and a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

Download Firefox 4 Here

If you're a Firefox 3 user, as many, many folks are, I think you'll really appreciate the features in version 4. I use Firefox everyday for work and play and v4 is much faster and easier to use.

Be sure to check out yesterday's blog post by Scott Orgera about Firefox 4.

Have you updated to Firefox 4 yet? What do you think about it?