Now, as many as 85, 000 Apple Computer fans make a pilgrimage to the MacWorld expo, the annual four-day event at San Francisco's Moscone Center.

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For conference calls and chats, Tiki's Intelligent Speech Mode uses voice isolation to bring your voice to the forefront while noise-canceling technology simultaneously reduces unwanted, competing background noise such as computer fans, keyboard typing and ambient sound.

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Reports of thousands of fans who participate from their computer at work are an indication of the burgeoning fantasy mania.

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Enough computer users are fed up with noisy fans and humming hard drives to fuel a whole subculture of folks who build their own silent machines.

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As a creative way of raising funds for his charity, the Luol Deng Foundation , he's organized an event where fans can come and take him on at his favourite computer games.

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But these spiders and fans can only be found by eye - there's no computer that can pick them out, and they change over time.

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Eventually it gets too loud, so gamers replace fans with a water-cooling system--essentially a car radiator for their computer--which also enhances overall performance.

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