What's so hard to understand about new evidence surfacing that throws doubt on her innocence? A forensic examiner apparently only pulled the browsing history for IE and failed to recognize that a second browser was installed. The browsing history for that browser has now been examined and on the day that this child disappeared there were searches regarding methods for killing someone. Why is importance of THAT so hard to understand?

DNA isn't the be all end all for a conviction either. It's quite possible to find DNA at a crime scene and NOT have it belong to a killer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_of_Heilbronn

We have to be very careful about being lazy when a new tool is introduced as it very well may NOT prove what we think it does. Investigation still has to be done by investigators that have a clue. Sadly it looks like they used an amateur for this investigation.

Frankly, the fact that they failed to recognize more than one browser was on this machine and in use is criminal in and of itself. Whoever did the forensic examination of this machine was an idiot and ought to be fired! they could easily have imaged the workstation, run the image, and explored it to figure out what was and wasn't in use. This could just as easily have been evidence to exonerate someone that was missed, this is disgusting!

Yes, went back and reread it and spotted what I'd missed - mentioned it below. The mention of the lighter threw me, I didn't understand why that was important. However since it was apparently being sold in that town around that time it was used as evidence that the person who commited the crime was likely local and thus supported the DNA requests.

Ever done a CAPTCHA? Yup, may of those support an OCR effort...

At this point, unless he has confessed, it appears that the DNA is the only linkage...

No, the DNA on her body is ALSO mentioned. They mentioned the lighter up front though and I missed the part about DNA also matching on her body. Apparently the fact that the lighter was sold locally led them to believe that the person was a local who did this - hence the mass DNA gathering. It would have been helpful had they spelled that out a little more clearly IMO but they DID mention a DNA match on her body that I missed...

Crap, you're right! :-(

"The decision to launch the dna appeal came after De Vries in May broadcast information about a Playboy cigarette lighter found in Vaatstra's bag which contains dna traces that match the traces found on the schoolgirl's body."

I missed the last part. Why is the lighter even mentioned?

Have you got a source for this? The article simply stated lighter or did I miss something?

The DNA matched DNA found on a cigarette lighter found in her schoolbag - not DNA from the rape itself apparently. It's possible in my mind that the guy is innocent of rape\murder and guilty of selling a schoolgirl a lighter or her guilty of stealing it. More details need to come out, this isn't "solved" in my mind unless they have DNA evidence from the rape itself that matches.

He was WEARING the watch, it was NOT in his boots. The boots were oversized and had added insoles in them. Doesn't sound too bad right? The watch was modified and had fuses, wires, and switches added to it....

Sounds like they erred on the side of caution and while the summary sounds pretty outrageous I think a watch with all of that added to it sounds a bit odd too. Need more details, the dude definitely sounds a bit off...

They should have proposed this prior to the last presidential election? Or made a point to mention it during the debates? It's quite possible they might have swayed a few votes their way. Guess that was too risky?

What add-on is this? I've seen Fusion for VMworkstation but nothing for vbox. Sounds like something to try out!

Its not THAT picky if you do research. I've got a dirt cheap 1150? Board with an i7 on it that worked great including VT-d except I chose a 2600k back before folks realized it has VT-d disabled - grr! Oh, onboard NIC worked fine. Model number not handy but if anyone cares I can find it.

I have a Tyan Xeon board too. 3 NICS with one being iPMI/iKVM. Not super cheap but maxxed out what ESXi can run. Single socket 32gig ECC. This is what I graduated to :-)

They have VMplayer and now it allows you to create new VMs not just use appliances without jumping through hoops. It works well but no snapshots I don't think, you can obviously copy a VM manually. Workstation is good though if working with ESX as I swear you need an array of tools to get stuff to convert on it. Yeah I know about the standalone converter...

Or run a Windows VM and VNC to it to run Vsphere....

Would be nice to know if the OP wants a desktop or server sized solution to play with. If just desktop there's plenty of options....