Bluetooth has some competition - Wi-Fi Direct is touted to everything Bluetooth does, but with far less issues and annoyances all while using a protocol that is far more widespread and easier to setup.

Starting today - Wi-Fi Direct devices will enter the certification process - the actual products to use this tech are unknown at this point, but there should be some hardware on the shelves before Santa arrives in 2 more months.

Functionality wise, the claims stand out instantly - for someone to make a device-to-device connection over Wi-Fi just ONE of the devices needs to be Wi-Fi Direct certified. This will help create a user base out of the box, which is a great step towards instant sales.

Patriot has been peddling RAM to gamers and Enthusiasts for a long time and like many other memory companies, Patriot has expanded into SSDs as well. Patriot has unveiled a new line of SSDs today called the Torqx TRB line that offer nice features and performance. The new 64GB SSD uses the latest controller from JMicron called the JMF616.

The controller allows the SSD to operate at up to 260MB/s read speed and 115MB/s write speed for the 64GB version. A 32GB SSD is also offered using the JMicron JM612 controller allowing the SSD to operate at up to 245MB/s read speed and up to 60MB/s write. Both of the SSDs have a 3-year warranty and are designed to support TRIM in Windows 7.

The SSDs consume 0.5W in standby and 5.3W when operating. Both also have a 64MB cache. Patriot is mum on pricing and availability at his time. "As solid-state drive technology advances, we are able to develop SSD solutions that provide the performance users want while reaching the affordable price points they demand. Patriot's objective is to offer the latest technology while providing the best performance and price options", states Les Henry, Vice President of Engineering at Patriot. "Our Torqx TRB family of SSDs meet these goals. Users upgrading with a Torqx TRB SSD will benefit from improved transfer rates, quicker boot times and the reliability of solid-state storage in their boot drive option. Including a Torqx SSD in your desktop or notebook upgrade plans provides one of the best bang-for-the buck improvements you can make to your system."

When it comes to mobile gaming I stick to my iPhone or iPad. I have a couple PSPs here in the house along with a couple Nintendo DSi systems that my kids play. We haven't used the PSPs in over a year now so the PSP format altogether isn't very appealing around my house. When I first heard of the PSP Go I thought it sounded cool enough until I realized that the games you have for your old PSPs were useless on the new Go. Many people felt that way and many retailers were mad that they could not sell software for the Go making it a bag of fail.

Sony Japan has confirmed a price cut that has been rumored for the Go. In Japan the Go will see it's price chopped to 16,800 yen with taxes included. That works out to about $208 here in the US. The rumors that have been swirling claiming a new price of $199 are incoming for the Go for the States. With the Japanese price so close to the rumored price here at home, I would say the rumors are probably accurate.

The Go is unchanged from the version that launched last year with its new price. The device will be offered in Japan at the discounted price starting tomorrow. That is about a $50 reduction in the cost of the Go here in the US. I still don't think that $50 off will be enough to coax most gamers into buying the Go since the core issue was software for most of us.

I'm not really the sort of geek to buy flashy colored computers or hardware. I prefer more of a stealth look for my gear. Some people like to have nice specs and some flash on the outside when it comes to buying a machine. Women often want a netbook that has lots of style and works well and Asus has a new netbook that comes in some colors that will appeal to the style conscious women out there shopping for a new netbook. I know my wife would like the colors of this new Eee netbook.

The new machine is called the Asus Eee 1015PW and the machine is a hardware clone of the existing Asus 1015PEM. That's not a bad thing at all considering as far as netbook hardware goes, the rigs are great on the inside. They have dual core Atom N550 processor, the LED backlit screen has 1024 x 600 resolution, and the battery is good for up to ten hours of use per charge. The netbook comes in some crazy colors with names like Purple Rain, Gold Dust, and Angel Skin.

Other hardware features include up to 320GB of storage, 1GB of RAM, WiFi, and Bluetooth 3.0. Asus also offers the 500GB of online storage for those wanting to take advantage and the netbook has the ExpressGate fast booting tech inside. Pricing is unannounced at this point, but it should be in line with other netbooks. The lid of the 1015PW also gets a new design called wave.

When it comes time to build up a new gaming PC most of us want something that performs really well. We also tend to want the machine to look good and with many of the cool computer cases on the market today have clear side windows the way the hardware inside the machine looks is as important as how the case looks on the outside.

Kingston has been selling a fan specifically made for its HyperX RAM for a long time now with the same blue color that the HyperX RAM sports. That blue fan might not go well if you are into the stealth look and are using one of the many cases that are black on the inside and out. If the blue color puts you off the fan, Kingston has announced a new black colored fan that cools just as well as the blue one.

The black fan is a standalone product that sells for $23 and is part number KHX-FAN-B. The fan has a pair of 60mm fans that help to cool memory allowing you to overclock to higher speeds before the RAM gets unstable. The fans also have eight blue LEDs that glow when the fans are on. Noise output is minimal with 25dBA when operating.

Microsoft is set to launch a new online PC game store called Games for Windows Marketplace in the middle of November.

Microsoft will have over 100 titles from various game developers and studios at launch, including many of the big hits from Microsoft Game Studios such as "Fable: The Lost Chapters," "Flight Simulator," "Gears of War," "Halo" and "Age of Empires Online." Other big titles in stock include "Grand Theft Auto III," and "Max Payne" from Rockstar Games and "Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition" from Square Enix.

Games for Windows Marketplace will also host indie games too.

I thought piracy was only big on the PC? Oh how people are wrong...

Well, the highly anticipated upcoming Treyarch title, Call of Duty: Black Ops was nearly leaked onto the internet last week which caused a ruckus in the community. It has been donned "Blackgate" by one man who found himself in the middle of this mess - there is a handy YouTube video showing what has happened:

A man who calls himself "Computer Healer" had gotten news that a legit copy of Call of Duty: Black Ops was somewhere near his house in New Orleans - after reviewing the information on the disc at an Xbox 360 piracy related website, "Computer Healer" found out what he'd need to do in order to get his hands on a copy.

It felt like only yesterday that Windows Vista was released, it only felt like a few hours ago that Windows 7 was let out of the bag - but now we're hearing the early rumbles of Windows 8 and rumor has it, it's less than 2 years away.

We all know they're working on it - it is no surprise, but there something great about knowing it's on it's way. Microsoft said in a blog post on it's Dutch web site that Windows 8 is about two years from being on the market.

The comments were made on Sunday and were made at the end of a post celebrating Windows 7 first birthday. Microsoft is hesitant to comment on this sudden news of Windows 8 but their Server team did say last year that a major release of Windows Server was due in 2012 - and server versions usually lag a desktop release.

NVIDIA, following their just recently (as in 24 hours ago) big price drop on GTX460 and 470 GPU's because of the AMD Radeon 6k series launch have shocked everyone again by dropping Quadro card prices by 50%.

CEO of NVIDIA, Jen Hsun Huang had a few things to say, "We have delivered excellent results in Quadro professional graphics". "We expect to drive revenue and grow market share with new products that are gaining momentum in each of our businesses".

But, any company will say that - can't remember the last time I heard "we expect revenue to drop heavily and our share price to plummet, because we are losing market share". Enter tongue face, :P

It may be a day later than the official release of the 6800 graphics card lineup, but AMD has today made Catalyst 10.10, their latest driver release, official. Along with optimization for the new graphics cards, the new driver release includes support for Linux versions openSUSE 11.3 support (production) and Ubuntu 10.10 support (early look). AMD's HD3D Technology is also introduced with this driver release, giving Blu-Ray and Stereo 3D support. Check out the full list of updates after the break, and get your new drivers at the Source Link..

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 10.10 Windows release include: (Courtesy of AMD)

New Features

The pros and cons of an SSD versus a HDD are well documented. No one will argue that the SSD offers more speed than your average HDD, but most will agree that the amount you pay for an SSD versus the storage space leaves a lot to be desired. However, users that want outright speed in their computers know that the SSD is the way to go.

SSDs that connect directly to the SATA port have bottlenecks inherent in the SATA design and to avoid those bottlenecks there are a few SSDs on the market today that plug into the PCI Express slot. A new SSD storage device has surfaced from a company called Angelbird that is a combination of a traditional SSD and one of the PCI Express SSDs.

The Angelbird device has no storage integrated into the PCI E card itself, but it is purchased with a wired SSD in 16GB or 32GB that is used for booting the computer. With a single SSD hooked to the PCI E card the device is capable of up to 285MB/s performance. The real coolness comes when you add more of the expansion modules the company offers. You can go up to four of those expansion modules and with a quartet of 120GB modules the device is capable of up to 1081MB/s data speeds. The system starts at $239.

There are many music games on the market today with offerings like Rock Band and Guitar Hero at the top of the market. There are other smaller and lesser-known music games though and some of them have some awesome controllers. Power Gig is a music game that works sort of like Guitar Hero in that you have a wireless guitar controller to play with, but Power Gig uses a real six-string guitar.

Seven45 Studios is the company behind Power Gig and it has announced an awesome new guitar controller is available for the game in versions for the Xbox 360 and for the PS3. The controller works just like the basic six string controllers for the game, only these limited edition controllers are handmade for gamers wanting the best controllers out there. The controllers are made by First Act and look more like real electric guitars than game controllers.

Each of the controllers is made by hand by First Act craftsmen and include a single cutaway basswood body, humbucking pickup, and a maple neck with rosewood fretboard. The sweet controllers each cost $250, which isn't cheap, but man are they awesome. If you have wanted to learn the real guitar, this game and the handmade controller with real guitar playing action might be the perfect way to learn. The game is available right now but the controllers can only be pre-ordered at this time.

Word has quickly started to get around regarding the AMD Radeon HD 6850 carrying with it 1120 Shaders. This afternoon when I was testing for my HD 6850 OC article, I noticed that in GPU-Z my HD 6850 was listed as 1120 Shaders. When I realized I double checked the video card to see if it was actually the HD 6850 and it was.

I had a look at my Sapphire card and noticed that it also showed 1120 Shaders. With the version of GPU-Z being brand new, I put it down to nothing more than a software error since both cards showed it. It's becoming widespread that the cards actually have all 1120 Shaders enabled.

While it doesn't skew our opinion of the HD 6850, it does affect the overall performance. At the moment, though, we don't have a BIOS for the HD 6850 that's only 960 Shaders. Next week when everyone starts to get back to work, namely AMD and its partners we've got samples from, we will speak to them about the situation.

The gaming world has many iconic characters that have been part of some of the most important video games around. A few of these iconic characters include fan favorites like Pac-Man and Mario. Nintendo has been celebrating the 25th birthday of Mario all year long and has offered some cool facts about the game and is offering up some cool new bundles of hardware for Mario fans.

The latest hardware bundles include special edition glossy red Wii and DSi XL game systems. The red Wii bundle includes a glossy red console, the new Super Mario Bros. Wii game, a red Wii Remote Plus controller with built-in Motion Plus capability, a red nunchuk, and the Wii sports game that typically comes with the Wii. The coolest part is that the special edition console has a price that is affordable at $199.99 while supplies last.

The red DSi XL bundle has Super Mario Bros. themed graphics, includes Mario Kart DS game and a pre-loaded Brain Age Express title. The DSi XL bundle will also be offered only while supplies last and will sell for $179.99. Nintendo has also unveiled a new FlingSmash bundle that has a game with pinball action and the new Wii Remote Plus controller inside for $49.99.

I have never tried Netflix's streaming content service. I have been on the company's mail order DVD program before and ended up cancelling when the movies I wanted never showed up. I am more interested in streaming content now when I miss a show than going and trying to rent it or waiting for a rerun and when Hulu announced its Plus subscription service I was interested. The price was a bit steep though at $9.99 monthly for access to shows from most of the major networks and older shows that are no longer on TV.

Hulu has been running a beta of the subscription offering for a while now ironing out all of the kinks before the official launch and getting ready to take the service to the general public. AllThingsD reports that sources have told it that Hulu is considering a much more palatable price for the subscription service. The $9.99 price is apparently hard for the beta users to stomach so Hulu is said to be eying a new price tag of $4.95 per month.

That new price would make the service much more affordable and help to coax users to try it out. The original price at almost $10 monthly was more than you had to spend to get Netflix streaming and some DVDs in the mail as well. We can only wait and see if the sources leaking the info are correct, I hope they are.

NVIDIA is always at work on new video cards and GPUs for different user groups that it can sell and put on the market to fight AMD and its ATI video cards. One of the better cards from NVIDIA over the last few years was the GTX 480 and if you were a fan of that card's performance, you will really like the GTX 580 that is coming according to DigiTimes.

The GTX 580 is supposed to offer 20% faster performance than the GTX 480 it will replace according to DigiTimes sources at video card manufacturers. The 580 will be a GF110-based video card and is expected by the end of November or the beginning of December according to sources. NVIDIA will also reportedly have new GPU families coming out next year.

The same sources to DigiTimes that in 2011 NVIDIA would be offering new GF112, GF115, and GF119 GPU families. NVIDIA is also expected to unveil the new Kepler GPU by the end of 2011 and the successor to the Kepler GPU called Maxwell is also reportedly in development already. AMD also has new products coming in November or December according to the sources.

If you travel out of the country and use your data plan on your notebook or mobile phone chances are you will end up getting charged much more than you think you will. Some people have traveled overseas and ended up with wireless bills in the thousands of dollars range after downloading movies or TV episodes.

If you travel to other countries and you really need access to data on your notebook or netbook with an integrated modem or with a USB modem, AT&T has unveiled some new pay as you go options that will keep you from being hit with a giant bill when you get home. The new data packages cover 100 countries including Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia and lots more. The plans start at $24.99 and go up to $199.99.

You don't get much data at all in the plans AT&T offers, so don't think you will be streaming lots of Hulu or downloading lots of large files. The $24.99 plan gets you 20MB of data while the $59.99 plan gets you 50MB of data use. The $119.99 plan gets 100MB of data and the most expensive $199.99 plan gets you 200MB of data. The service will let the user buy the plan before a trip and then specify when it starts. Users with AT&T accounts active more than 90 days can bill the packages to their wireless account or pay with a credit card.

For many years before Dell bought Voodoo, its gaming line of computers was the XPS series. After the purchase of Voodoo PC, Dell migrated the XPS line of notebooks and desktops towards machines that were more focused on media than pure gaming. Dell has unveiled a few new notebooks for the XPS family this week that include some thin and well equipped machines that are aimed directly at the thin and sexy HP Envy line of notebooks.

Dell's new XPS notebooks include anodized and brushed aluminum finishes, backlit keyboards, and lots of media features. The new notebooks offer a variety of screen sizes with offerings in 14-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch categories. Even the base configuration of the notebooks has some nice hardware inside with Intel Core i5 460M CPUs, NVIDIA GeForce 420M GPUs with Optimus tech for power savings, and 500GB HDDs that spin at 7200 rpm.

The machines also have 4GB of RAM in the basic configurations. There are a number of options that will up the price and performance of the series though with things like a Core i7 840M CPU, better GPUs, and more RAM if you are so inclined. Other features include a 2MP webcam, USB 3.0, eSATA ports, HDMI 1.4a outputs, Intel Wireless Display, WiMax, Bluetooth 3.0, and internal TV tuners. The basic configuration for 14-inch version is $899, the 15-incher is $849 and the 17-incher is $949.

The iPad is a great tablet that can replace a notebook or a netbook for many users. There are many folks out there that have an iPad that probably never take it out of the house. If you are this sort of user and you want a nice mount that you can use to mount the iPad in the kitchen, bathroom, or office where it will be safe and easy to use the Griffin Cabinet mount for iPad may be perfect.

The mount does just what the name implies with a special mounting option that allows the thing to be mounted to any cabinet on the front, side, or bottom. The mount is made so that it can tilt 90-degrees front and back to allow the iPad to fold flat against the bottom of a cabinet. It will also rotate 360-degrees around to allow the iPad to be viewed at any angle.

Griffin uses custom designed mounting brackets that grip the iPad securely so you don't have to worry that it will fall out of the mount. The mount works with any cabinet that is 14-inches or deeper. The best use for this thing for me is under the hutch on my desk. That way I can use an app to shoot my desktop content to the iPad as a second monitor. The Griffin cabinet dock is available right now for $69.99.

A few days ago I talked about Foxtel's new Xbox 360 service - it's still planned to launch next month but will not be unmetered because ISP's are offering their own internet TV solutions.

To put things in perspective, an hour of standard-definition streaming content is rumoured to use around 800MB of data - while the average television viewing is around 21 hours per week, equating to 16.5GB of data per week.

iiNet communications manager Anthony Fisk said while users are free to use the Foxtel service - it won't be unmetered.