For a bit there we were scratching our heads a bit on what Barnes & Noble had up their sleeve for us come its scheduled November 7th event, but it's all out in the open now thanks to the crew over at Engadget working their magic and getting all the hot details for us.

It does indeed look like Amazon's Kindle Fire will be getting some company with B&N planning to reveal its new "Nook Tablet" in a few days time, and beginning shipments from November 16th.

The said tablet will come in at $249 and promises 'the best in HD entertainment'. It looks much like the Nook Color and measures 8.1 x 5 x 0.48-inches, weighing in at 400 grams. It features a 7-inch (1024 x 600) VividView IPS touchscreen display and is powered by a 1.2GHz OMAP4 dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM.

If you're holding off on picking up a copy of Battlefield 3 due to your current VGA card being indefinitely not up to scratch to handle it, ASUS has just the ticket for you convenience wise, and may well save you some cash at the same time.

This page from ASUS direct details a couple bundles they're now offering which comprise a graphics card or sound card, and a Battlefield 3 coupon that can be redeemed on Origin.

The graphics card bundle comprises ASUS' GeForce GTX 560 Ti DirectCU II TOP with a BF3-themed Lanyard and of course the coupon for the game thrown in too.

So this is where Matrox has been hiding, it has been in a love dungeon with Shuttle and they've been getting jiggy with it, and the results? A new mini PC, powered by a Matrox M-Series multi-display graphic card that powers the new Shuttle XPC H7 5820S mini PC. The M-Series PCI Express x16 boards support up to eight DisplayPort or single-link DVI monitors at resolutions of up to 2560x1600 per display.

But, get this, a second M-Series card can be combined within the H7 5820S workstation which allows integrators to use a wide range of multi-display installations in corporate, digital signage, security surveillance, process control, stock markets, share traders, crazy-insane monitor lovers and other professional environments.

One of the best features, is that its only 19 centimeters (7.5-inches) in height, which means its quite the mini PC indeed. The Shuttle XPC H7 5820S mini PC sports an Intel Core i7 processor with up to six cores and up to 16GB of DDR3 memory. The high-performance H7 5820S can be incorporated with one or two M9128 dual-monitor, M9138 triple-monitor, M9140/M9148 quad-monitor, and M9188 octal boards.

Ah, the Commodore. I have such great memories of thee. But, Commodore USA's C64 computer recreations have been quite good since last year, and now we have the third variant, the C64x Extreme. This unit sports the 80s flair, but 2011-specced. Inside, it features an Intel Core i7 quad-core CPU capable of turbo boosting to 3.3GHz.

Also, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, Intel HD integrated graphics and a decent 2TB. On the outside, where this thing looks quite amazing, we have two USB 3.0 ports, three USB 2.0 ports and an eSATA port. Also included is HDMI, 3.5mm S/PDIF, VGA and DVI. Apart from the kitchen sink, the C64x Extreme also includes Bluetooth, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, an Ethernet port and even a DVD-RW drive.

The only downfall is it comes with Linus Mint 11 pre-loaded, and will only fully support Windows once the company's "retro inspired" Commodore OS Vision becomes available. While it looks insanely cool and will most likely being a nostalgic tear to your eye, it will also kick you in the balls and rob you, too. It'll set you back $1,500. But, to you, it might just be worth it. I'll be down on the ground holding my nads in pain, while dreaming of this amazing beast.

Commodore USA plans to ship orders played by November 25th before December 15th, if that helps.

While still a few weeks away, we're able to give you a little peak at a kit that's going to see the light of day later in the month when X79 launches. The new RipjawsZ series from G.Skill are designed for the new Intel platform and look absolutely fantastic following that Black / Blue design we've seen from the company before.

Consisting of four 4GB modules, the up and coming kit brings with it a total of 16GB of DDR3 RAM running at PC3-17000 or 2133MHz DDR. Taking a closer look at the modules we get a better idea what's going on with the timings. As you can see we've got a 9-11-9-28 setup that requires a grand total of 1.65v.

The name of the upcoming 23rd James Bond film has been confirmed: Skyfall. Skyfall features the great Daniel Craig donning the role of James Bond once again (for the third time), with leading ladies confirmed as French actress Berenice Marlohe and Naomie Harris.

Skyfall is being directed by Sam Mendes, most famous for 1999's American Beauty in which he won an Oscar. Mendes has said that the storyline will take Bond to London, China, Turkey and Scotland. Skyfall will see Bond's loyalty tested to M, his superior, while espionage headquarters MI6 faces an attack.

Dame Judi Dench returns as M, and Skyfall will also co-star Ralph Fiennes, Albert Finney and Javier Bardem as the villain of Skyfall. Best of all, it will be released in the UK on 26 October 2012, which is less than a year from now.

The flooding in Thailand is set to cause an even more drastic shortage of hard drives according to researchers at iSuppli. Roughly 660,000 Thailand residents are out of work after the country shut down 14,000 factories, including those that Western Digital and Seagate use. Shipments of hard drives are set to decline 27.7-percent from 173 million units in Q3, down to 125 million in Q4.

Both WD and Seagate have adjusted their shipment estimates, as well as raising prices to meet revenue forecasts. Average hard drive prices will increase by 10-percent according to iSuppli (not here in Australia where we're seeing a near 100-percent increase), but certain models have increased by as much as 20 to 40-percent. WD has been more directly impacted by the flooding, with analysts reporting that they will lose market share to Seagate, who has roughly double the shipment forecast for the current quarter.

Of course, there are stock reservers by most vendors to avoid disruption in desktop and notebook shipments for months, but ASUS aren't so fortunate. ASUS expects to ship 4.1 million notebooks, 600,000 Eee Pads and 1.2 million Eee PCs in Q4 2011, down from 4.3 million, 800,000 and 1.3 million in Q3. Part of that forecasted decline can be blamed on the production halt in Thailand.

AMD have just announced a new restructuring plan that is set to cut 10-percent of their workforce over the next few months. The new plan [of sacking employees] and implementation of operational efficiency initiatives designed to strengthen AMD's competitive positioning. By cutting their work force by 10-percent, AMD can save approximately $10 million in operating expenses during Q4 2011.

That sum will expand out to $118 million for 2012, the workforce layoffs will be global and not centred on just one or two sections of AMD's global footprint. It's expected to be completed by Q1 of 2012, with other restructuring plans to continue into 2012. AMD are also saying they plan to save another $90 million off its expenses in 2012, by undertaking various operating efficiencies, but they did not elaborate on that.

AMD's total operating expenses are estimated at $610 million for Q4 2011, with the savings factored in. AMD also wants to improve productivity, reduce the time it takes to release products to the market and better align themselves with key industry trends.

We recently saw quite the breath taking overclocking record out of an AMD FX-8150 CPU from world renowned overclocker Andre Yang, cranking it up to a whopping 8.46GHz, above that of AMD's own previous record (at 8.43GHz).

With only 30 odd MHz separating it, Andre Yang has given it another crank and has produced a new record result, taking the processor to an incredible 8584.8MHz exactly; 123.3GHz higher than his previous achievement. We're still waiting to see the new overclock result appear on CPU-Z's validation database, but its authenticity looks good enough for us.

If you read my mini Editorial yesterday, you'd see that I'm not happy with the state of the gaming industry right now. Today is another day, and with it brings the news that Valve has delayed Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta, after feedback given by professional Counter-Strike 1.6 players. The closed beta was planned for last month, and now has no start date.

Professional CS 1.6 players were invited by Valve to come and play the game and offer their thoughts. Valve's Chet Faliszek explained that their early access was granted because they could "talk intelligently about the game", versus the masses where constructive feedback can be quite hard to come by.

Faliszek didn't say when the closed beta will begin, but when it does begin, around 10,000 people will be invited to participate. "After that we'll grow it in steps as we get a test server infrastructure and scalability," he explained. For a full read of this news, where there are lots of quotes and snippets of news, check out the source.