As with other Apple devices of late, the new MacBook Air has been taken down a dark alley, bashed across the head and taken advantage of - but, in a good way.

We knew this before, but with it being opened it's now confirmed - the new MacBook Air is next to impossible to do self-service on, as it uses mostly propriety components. The interior is secured using five-sided Torx T5 screws - where as the rest of the components are so customised that it would be near impossible to find them in a parts store.

Interestingly, the SSD is what most people (as well as myself) want to see, instead of the standard 2.5" SATA SSD drive - they use a unique Toshiba SSD, looks purdy!

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