With its focus on on-demand entertainment at the expense of gaming prowess, Xbox One didn't impress gamers at E3, who instead flocked to Amazon to pre-order their PlayStation 4, which not only features faster hardware, that could translate to better visuals in gaming, but is also a whole 20 percent cheaper ($499 vs. $399). At E3, Microsoft tried to pull a fast one. It set up several gaming stations allegedly powered by Xbox One, where gamers could play unreleased Xbox One games using the new Xbox One controller, just to get a feel of how rich and smooth the graphics really are. Some of them fell for it, others didn't. When these peeping toms didn't find the screens wired to an Xbox One main unit, they yanked open the cupboards below, only to find a full-fledged Windows 7 gaming PC.

How full-fledged you ask? Keen observers across the forumscape made out a rig powered by an Intel LGA2011 processor, which could at least be a Core i7-3820, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 700 series reference design graphics card, which could at least be a GeForce GTX 770. Such a system would obviously give you a rich and smooth gaming experience.

Patriot, a global pioneer in high-performance memory, NAND flash, storage, and mobile accessories today announces the next generation in its ecosystem of wireless storage solutions, the AERO wireless mobile hard drive.

Load up, go mobile, and share. With the ever expanding tablet and smartphone landscape, the AERO is the definitive mobile storage solution that allows you to take your full media collection on the go and stream to any tablet, smartphone, or laptop. The Patriot AERO truly lets you share content to your mobile devices like never before, even if you don't have access to the internet or cloud storage.

StarTech, a leading manufacturer of hard-to-find connectivity parts has announced the release of a rugged new 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub (ST7300USBM), which enables users to add multiple external USB 3.0 connection ports to a PC, server or thin client located within server rooms or industrial operating environments. The industrial-grade hub can be mounted to a wall or DIN rail, and features 350W surge protection on each port as well as a solid metal chassis designed to withstand harsh conditions.

"This addition to our extensive USB 3.0 Hub product line provides more USB 3.0 connectivity and flexibility to areas that require the most modern device connectivity" said Carey Cline, Senior Product Manager for StarTech.com's Industrial I/O product line. "The hub not only delivers the convenient option of wall or DIN rail mounted installation, but also an impact-resistant metal casing that is durable enough for industrial applications."

With its 4th generation Core "Haswell" processor lineup not too far away, Intel is making efforts to clear inventories of its 2nd generation Core "Sandy Bridge" one. Usually, OEMs on the receiving end of such a move stand to score truckloads of chips at discounted prices. Samsung is one such OEM, which may have bagged a ton of "Sandy Bridge" Core i5-2450M dual-core chips clocked at 2.50 GHz, to deploy in its new premium Chromeboxes, which normally use entry-level Celeron B840 chips, because you can't exactly use Chrome OS to play Crysis, and so you don't need a faster CPU. The new, faster Chromebox is listed on Amazon for $423, bearing the SKU "Samsung Chromebox XE300M22-A01US."

GUNNAR Optiks, the world's leading manufacturer of computer eyewear, today announced that it has been awarded broad patent coverage on the company's lens technology and design. GUNNAR's 20/20 and prescription computer eyewear, optimized for use while viewing digital screens, combines a proprietary lens material in an advanced geometry, finished with custom tuned lens tints and coatings.

"Aggressively protecting our technological innovations is an integral part of our business," said Joe Croft, co-founder of GUNNAR. "GUNNAR Optiks computer eyewear addresses a problem affecting more than 120M Americans today. Securing broad-based patents reinforces GUNNAR's leadership position in the category that we created, and ensures that affected consumers can receive a high-quality eyewear solution that protects their vision."

Those who marked Spring of 2013 as the most beautiful time of the year to come -- because your favorite game franchise has one coming for you -- will have to spend almost the entire season watching blooms and leaves sprout. Amazon revealed the definitive launch date of GTA V to be June 19, which is just two days short of June 21, the official start date for Summer. The addition to the hit game franchise will arrive on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 first, even as Rockstar "considers" other platforms, such as you know -- TFLOP/s capable PCs.

Lexar unveiled the Platinum II series SDXC cards. The cards are packaged in Amazon clear (frustration-free packaging), and are compliant with UHS-I, SD Class-10 standards, with a minimum transfer speed of 10 MB/s, and 30 MB/s maximum. The cards are available in 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities. The three capacities (in the above order) are priced at the equivalent of US $11.4, $21.4, and $49.7, respectively.

WD, a world leader in external storage and connected home solutions, today introduced powerful new collaboration and file management features, including Dropbox integration, in the next generation of its popular WD 2go mobile app for their personal cloud products, the My Book Live, My Book Live Duo and My Net N900 Central HD router with storage.

WD's personal cloud products provide shared storage on the home network, letting customers centralize their important documents, photos, videos and music in one place as well as automatically backup all the computers in their home. With the WD 2go app customers can access and share that content from outside the home on their mobile devices.

Belkin today launched WeMo, a line of modular, Wi-Fi-based products that turn an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch into a remote control for household devices. Consisting of two initial products, the WeMo Switch and the WeMo Motion, WeMo works with the free WeMo app to create a scalable, customizable home control system designed to provide added safety, convenience, and peace of mind.

"WeMo uses familiar technology to create a plug-and-play solution for controlling gadgets and appliances remotely," said Jamie Elgie, senior director of product management for Belkin. "Designed to address simple automation needs without the hassle or expense of whole home automation, WeMo is an easy and fun way to put your home at your fingertips."

VIZIO, America's #1 LCD HDTV Company*, announced today the availability of its highly anticipated line of innovative personal computers designed to work hard and play hard. By combining its entertainment know-how with the unmatched power of the latest Intel Core processors, VIZIO intends to set a new standard for the Windows experience. The premium line, which consists of the VIZIO Thin + Light, Notebook and All-in-One PC, was created to break through the clutter present in the mainstream market and prove that power, design and entertainment can flawlessly co-exist in a PC.

Similar to its entrance into the HDTV category nearly a decade ago, VIZIO took careful inventory of the needs and wants evident in the PC space. The result is a sophisticatedly handsome PC line that meets the productivity and power standards consumers expect, while delivering the entertainment and design differentiators they desire. Calling on its HDTV background, VIZIO developed the PCs with contrast, image quality and viewing angles top of mind, giving PC users an experience only HDTVs could previously deliver. Combined with an NVIDIA Kepler-Class GeForce GPU, the brilliant HD display of the VIZIO PCs makes watching movies, gaming and streaming TV shows more enjoyable than ever. Deep and resonate SRS Premium Sound HD serves as an ideal complement to stunning image quality but can also stand alone, allowing music junkies to immerse themselves in rich, custom-tuned audio.

Seagate Technology plc., today introduced Backup Plus storage devices - its reinvented consumer storage product family that delivers the easiest setup, one-click backup and the ability to save and share your content on Facebook and Flickr.

Seagate Backup Plus hard drives are newly designed external storage that work interchangeably with both Windows and Apple computers and deliver new features to protect, share and save nearly every aspect of one's digital life. These products come loaded with the new hassle-free Seagate Dashboard software for one-click local backup making it easier than ever to eliminate excuses or apprehensions about backing up one's most valuable digital content. Seagate Backup Plus products are the world's first external hard drives to provide backup for content on social networks, such as Facebook and Flickr. Storing a local duplicate copy of photos from social networks is now as easy as backing up files on your computer. Seagate Backup Plus will provide the peace of mind that every aspect of one's digital life is safe from loss.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced an update enabling browser support for Wi-Drive. The update allows multiplatform wireless streaming of data to any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device via a Web browser. The feature will be included in future shipments and all current owners of Wi-Drive can update their own device.

This expansion of device support allows a mixture of users' preferred mobile devices to simultaneously access and share content on the Wi-Drive. With integrated Wi-Fi and four hours of battery life, Kingston Wi-Drive offers great pocket-sized portable storage (up to 64GB) and easy file sharing for any Wi-Fi device including Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android devices, Kindle Fire and more.

In what could be a blow for gaming PC users with lower-capacity SSDs (such as 60 GB, 90 GB, etc.), the minimum system requirements list of Max Payne 3, published by Rockstar Games, asks for at least 35 GB of free space on the installation drive. The game will likely ship in four double-layer DVDs, if not more. It could also make for an extremely huge download (over Steam, Amazon.com Digital Download, and GameStop. Other system requirements, particularly the requirements that the game is capable of taking advantage of, are particularly steep. For example, the game can take advantage of 6-core Intel Core i7-3960X, 8-core AMD FX-8150, the fastest single-GPU graphics cards in the market, as well as 16 GB of RAM.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Linux Creator and Linux Foundation Fellow Linus Torvalds is a Millennium Technology Prize laureate. This prize, determined by the Technology Academy of Finland, is one of the world's largest such prizes with candidates sought from across the world and from all fields of technology.

The Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every two years for innovations improving the quality of human life and encouraging sustainable development. Universities, research institutions, scientific and engineering academies, and high-tech companies from around the globe make nominations. The International Selection Committee, nominated by TAF Board, reviews the nominations and determines the year's laureates. The Board makes the final decision on who will be the recipients of the prize, which is together established by Finnish industry and state.

AMD plans to sell bundles of its FX-8120 eight-core processors in the AM3+ package, along with AMD FX-branded self-contained liquid-cooling kits. The SKU is up for pre-order on Amazon, for US $383.5 (incl. shipping). The part-number for this chip+liquid-cooling bundle is "FD8120FRGUWOX". The liquid cooler is originally made by Asetek, combined with the unlocked base clock multiplier of the FX-8120, it facilitates high overclocking. The cooler is not just a dumb closed-loop, but also packs sensors that connect to the system over USB (internal USB 2.0 header), that let you monitor it via Chill Control software.

Providing more proof that Ivy Bridge is closing in fast, Amazon has put up for pre-order a Lenovo laptop which is powered by an Intel 3rd generation Core processor. The laptop in question is named IdeaPad Y480 (20934FU) and it features a 1.3-inch thick chassis, a 14-inch display, a 2.3 GHz Core i7-3610QM CPU, 8 GB of RAM, a 750 GB hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M 1 GB graphics card.

The Y480 also packs two 1.5 W JBL speakers, it runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and apparently has a battery life of only 3.5 hours. The price tag of this new IdeaPad is $999.99.

A slip-up by online marketplace Amazon.com saw the release-date of Blizzard's hotly anticipated hack-and-slash RPG title, Diablo III getting leaked. That date is April 17, 2012. The date has since been removed from Amazon. What makes this slip-up a credible leak and not an error, is the fact that Blizzard has been talking about a Q2, 2012 launch for the game.

Anno 2070's Draconian DRM: Guru3D's Graphics Card Review Killed Off (UPDATED)

Hilbert Hagedoorn of well-known PC tech review site guru3d.com recently bought a copy of Ubisoft's Anno 2070 and wanted to use it in one of his graphics card reviews. However, he became badly unstuck. This game comes on the Steam platform and the store page states: "3rd-party DRM: Solidshield Tages SAS 3 machine activation limit". Unfortunately for Guru3D, they found out exactly what this means, which resulted in just one performance graph, an aborted review, an unplayable game - and bad publicity for Ubisoft once again. They have published an article about their experience, pledging not to use their titles again because of this DRM.

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the availability of new VMware View Clients for Kindle Fire, Mac and Linux, along with updates to its popular VMware View Clients for Android and iPad. Available today as technology previews, the new VMware View Clients for Mac and Linux allow IT organizations to empower more agile, productive and connected workforce or school communities by enabling an easy to access, high fidelity desktop virtualization experience optimized for the device of their choice.

"More and more people want the freedom to choose the device that best fits their computing needs in school and into the workplace," said Pat Lee, director, end user clients, VMware. "With the new VMware View Clients, both IT and end users win with a complete, secure and easily-accessible virtual desktop on the devices that best meet their needs."

If you're buying an Electronic Arts game, be prepared for the Online Pass that came with it to have already expired. This was the recent experience of a NeoGAF member who bought a brand new copy of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit from Amazon, only to find that he got an error message saying that the code was either incorrect or no longer valid. Gaming website Joystick picked up on this and asked an EA advisor about this situation. It turns out that it's EA's corporate policy to have some of these codes expire, but that no one should be faced with this, as a rule. However, if they are, then they can get a new one for free, by either downloading it or getting it from EA directly. Checking the EULA shows that at the moment, there is only one game with this restriction. It's only Dragon Age 2 (packaged) which has a time-limited an Online Pass code and that it expires on March 31, 2012:

Netflix's CEO, Reed Hastings, has apologized for mishandling a recent price increase that caused customers to fly away in droves. However, that was immediately drowned out by the decision to split the Netflix service into two, one with the odd name of Qwikster. The new streaming service will still be called Netflix and continue to have the same dedicated website as the old physical media one, netflix.com. However, the DVD rental service is now branded Qwikster, which will also have it's own site. Crucially, both sites will operate completely independently, which means separate logins and user profiles for each one, causing significant inconvenience to customers.

CompuExpert, a division of Digital Interactive Systems Corp., today announced the Sharkoon X-Tactic SR will begin shipping August 16 in North America, and will be available exclusively from Amazon.com. The latest in the award-winning line of specially designed gaming headsets delivers the ultimate in multi-directional audio performance for maximum immersion and combat advantage, yet is incredibly lightweight for continued comfort over long hours of gameplay. Experience a whole new world of crushing explosions, screaming commands and powerful game sound output through the Sound Control Unit (SCU) with the new 3D Sound Expander.

The X-Tatic SR features Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Pro Logic II and Dolby Headphone, creating completely new sound dimensions that allow players to hear enemies approach from any direction. In addition, the SCU offers one additional connection for a second headset with 3.5mm jack, so two can enjoy excellent surround sound.

AMD Radeon board partner XFX designed its triple-head monitor stand to make life easy for AMD Eyefinity and NVIDIA 3DVision Surround users. The stand holds up to three flat-panel displays in perfect alignment, and gives you control over the viewing angle, tilt, and panning of each display. This is handled by three VESA mount standard-compliant joints along the two arms and a central beam. The arms and trunk of the stand are made of durable steel, and a space-age base holds it all, to sustain balance. The base, along with the hollow trunk and arms facilitate better cable management, the base even acts as a USB 2.0 and audio hub. The XFX Triple Display stand is listed on Amazon for US $367.06.

Seagate, today announced GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, the first battery-powered external hard drive to wirelessly extend the storage capacity of any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device. With 500GB and Wi-Fi access over 802.11 b/g/n and a rechargeable battery, this latest member of the GoFlex family provides the ability to carry an entire library of video, music, pictures and documents with you. Devices are wirelessly connected directly to the GoFlex Satellite drive by use of the free GoFlex Media app-available now on iTunes and the Apple App Store-or a web browser. GoFlex Satellite is available immediately for preorder from Seagate.com, Amazon and BestBuy.com for a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $199.99, and is scheduled to arrive in Best Buy stores in July 2011. Global availability is planned for later this summer.

"With the growth of the tablet and iPad markets and the larger volumes of high-quality media now being consumed, there is a clear need for access to content that is not plagued with the challenges of streamed video over the Internet," said Patrick Connolly, vice president and general manager of Seagate's retail group. "The unfortunate fact is that these popular new mobile devices are hampered by their limited storage capacity while one of their primary functions is that of media consumption.

Turtle Beach, a leader in premium gaming headsets and audio entertainment accessories, today announced its new Ear Force DX11 7.1 Surround Sound System Bundle, available exclusively at Best Buy stores nationwide. The Ear Force DX11 combines the exceptional audio quality and comfort of Turtle Beach's battle-tested Ear Force X11 gaming headset with the Ear Force DSS Dolby 7.1 surround sound processor. This dynamic duo delivers a rich and immersive surround sound experience with full chat support during Xbox 360 or PC gaming and while enjoying movies, TV and music.

"The DX11 headset bundle represents the ultimate in value and performance for discriminating gamers seeking a Dolby surround sound experience." Explains Michael Arzt, vice president, marketing and business development at Turtle Beach. "Players will gain a competitive edge and greater enjoyment of all their games (and movies) thanks to the well-defined directional cues and immersive power of the DX11."