Itching for a new laptop? Well, Apple are looking to refresh the MacBook Pro line early next year and instead of a simple upgrade in specs we could see a complete redesign like the latest MacBook Air received.

The new MacBook Pro is poised to move into SSD territory by offering up to 512GB of Solid State storage, the removal of the optical drive and it might include Light-Peak which will make it a first-ever debut into the market giving Apple the exclusive.

The last few upgrades of the MacBook Pro line have just been slight tweaks - nothing the really push the line to the top of the market. But these changes could see a very big change in the way the MBP is perceived. The removal of the optical drive is a bold move, but with the age of Network Attached Storage and large HDD's or external storage - there's not much to worry about, if you still use an optical drive, I'm sure an external device will be optional.

PCI-Express 2.0 has been here for us for what seems like an eternity in the tech world - so much moving past us in terms of cores on a CPU, the amount of system ram and at the moment the apocolyptic GPU wars between the great AMD and NVIDIA.

PCI-Express 3.0 is the next gen champion to be on your motherboard. It is rumored to be clashing it's hammer with the Sandy Bridge E 'Patsburg' on LGA2011 which is slated for 2011. Depending on whether the LGA2011 becomes the consumer-targetted replacement. The closest definite for PCI-Express 3.0 is for early 2012 when Ivy Bridge hits.

What will it bring us you say? We see a doubling in speed from PCI-Express 2.0's bandwidth of 4Gbps to a next-gen of 8Gbps, a 100% increase - also remember that is per lane in each direction which means the total bandwidth going to the next gen is going to be 32Gbps. This gives it a huge upgrade to allow GPU's to start running laps around their current high end VGA cards.

Well - just as I was losing faith in the high end PC phenomenon, my socks have just been blown off and my hair looks like I've just stuck a fork in an electricity socket. Crytek have announced "Warface" - it will use Crytek's proprietry graphics engine, CryEngine 3 and will be a PC exclusive multiplayer shooter.

Coop missions will be a key-feature, right now there's no mention of a single player campaign. More interesting though - is that they plan to release Warface as a free-to-play shooter and is looking to target the Korean and Asian markets specifically.

'Our passion is to always deliver the best gaming experience possible,' said Crytek CEO, Cevat Yerli. 'That's why we opened our Crytek Korea office in 2008, which today enables us to offer a game that is tailored to suit its market. We're excited to debut with Warface in South Korea and to deliver a compelling and truly unique experience soon.'

Home theater fans that have multiple 3D sources like cable boxes, Blu-ray players and game consoles might have the need for a converter box that can handle those multiple inputs and shoot them out to a projector. If you are one of these folks a new offering from Optoma called the 3D-XL will ship in December.

The product is called the 3D-XL and the thing is compatible with HDMI 1.4a inputs and supports multiple 3D devices. It can switch between 2D and 3D inputs and only works with DLP projectors. Those projectors don't have to be the Optoma brand, any DLP projector will work.

The 3D-XL supports 1080p 3D content and uses passive 3D glasses. It ships with one pair of 3D glasses and additional pairs of glasses are about $90. I wondering the glasses that we typically recycle after seeing a 3D flick in the theater will work for the device. The 3D-XL Converter box will sell for $499 at Amazon.

I have never felt the need to have the artificial sound of crickets, waves, or anything else to fall asleep or stay asleep. I really don't need any colored lights to sooth me into dream land either. I guess some folks need that sort of stuff though and if you are one of the Pure has a new audio device for you called the Twilight. The thing might actually be a pretty cool radio for a kids room.

The white dome on top of the radio hides a light that changes between several colors. The light can be white, blue, green, purple, red, or orange. It also has built-in lullabies for kids including 'twinkle, twinkle, little star' and 'rock-a-bye baby'. It also has a built-in FM receiver that will let you listen to your local stations and you can plug in an iPod or MP3 player via the aux input.

The Twilight also has a headphone port for private listening and it has a sleep timer that will turn off the music and the lights when you want I to. The snooze function is activated by touching the white dome and the alarm can wake you up with light as well with a dawn simulation. The Pure Twilight has an accessory for docking your iPhone or iPod and the price for the device is unknown.

Hitachi along with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) - a public-sector body that promotes research of energy efficient technology, National University Corporation Tokyo Institute of Technology as well as Kyoto University have together developed a new hard drive data recording technology that has promised to increase data density 8-fold.

Together they have developed a new patterning tech for the magnetized bits that are laid on the platters - which are only 10nm in size. This new technology is made possible by using new materials, and also the use of a self-arranged phenomenon of polymer materials.

It's practical applications increases areal-density of disk platters to 3.9 Terabits per square inch (!!!) which is an 8 fold increase compared to the current 500 Gigabit standard. This will let loose 24TB HDD's in the near future.

Yesterday we visited the ASRock headquarters here in Taipei and Chris Lee, Marketing Manager, was on hand to give us a full hands-on video look at their upcoming P67 Transformer motherboard.

The Transformer is an upcoming motherboard based on the Intel Sandy Bridge P67 Express chipset and should go on sale in early December. But what is so special about this motherboard and what gives it the right to attain the "Transformer" moniker?

You would expect a P67 motherboard to come with support for an upcoming Socket LGA-1155 processor from Intel, but in typical ASRock style, their on the toes engineers have come up with yet another unique idea. Most users with a current generation LGA-1156 Lynnfield processor now would probably be on a P55 based motherboard. ASRock came up with the idea of allowing users to experience all the new performance benefits of the P67 chipset while using their existing processor.

The newest movie streaming startup Zediva has an interesting way of circumventing licensing requirements and other issues that Netflix, Hulu, and other well known streaming services have to deal with. Their process? Offering rental of a DVD player and DVD for a fixed amount of time and then streaming the media to you.

According to Zediva founder Venky Srinivasan, "Our users rent a physical DVD, along with a DVD player from us for a fixed amount of time. They then control that DVD player remotely over the internet - and stream the movie privately to themselves. Think of it as a really long cable and a really long remote control." This workaround allows Zediva to charge lower prices than the competition: $1.99 per movie and ten movies for $10. Movies can also be re-rented for free for up to 14 days. Movies can be rented out just like in any Brick and mortar store.

Zediva only currently has around 40 movies in stock at the moment, but is starting small and working on offering "the top two or three movies of the week." We'll see what the copyright law experts have to say about the methods to this madness, but you have to admit it's creative.

No, not Opera, the web browser - Oprah as in one of the most powerful women in the world, Oprah. Telstra today announced it has secured a deal with The Oprah Winfrey Show to supply network support for the live shows as well as ensuring network coverage for the show's 300 guests next month.

Back in September, The Oprah Winfrey Show announced that it would fly 300 audience members out to Australia to film two live shows at the Sydney Opera House on 14th of December - the trip is partly paid for by a $3 million fund from the Australian Government.

The audience members will be connected through Telstra's Next G network using the "summer-proof" Motorola Defy smartphone - while the show's producers will be given Telstra's Ultimate broadband USB modems. Telstra's chief marketing officer, Kate McKenzie announced the deal this morning.

Ah Angry Birds. It now has it's own day. Some sources of TechCrunch have been flung into their offices and said that there's going to be something big happening, specifically in London's Trafalgar Square. Which has supposedly become a big venue to launch big games - especially console games.

There's speculation Angry Birds will get a Windows Phone 7 announcement on the day, there's also speculation that Rovio Mobile will launch a console version or that it will spin out into a movie.

But, there's something else boiling about this... Rovio Mobile has just bought on Peter Vesterbacka as head of business development for North Americ