Paul Thurrott reports some good news for desktop users who feel spurned by Windows 8 and aren’t satisfied with the changes made with Windows 8.1: Microsoft is working hard to appease them. The most important change, as Thurrott hears it, is that Microsoft will finally be bringing back the full Start menu to the Windows 8.2 desktop mode.

Existing 840 Pro SSD's are receiving a nice upgrade that enables a feature called Rapid Mode. Samsung says that it has applied the Samsung Magician 4.3 and the RAPID mode on its previous 840 PRO SSD line-up. "RAPID (Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data) mode is a performance level of approximately twice that of a typical SATA SSD and ten times of an average HDD. Samsung also applied Samsung Magician 4.3 and the RAPID mode on its previous 840 PRO SSD line-up," Samsung said in its official blog post about the new 840 EVO mSATA SSDs.

The Battlefield 4 blog has a list of fixes contained in the latest patch being pushed out today. Fixed in the PC version: Sometimes the character stance could get into a multiple frame desync and be part of the problem where you got shot even though your character was actually behind cover. This would mostly affect players doing transitions into crouch and prone as well as moving when crouched. The impact was smaller in a standing stance. This bug fix eliminates this particular desync issue.

Network administrators can cope more easily with the ever increasing demands from more devices, higher traffic levels and greater performance expectations, thanks to D-Link. It has unveiled a new addition to its range of Wireless AC products, the Wireless AC1750 Simultaneous Dual-Band PoE Access Point (DAP-2695).

Okay not exactly big news, but ASUS is about to mix up their coloring  schemas a little bit. They will include a Red or Gold themed stickers of the ASUS GTX 780 Ti DCU2 Graphics Card so you can stick them on there yourself. Of course if you don't like Red or Gold, you can always leave them out and go for an all dark design eh ?

AMD is getting ready to launch in January two Kaveri Accelerated Processing Units, that, by some reports, should boost both CPU and GPU performance by up to 20% - 30% compared to A10-6000 series APUs. Model numbers and specifications of new Kaveri processors emerged last week, and the A10-7700K and A10-7850K chips are now available for pre-order in US. 

Website Gamers Nexus had a chat with AMD Manager of APU/CPU Product Reviews James Prior who states that the FX series processors is not being ended. Earler last week a leaked AMD roadmap suggested that AMD may kill off their high-end processors series. Prior claims he's never seen that slide before and that he doesn't know where it came from.

he Stryder class titan will be stridin' across your Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC when Titanfall lands on all three systems on March 11, 2014. This lithe and shapely mech outperforms every other class of bipedal death machine in speed and mobility but it lacks the heavier armor of other classes. 

MSI is showing photo's of an upcoming card called the MSI GTX 780 Lightning Lite Edition. The LE model comes with 889/941 MHz Base/Boost GPU clocks compared to the regular GTX 780 Lightning at 980/1033 MHz. Tthe 780 is making use of the GK110-300-A2 GPU which is packed with 2,304 cores, 192 TMUs and 48 ROPs.

On the mighty interwebs nothing is safe really, photo's emerged of a Radeon R9 290X from Gigabyte that is cooled with their popular WindForce X3 cooler. The product carries SKU code GV-R929XOC-4GD and has been equipped with the dual-slot WindForce 3X 450W cooler.

Samsung Electronics today unveiled a new, compact storage solution, the 840 EVO mSATA solid state drive. Pictured below, this SSD makes use of 128 gigabit (Gb) 1x-nm NAND flash memory, it has a Samsung controller with TurboWrite technology, and is capable of 98,000 random read and 90,000 random write IOPS, as well as sequential read/write speeds of up to 540/520 MB/s. 

Intel's 15-core server chip code-named Ivytown will be targeted at high-end servers. According to information provided, the processor will be based on Intels Haswell Predecessor – Ivybridge and will be called the “Xeon E7 Ivytown”. Intel confirmed that it will release a 15-core server chip code-named Ivytown, which will be based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. Intel until now had topped off at 12 cores with the Xeon E5 v2 chips that shipped in the third quarter of this year.

CM Storm aims to offer the best available mechanical hardware by integrating CHERRY MX switches. These provide the QuickFire Rapid with the ability to respond to, and recover from, furious button presses with almost zero lag. Vastly improve your possible gaming actions per minute by utilizing a QuickFire Rapid Mechanical Gaming Keyboard in FPS, MMO, RTS, and other games. CHERRY MX Green switch will be available based on region.

Organizations can now achieve a higher level of storage performance with Intel RAID RS3 controllers, powered by LSI Technology. They are specifically designed to meet the demands of I/O-intensive applications, cloud datacenters and virtualized server environments. Businesses that use Intel RAID RS3 controllers as the basis for their storage infrastructure can achieve more than 1 million IOPs in JBOD mode. With 12 Gb/s SAS-3 technology, it can accelerate business-critical applications in enterprise, Web and cloud datacenters.

MSI proudly announces its latest AIO PCs, the AE222(G) & AE201, featuring a 21.5" and 19.5'' display with Intel Haswell i3/i5 CPU. They both have the classic and elegant appearance of the general family look of MSI's AIO AE Series. However, the internal hardware is upgraded dramatically. 

It has emerged that the FBI has the ability to activate any computer’s in-built camera without triggering the light that lets users know the camera is on. According to the Washington Post, the agency has had the ability to covertly monitor computer’s cameras for years. Speaking to the newspaper, Marcus Thomas, the former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division confirmed that the agency has the ability.

The cessation of Windows 7 sales is right now a mere formality for Microsoft. Seeing how long it took Microsoft to actually get serious about shutting down XP, Windows 7 may outlive us all. Windows 7 as it seems will be available in retail for another extra year.