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Netgear launches the N900 wireless dual band router, handling wifi speeds to up to 900Mbps (with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands delivering data at 450Mbps).

It carries x6 internal antennas with "ultra-high-power radio amplifiers" providing more wifi range-- and wireless speeds at any given distance-- according to Netgear.

Two USB ports provide further connectivity, and an improved processor should increase data saving and retreiving speeds by up to 30%.

The company also includes a number of additional features-- Genie network monitoring, Live parental controls, printer sharing, video stream optimisaion, DLNA, gigabit wired ethernet, guest access, WPA and WPA2 security protocols, usage meter and shutoff timer.

Go Netgear N900 Wifi Router

Intel and Google announce an alliance optimising Android for Intel chips, with Google's Andy Rubin joining Intel CEO Paul Otellini at the Intel Developer Forum 2011 keynote.

The joint effort will leverage Intel technology across both smartphones and tablets, improving Android performance on x86 architecture.

During the keynote Otellini shows a Medfield-powered smartphone running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), while the show attendees can also find a Medfield-powered Honeycomb tablet prototype.

Other Google products (such as Chrome OS and Google TV) and the Android SDK and NDK will also be Intel-optimised.

One can interpret the announcement as a sign of further cracks within the Wintel alliance-- particularly with Windows 8 working on low-power Arm processors as well as Intel designs.

Go Intel and Google to Optimise Android Platform for Intel Architecture

Global 2011 PC unit growth will total 364M units and 3.8% Y-o-Y growth according to the latest Gartner forecast-- a reduction from the previous Gartner 2011 projection of 400M units and 9.3% Y-o-Y growth.

Next year should improve a bit-- the 2012 WW PC market should reach 404M units, with 10.9% Y-o-Y growth (still down from the previous projection of 12.8% growth).

The "notably lower" 2011 PC growth outlook is due to sharply downgraded H2 2011 forecasts for W. Europe, resulting in a weaker 2011 and a slower start to 2012.

W. Europe currently struggles through both excess PC inventory and economic upheaval.

However Gartner hopes for improvement in H2 2012, as economies stabilise and new mobile PCs enter the market.

The long term view remains worrying-- younger customers don't buy PCs as their first (or even their main) device, while older customers repair (rather than replace) their PCs.

Tablets also "have dramatically changed the dynamic of the PC market", Gartner says. The analyst does not include tablets in its PC market forecasts.

Go Gartner PC Forecast Update Q3 2011

AMD beats the "Highest Frequence of a Computer Processor" record and enters the Guinness World Records book by overclocking the upcoming Bulldozer-based 8-core AMD FX desktop processor.

The overclocked processor reaches speeds of 8.429GHz as it sits inside a helium-cooled rig, beating the previous record of 8.309GHz.

Holding an event for the Guinness officials, AMD also had more overclocked pre-release FX processors-- to around 5GHz using air and water-cooling, to 6GHz using phase-change technology and to around 8GHz using liquid nitrogen and liquid helium.

The FX chip range should be available by end 2011, following delays from the original September release date.

Watch AMD FX Processor Takes Guinness World Record