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Thermaltake reveals the Level 10 M Mouse at CeBIT 2012-- a gaming-centric mouse with a design from BMW subsidiary Designworks USA, creators of the 2009 Thermaltake Level 10 PC chassis.

It features a skeletal design and an alumium base, with an LED-illuminated perforated midsection (supposedly to allow for airflow). The design is also customisable-- the rear is height-adjustable by 5mm and tiltable to either side by 5 degrees.

Included software allows customers to program buttons (all 11 of those), LED colours and tracking sensitivity (ranging from 800 to 8200 DPI).

The mouse will be available in 3 colours (black, white and green), and Thermaltake gives no release date as yet.

Go Thermaltake Level 10 M Mouse

Intel will be introducing optical Thunderbolt cables later this year, an Intel spokesperson says-- allowing longer data transfer distances (with potentially greater bandwidth) for the connection standard.

The news joins the earlier announcement of Intel adding Thunderbolt support to PCI Express 3.0.

What are the differences between copper and optical? Copper handles data transfers for up to 6m (with sufficent bandwidth) while optical technology allows for tens of metres-- making it particularly useful for enterprise applications.  However, copper cables offer up to 10W of power to power peripherals (optical cables don't), and are cheaper to produce.

An Apple-Intel co-development, Thunderbolt started off as an optical cable interconnect called "Lightpeak"-- but got a change of name (and material) once it hit the market in early 2011. Even in copper, it offers a bidirectional data rate of 10Gbps.

Intel is already working on a silicon photonics-based successor to Thunderbolt, which is to hit the market sometime in 2015.

Go Intel: Optical Cables for Thunderbolt Coming This Year (IDG News Service)

Go Intel Thunderbolt

According to Gartner WW PC shipments for 2012 will total 368M units with 4.4% Y-o-Y growth, as the PC market remains weak in the face of variable economic and consumer dynamics.

"2011 redefined the landscape of the device market," Gartner says. Users are replacing PCs with tablets and smartphones, prefering such devices to access traditional PC applications such as e-mail, social networking and the internet.

Consumers will also make more use of personal cloud services-- challenging vendors even further.

Weakening the PC market further are economic and supply issues, even if Gartner says the change in consumer dynamics is a far greater issue.

The analyst expects ultrabooks to make waves-- or at least garner attention-- in H2 2012, together with the Windows 8 launch. Will the combination of different laptop format and new OS get the early adopters excited about PCs again? Perhaps, but replacements will continue driving mature PC markets (such as W. Europe), and as a result shipments will remain low.

Gartner predicts emerging markets will instead by "key" to driving both long- and short-term WW PC growth. According to the analyst, emerging markets make 50% of 2011 global PC shipments-- a figure set to reach nearly 70% by 2016.

Go Gartner PC Q1 2012 Forecast

Netgear broadens its wifi range extender series further by launching the WN2500RP-- now boosting coverage of both 2.4 and 5GHz wifi signals simultaneously.

It supports wireless 802.11 a/b/g/n standards (making it compatible with virtually all wireless networks), using FastLane technology to enable customers to maximise bandwidth for video streaming and online gaming.

In addition it also supports up to x4 wired to wifi connections, providing ethernet-enabled devices with wifi connectivity.

Go NetGear WN2500RP Universal Dual Band Wifi Range Extender