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Here's a prickly subject if ever there was one: while with keyboards you could reasonably argue for the superiority of using mechanical switches over traditional rubber-dome membrane keys, mice are much, much more a matter of preference. A mouse could have all the features you're looking for, but if the grip isn't right or the texture makes you hand clammy the whole enterprise can be a bust. Understanding how delicate the balancing act of a good mouse can be, Corsair has come up with matching mice for their new gaming keyboards.

The new Vengeance M60 is geared for FPS players with an innovative "Sniper" button while the M90 targets MMO players who'll use as many configurable buttons as they can find. Do they work out in practice, though? Read on for our thoughts on these two new mice.

When people envision a World of Warcraft player, they likely envision some pale guy hunched over a keyboard in his parent’s basement, but they may have to start picturing their own parents and grandparents, according to new research. From North Carolina State University comes a study investigating the benefits for older adults with age related cognitive impairment that come from playing WoW. Such impairment can effect memory, focus, and spatial abilities.

The researchers had a group of older adults, aged 60-77 years old, take a standard cognitive abilities test before starting a two week regiment of WoW gameplay, with an average of one hour a day. At the end of the two weeks the players and a control group also tested earlier were retested, with some interesting results. Those in the experimental group who had little impairment to begin with saw no appreciable increase in abilities. However, those who were impaired saw significant improvements, and the more impaired the person was, the greater the improvement.

The PC platform usually isn't the place where you'd expect to see a shiny new Metal Gear Solid game, but if Kojima Productions' latest job ads are any indication, we will be seeing the next MGS released on the PC. Kojima's studio looks to be expanding its gaming horizons in a big way, as its list of available jobs cover a wide range - from programmers, character artists, and a project engineer for "the latest Metal Gear Solid targeted for high-end consoles and PC."

What's more, a multiplayer component is likely to be included in the next MGS, as there's also an opening for an engineer capable of developing "network gameplay functionality for online games." Got some professional ideas on how to enhance the Fox Engine to create awesome content or the know-how to deliver the MGS franchise to global success? Drop by the Game Developers Conference Career Pavilion (March 6-9) for your chance at working on the next Metal Gear Solid.

Intel 313 Series SSDs (also known as "Hawley Creek") were originally scheduled for Q4'11 release but obviously they were delayed. VR-Zone is now claiming that the release will take place alongside the Ivy Bridge processors and the 7-series chipsets. That could mean an April release, though there are also rumors of a delayed IVB launch. Either way, here's a quick rundown of the upcoming 313 SSDs.

The 313 Series is the successor of the 311 Series (or Larson Creek if you prefer codenames), which is a 20GB SLC NAND SSD meant for caching with Intel's Z68 chipset with Smart Response Technology (SRT). SRT will be even more useful with the Ivy Bridge platform because there will be widespread support among the 7-series chipsets: two of the three consumer desktop chipsets (Z77 and H77) will feature SRT, along with one of the business chipsets (Q77). We will also finally see mobile chipsets with support for SRT.

The major change with the 313 Series is that it will switch to 25nm SLC NAND and offer a 24GB model, but otherwise we are looking at a product very similar to 311 Series. The controller is Intel's own, but that's all we know for certain. Most likely the controller is the same as in 310, 311, and 320 Series, i.e. Intel PC29AS21BA0, because Intel's roadmap shows no plans for any other SATA 3Gb/s SSDs. It wouldn't make much sense to make a new SATA 3Gb/s controller just for one product, or to create a new SATA 3Gb/s controller in general at this point. Unfortunately we don't have any performance figures but given that the controller should be the same, the performance should be on par with 311 Series—the 24GB model should have slightly higher write speeds as it uses six NAND channels while the 20GB model uses only five.

As for pricing, VR-Zone is claiming a suggested retail price of $99 (20GB) and $119 (24GB). For comparison 20GB 311 Series had an MRSP of $110 and retails for ~$120 now, so a ~$10 price drop sounds plausible. A few German retailers have already listed the 24GB model and it's selling for around €104 without tax, which translates to ~$138, but Euro prices tend to run higher than USD. Moreover, one of the sellers is listing availability as 2-3 weeks so 313 Series may hit the retail channel sooner than April. However, some of the retailers are listing the SSDs as OEM models, which explains the early availability and possibly high pricing as well.

PowerColor has announced the first Radeon HD 7970 video card with a liquid cooling solution, the PowerColor LCS HD7970. The LCS HD7970 incorporates an aftermarket water block from EK Water Blocks. By offering the first water-cooled HD 7970 on the market, PowerColor has managed to increase the overclocking headroom on the HD 7970 above the factory overclock settings of 1150MHz core and 1425MHz memory speeds. With the nickel-coated copper base fully covering all key components, the LCS HD7970 allows the GPU to operate at temperatures under 50°C even under full load. The block comes with both 3/8" and 1/2" high-flow fittings which are equipped with O-rings to prevent leakage. Beyond the factory OC settings, the LCS HD7970 offers standard features you'd expect such as 3GB GDDR5 memory, 384-bit memory interface, support for DirectX 11.1 and DL-DVI-I/ HDMI/2x mini DisplayPort connections. PowerColor did not reveal the price or availability at this time.

Today we have a couple of Radeon HD 7900-series video card reviews for you to read. We'll start off with the Sapphire Radeon HD 7950, a factory-overclocked version first released back at the end of January. The HD 7950 cards were the second in the 7900-series with the HD 7970 being launched in conjunction with CES 2012 earlier in January. Our roundup includes another look at the XFX HD 7970 Black Edition Double Dissipation card courtesy of the folks over at Neoseeker. There's also a couple of solid states drive reviews covering offerings from OWC and Kingston along with an editorial examining the state of NAND flash memory. We have more for you to read about in cooling with a look at the Cooler Master Hyper 612 PWM CPU cooler, the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 notebook and the SteelSeries Kana Black 1.1 gaming mouse.

Cooling
Coolermaster Hyper 612 PWM Heatsink @ Frostytech

Input Devices
SteelSeries Kana Black 1.1 Gaming Mouse @ TweakTown

Notebooks
Lenovo ThinkPad T420 Review: Kickin' It Old School @ PC Perspective

Storage/Hard Drives
NAND Flash Memory - A Future Not So Bleak After All @ PC Pespective
OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB Solid State Drive @ ThinkComputers
Kingston SSDNow 200V+ 120GB @ Bjorn3D

Video
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC Video Card @ [H]ardOCP
XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition @ Neoseeker

With more than 20 million subscribers, Netflix holds the crown as the first, and largest, instant video streaming service. Larger companies, such as Amazon and Walmart, have sought to cash in on the large number of consumers who have ditched their cable providers in favor of instant media. However, Comcast announced that it will be the first cable provider to jump into the streaming media race. The cable giant plans to release a service this week that will deliver older television shows and movies to Internet-enabled devices, called Xfinity Streampix. The service is hard to pronounce, but it will be easy on the wallet, as it comes in at only $5 to current Comcast subscribers, and will be free to users who bundle multiple services from the company.

This seems to be a move by the company to retain subscribers, as many consumers have become disenfranchised with the high price of cable, and other TV services. It’s difficult to imagine that this new service will have much effect on current streaming services, as you must be a current subscriber to take advantage of it, but it is interesting to see that cable companies are taking note of the drop in subscribers, and scrambling to gain some back.

With more than 20 million subscribers, Netflix holds the crown as the first, and largest, instant video streaming service. Larger companies, such as Amazon and Walmart, have sought to cash in on the large number of consumers who have ditched their cable providers in favor of instant media. However, Comcast announced that it will be the first cable provider to jump into the streaming media race. The cable giant plans to release a service this week that will deliver older television shows and movies to Internet-enabled devices, called Xfinity Streampix. The service is hard to pronounce, but it will be easy on the wallet, as it comes in at only $5 to current Comcast subscribers, and will be free to users who bundle multiple services from the company.

This seems to be a move by the company to retain subscribers, as many consumers have become disenfranchised with the high price of cable, and other TV services. It’s difficult to imagine that this new service will have much effect on current streaming services, as you must be a current subscriber to take advantage of it, but it is interesting to see that cable companies are taking note of the drop in subscribers, and scrambling to gain some back.

We don't get a lot of projectors for review, but ASUS sent us their P1 Portable LED Projector and so we wanted to do a short write up of the device. It's a small projector primarily intended for portability and business use--something that you could easily carry with you as you travel to meetings so that you know you'll have a viable projector for your presentation. Tipping the scales at less than a pound, there are many projectors where the lens alone is larger than the P1.

So how does the ASUS P1 fare in our short look? While we don't have the necessary equipment to test many aspects of the projector, for the intended purpose it delivers what ASUS has promised. Read on for our thoughts on the device.

OCZ has a new entry into the enterprise market with its SANRAD VXL enterprise storage accelerator. This technology will offer flash caching and acceleration for virtualized environments based on VMWare ESX and Citrix Xen. VXL technology will allow OCZ PCIe SSDs, such as the recently announced Z-Drive R4 CloudServ, to take the place of tier-1 SANs and act as an accelerator for iSCSI and fibre channel storage. OCZ will be putting this to the test as it is offering on-site demonstrations for enterprise customers, hoping to show off data access up to 25 times faster than a normal SAN. All operating systems will be supported as long as they are supported by the underlying hypervisor, and VXL technology will be transparent to the guest OS. For those interested in arranging a demo, contact your OCZ account manager or contact the OCZ enterprise team.