Summary: The PC is, at its heart, a gestalt of components that come together to serve a purpose. Lose the ability to choose what goes into a PC, then a PC becomes nothing more than a black box, like a DVD player or a games console. And that's not a PC.

This week I went head-to-head against ZDNet's Tech Broiler guru Jason Perlow in a Great Debate. The question – PC homebrewing and white-boxing: Dead or alive?

It seems that while Mr. Perlow and I were at odds, readers saw sense when it came to the voting and unanimously agreed with me that the homebrew PC is alive and well, decimating Mr. Perlow.

Summary: The Kindle Fire represents a real threat to the Android tablet landscape not because of the Amazon logo, but because of its highly disruptive pricing.

Amazon has announced that it is to offer its 7-inch and 8.9-inch Android-powered Kindle Fire HD tablets to customers to pre-order in over 170 additional countries, with the tablets shipping June 13.

The biggest online retailer has also expanded its app store to over 200 countries, allowing Kindle Fire owners to choose from tens of thousands of popular Android apps.

Summary: AMD debuts new silicon, including the world's first 28-nanometer, quad-core x86 SoC APU aimed at small touch-enabled notebooks, tablets and hybrids.

California-based chipmaker AMD has revealed three new additions to its A-Series and E-Series APU lineups. This new silicon is designed to bring increased performance and lower power consumption.

The new silicon is divided into three categories.

Summary: While Intel is enthusiastic about touch-enabled devices, even if it hits 25 percent market penetration by 2016, it will still be niche rather than a must-have feature, which doesn't bode well for Microsoft and its touch ambitions for Windows.

By 2016, about a quarter of all notebooks shipped will feature a touchscreen display, claims research firm IHS.

While touchscreen-enabled notebooks are pretty rare at present, a combination of falling touchscreen display prices and Intel's supply chain muscle will see global shipments increase from just 4.6 million units in 2012 to 78 million units in 2016, by which time they will account for 24.6 percent of all global PC notebook shipments, according to IHS's Notebook Touch Panel Shipment Database.

Yesterday Yahoo! revamped its Flickr terms and gave every member 1TB of photo and video storage for free. But the company also announced a new offering called Doublr, which gives users the option to upgrade up to 2TB of storage … for $499 a year.

How can Flickr offer 1TB of storage for free, and yet ask a whopping $499 per year for 2TB?

The reason is that storage when measured by the terabyte is expensive, and Yahoo knows that most Flickr users aren't going to get anywhere near to that limit.

Summary: Could $200 ultrathin, touch-screen PC be the shot in the arm that the PC industry needs to climb out of the tailspin it has found itself in?

Can PC OEMs put together an ultrathin, touch-screen PC that will both appeal to consumers and come in at just $200? Analysts believe so, but chipmaker Intel holds the key to success.

And that key is almost older than dirt – cut prices.

Summary: It's easy to touch-enable your existing PC without breaking the bank. Here are a few recommendation,along with some pros and cons for you to note.

Time to answer a popular Windows 8-related question from the Hardware 2.0 mailbox:

I've decided that my problem with Windows 8 is not Windows 8, but my PC's lack of support for touch. Can you suggest a way I can add touch to my PC without replacing my entire PC?

Summary: Buyers are unlikely to care about the odd half-inch of screen size here or there. These days, only one thing matters -- price.

Lots of rumors and speculation circulating today that Microsoft has a smaller variant of the Surface – let's call it the Surface Mini until further notice – in the pipeline, and there's been a lot of focus on what screen size this mythical device will have. But it's not screen size that will determine whether the Surface Mini sinks or swims. 

The general chit-chat hints that the Surface Mini will have a screen size of between 7.5- and 8-inches, putting it in the same ball park as Apple's iPad mini, and a smidgen bigger than Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD.

Within moments of Microsoft revealing that the Windows 'Blue' update to Windows 8 would be available for free to all existing Windows 8 users, a barrage of questions began pounding the Hardware 2.0 mailbox, most of them basically asking one thing:

Does this means that Windows 8.1/'Blue' is nothing more than a service pack?

I think that things are not as clear cut as that, and I believe that Windows 'Blue' represents an effort on Microsoft's part to change the way we think of Windows and its update cycle.

Summary: Are hybrid systems destined to kill off the tablet, or are they just another PC form factor waiting to fail?

Once upon a time, the desktop PC reigned. Then came the notebook. Then, tablets came along and wiped the floor with both the desktop and the notebook, and sent the entire PC industry into a freefalling tailspin. But could the reign of the tablet be a short-lived one? Could hybrid systems be waiting in the wings to give tablets a taste of their own medicine?

According to an AMD executive, tablets such as Apple's iPad and Google's Nexus could be sidelined by hybrid systems in "two to three years" time.