Popular tech site TechRepublic recently polled their audience of IT professionals, asking them which vendors make the most and least reliable notebooks.

While the numbers were not huge in their favor, TR's audience says Dell makes the most reliable notebooks. Acer being the least reliable was more unanimous.

Says the site: "TechRepublic recently asked its massive audience of IT professionals which vendors make the most reliable laptops and which ones make the least reliable laptops. Since most IT departments tend to use multiple vendors and/or switch vendors every 2-3 years in order to land the best deal, we thought IT departments would have a great perspective on this."

Of the 4609 IT pros polled for the "most reliable" study, 21 percent claimed Dell makes the best notebooks, followed closely by HP at 18 percent and Lenovo at 17 percent. Acer and Asus bottomed the list, at just 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

7370 IT pros were polled for the "least reliable" study, and 24 percent found Acer to have the worst notebooks. HP and Dell followed closely behind at 21 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

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According to multiple reports today, Google's way-in-the-future Android 3.1 update will be dubbed Honeycomb, following their still developing 3.0 update, Gingerbread.

Currently, only a handful of smartphones have Google's latest 2.2 Froyo update, so thinking about 3.1 is just a dream at this point.

Says TechCrunch: "It's likely that it will be more of an incremental upgrade, in the same manner as Android 2.2 (Froyo) was to Android 2.1 (Éclair) as Google seeks to perfect the new platform on tablets and high-end smartphones. That means Android Honeycomb will probably be Android 3.1 or Android 3.2, rather than a leap to the unimaginable magic of Android 4.0."

Details on Gingerbread are still sketchy, although many expect 3.0 to add a significant UI overhaul, one that will remove the need for other brands to add custom skins such as HTC Sense or MotoBLUR.

For now, many Android owners would be happy to see their phone updated to 2.2, which adds native Flash support, an improved browser, a 450 percent performance boost, Apps2SD, tethering, and remote wipe.

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Intel announced early this morning that it was acquiring security firm McAfee for $7.7 billion, in an effort to expand outside of its core semiconductor business.

The company paid a hefty premium for McAfee, $48 per share, an almost 60 percent boost from McAfee's closing price on Wednesday of almost $30 per share.

Paying in all-cash, the deal represents Intel's largest acquisition, ever.

Intel chips are currently used in about 80 percent of all the world's PCs and servers, and McAfee will help improve the security of the chips.

Additionally, Intel will continue to sell McAfee's mainstay security software to individuals and enterprises, adding another revenue stream.

Intel did make it clear, however, that any joint products from the companies would not be available until 2011.

"Everywhere we sell a microprocessor, there's an opportunity for a security software sale to go with it," says Intel CEO Paul Otellini. "It's not just the opportunity to co-sell, it's the opportunity to deeply integrate these into the architecture of our products."

McAfee had $1.93 billion in revenue last year while Intel had over $35 billion.

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PlayStation 3 has given modders and hackers a run for their money. For nearly fours years hackers have tried to create a working mod that would bypass the PS3 software protection and run homebrew applications and backups. However, there has been no real breakthroughs, until now, if you believe what PS3News has to say.

According to the site, a product called PSJailBreak will allow owners of any version of PS3 to run backups of PS3 games as well as homebrew applications. The $170 mod is a piece of software stored in a USB drive. By inserting the thumb drive to your PS3 you'll be able to install and run the launcher application in seconds without permanently modifying the console or its software.

The PSJailBreak application also includes a backup tool which allows users to backup their game discs to the PS3 hard drive. Movies whether DVD or Blu-ray, or previous generation PlayStation games aren't supported by the tool. The backup manager can also be downloaded for free.

At OzModChips.com the Stock Status says they'll be shipping preorders by the end of the month.

There are couple of YouTube videos (below) and Twitter updates that say it is working. Hopefully we can confirm this in the coming days. However, for now you should probably take it with a grain of salt.

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