As PC users, we're so used to hearing sirens warn that the sky is falling we barely notice the noise anymore. Part of the reason for that is because even when things are bad, they're still pretty good. That's again the case today as market research firm Gartner lowers its PC shipments forecast for 2011, but a closer examination of the numbers shows there's reason to remain confident in the state of PCs.

Chalk up another milestone for Seagate, which this week announced it has shipped over 1 million self-encrypting laptop and enterprise hard drives. Seagate's hunch that there's a market for HDDs with built-in encryption so far seems to be spot on, and it hasn't hurt that these drives have managed to win U.S. government certifications. And thanks in part to computer makers like Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM, and others stepping on board, Seagate said its enterprise SED shipments have tripled over the two quarters, while its laptop SED shipments have doubled in the past three years.

The bean counters over at Mercury Research just finalized their "PC Graphics Market Share Update" report for the third quarter of 2010, which for the second consecutive quarter shows AMD at the front of the discrete graphics pack, The Inquirer reports.

AMD managed to add 5.6 percentage points to its market share tally and now commands 61.9 percent of the market.

"AMD is the clear leader in DirectX 11 graphics technology with more than 25 million DirectX 11-capable units shipped to date, and the Mercury Research results are indicative of our continued focus on delivering compelling graphics technology to both notebook and desktop markets," said Matt Skynner, corporate VP and general manager of the GPU Division at AMD."

AMD benefited in large part from its mobile graphics unit. Going forward, AMD is banking on its newly released HD 6800 series to end the year on a strong note.