Source: Computer & Video Game Magazines – Maximum PC – March 2004

Maximum PC, known as ‘boot’ in its early days, was my favorite computer magazine. It was published from the late 1990s until just recently. It made me a little sad when this one ceased publication but I can’t really say it was a surprise. It was really the last significant computer print publication still being published in the U.S. as far as I am aware. The March 2004 issue includes:

Regulars

• In/Out – Letters from readers about buying MP3s from other countries, EULAs and kids, Dolby encoding, the Radeon 9600 XT, and more.

• Quick Start – An overview of the changes in Windows XP Service Pack 2, CPU naming schemes, why games don’t ship on DVD, modding your iPod, the exponential growth of digital cameras, moral choices in games, Creative acquires Sensaura, the OQO uPC, a 4GB 0.85-inch hard drive, the Creative Portable Media Center, dual layer DVD recorders, the Phantom fanless power supply, and more.

• Head2Head – Yahoo vs. Hotmail! Yahoo was the winner here and it is still around. Hotmail sort of went away.

• WatchDog – Copyleft.net appears to go out of business, issues with counterfeit Xbox controller to PC adapters, hard drive sizes, and more.

• Ask the Doctor – Questions answered about troubleshooting random game crashes, fixing the hosts/lmhosts file win Windows XP, SMART errors, laptop hard drive upgrades, using the headphone jack on your CD-ROM drive, and more.

• How To… – Using Windows XPs remote desktop connection to remotely access your PC.

• Rig of the Month – A custom retro looking PC that blends in with the desk. In addition to the custom lighting and enclosure, it includes an AMD FX51 CPU, 512MB of RAM and a Asus V9980 Ultra 256 video card.

Reviews

• Vicious PC Assassin desktop system – A PC in a clear case that features an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ CPU, MSI K86-Neo (Socket 754, VIA K8T800 chipset) motherboard, 1GB DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT video card, two 36GB Western Digital Raptor hard drives (10,000 RPM), and more for $3000.

• Belkin Bluetooth GPS Receiver – Sure, every phone has GPS today but in 2004 if you wanted to, for example, to have GPS capability on your Pocket PC then you would need an external receiver like this for an extra $300.

• Kyocera FineCam SL300R – A 3.2 megapixel digital camera with an interesting form factor for $400.

• AOpen AK86-L 64-bit mobo – This Socket 939 motherboard features VIA’s Apollo K8T800 chipset and supports the new Athlon 64 3400+.

• Albatron K8X800 PROII 64-bit mobo – A similar motherboard to the one above. One of the small differences is that it features a whopping 6 PCI slots (vs. 5).

• MSI K856 Neo-FIS2R 64-bit mobo – One of the earliest motherboards to support the Athlon 64. It has three memory slots but will only support two and DDR-400 speeds.

• Toshiba e805 PDA – PDAs were what people used in addition to phones when phones were still dumb. This one features Intel’s PXA263 processor running at 400MHz with 128MB SDRAM and is among the first to feature a VGA (640×480) resolution screen.

• Creative Labs Wireless Music MP3 streaming box – A device designed to stream your MP3 music collection wirelessly.

• Slim Devices Squeezebox MP3 streaming box – Similar to the above but this one gets a perfect 10 rating. The idea is that you install a piece of software on the PC hosting your MP3 collection then plug this device into your stereo system (or headphones or whatever) then use the provided remote to control playback.

• Addonics 18-in-1 Multi-Function Recorder – A portable USB 2.0 DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive that also provides slots for CompactFlash, Memory Stick, Sd cards, MMC cards, and more.

• Mad Dog Entertainer 7.1 DSP soundcard – A decent (but not perfect) sound card for a bargain price.

• logear MiniView III USB KVM – A no-frills four port KVM switch that allows you to use up to four PCs with a single mouse/keyboard/monitor.

• Acoustic Authority A-3780 2.1 speakers – An apparently not so great set of speakers than include two satellite speakers and a subwoofer.

• MediaRecover data recovery app – A $40 utility to recover data from accidentally deleted or formatted media such as compact flash cards.

• Arrowkey CD/DVD Diagnostic – A tool designed to recover data from damaged CD or DVD media.

• Adobe Photoshop CS – Photoshop is a great tool but it has never been cheap this latest update at the time would set you back $650 for the full version.

• Norton AntiVirus 2004 – Norton was rated highly but came in second place in the comparison of three anti virus programs.

• McAfee VirusScan 2004 – McAfee fared the worst with complaints about ads and a poor interface. At some point the anti virus becomes the virus.

• AVG Anti-Virus – Rated the highest here and the best part is that the most important parts are free.

• Armed and Dangerous – A third person humorous action game that is decent but linear and somewhat repetitive.

• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – This Prince of Persia sequel gets a high rating here and often appears on best of lists.

Features

• Join the Wireless Revolution! – A guide to adding wi-fi to your home. Includes tips on positioning your access point, making any printer a wireless network printer, protecting your wi-fi network (which meant enabling WEP in this case) and more.

• P4 Prescott – A look at the new Prescott version of the Pentium 4. Changes include a new SSE3 instruction set, redesigned pipeline (that would supposedly take the Prescott to speeds of up to 5 GHz), double the cache, and a die shrink. This article makes the point that it could have been called the Pentium 5. At the end of the day, it didn’t end up being much faster and didn’t scale to higher speeds nearly as well as expected.

• RAM – A guide to RAM, how it works and the differences between different kinds of memory. This guide includes BIOS setup information including what the different settings mean, info on memory banks, dual channel memory, as well as a look at memory technologies currently in use including SDRAM (PC66, PC100, PC133), DDR SDRAM (PC2100 to PC4000), and RDRAM (400MHz-600MHz).

…and more!