• Tag Archives Maximum PC

  • Maximum PC (March 2004)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    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!


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  • Maximum PC (November 2009)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: Maximum PC – November 2009

    Maximum PC has always been my favorite PC magazine even back in its earliest days when it was called boot. Amazingly enough, it is still being published today. The November 2009 issue includes:

    Features

    • Tech Preview – A look ahead to the new tech coming out in 2010. This includes Intel’s new line of Lynnfield based processors (Core i7-870, Core i7-860, Core i5-750), new Bulldozer based chips from AMD, PCI Express 3.0, new Evergreen based AMD graphics chip (RV840), new GT300 based nVidia cards, Intel’s Larrabee, 3TB+ hard drives, SSDs approach 500GB, USB 3.0, DisplayPort, and more.
    • Windows Home Server – A how to guide for Windows Home Server. This iteration of Microsoft’s OS was predicated on the belief that it would be common for people to store all of their music, movies, etc. on one PC and access it from all over your house. While some people indeed do this, it turns out most people don’t need more than a simple NAS or regular iteration of Windows (or even Linux) with some shared space. Windows Home Server seemed to survive for all of about 5 minutes.
    • Windows 7 – The brand new Windows 7 on the other hand was a worth upgrade, at least if you were going to 64-bit. This review details all the new features and improvements.
    • Borderlands – An interview with the CEO of Gearbox, Randy Pitchford about the state of PC gaming, Steam and Borderlands among other things.

    Departments

    QuickStart

    • News – News from SIGGRAPH, including the release of OpenGL 3.2 and the OptiX ray-tracing engine from nVidia; Sony introduces new type of Lithium-Ion battery; new Lynnfield motherboards support SLI, and more.
    • The List – Ten examples of artwork etched into silicon chips, including Dilbert on the MIPS R10000, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man on a 1988 Weitek math coprocessor, Mr. T on a T1 transceiver integrated circuit, and more.

    R&D

    • White Paper – A look inside the design and manufacturing process of a modern CPU.
    • Autopsy – A teardown of the Creative Vado HD Camcorder. This was a mini HD camcorder with a 640×240 LCD screen, 8GB of storage (enough for about 8 hours), and a low power ARM processor for encoding H.264 video.
    • How To – A guide for improving your PC. Includes tips and software for easily accessing more obscure Windows commands and utilities, cleaning your PC, and making a bootable USB key.

    In the Lab

    • Reviews
      • Cyberpower Gamer Xtreme 3200 – Features a 2.66GHz Core i5-750@3.35GHz, 4GB DDR3/1600 RAM, EVGA GeForce GTX 295, Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11, and more for $1645.
      • Intel X-25M 160GB MLC SSD – A decent SSD but at $440 it was pretty expensive.
      • IBuyPower M865TU Gaming Notebook – Features a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile T9900, 4GB DDR3/1066 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M GPU, 500GB Seagate hard drive, and more for $2000.
      • Thermaltake ISGC-300 Fan – A pretty good CPU cooler for $60.
      • Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 SLI – This sort of thing was necessary because of Blue-ray DRM and the lack of a protected path in Vista.
      • Lenovo Ideapad S12 Netbook – Features a 12.1-inch 1280×800 screen, 1.6GHz Intel Atom, 1GB DDR2/667 and more for $500. Seems kind of high for a netbook gut it gets an excellent review here.
      • Logitech Speaker System Z520 – A decent set of relatively inexpensive stereo speakers for your PC.
      • Eye-Fi Pro SD Card – An SD card that adds wi-fi capability in addition to storage to your digital camera.
      • Wolfenstein – A ok follow-up to the original.
    • Best of the Best – This month, a brief look at what hte editors consider to be the best budget CPU, an Intel 2.66GHz Core i5-750 for about $200.

    Letters

    • Doctor – Questions answered about shrinking SSD free space, malware and fake anti-virus apps, flaky USB ports, the right amount of RAM, and more.
    • Comments – Letters from readers commenting upon the Thermalright U120-E CPU cooler, the ID Vault USB token/key, music and movie DRM, discreet sound cards vs. onboard audio, and more.

    …and more!


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