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Maximum PC reviewed Left 4 Dead and rated it a 10/Kick-Ass. Doesn't sound like the genre is doing that bad.

Actually recent benchmarks have shown that defragging doesn't make *that* much of a difference - http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_disk_defrag_difference?page=0%2C2 I've never heard of a fragmented drive affecting machine stability. That's like saying having a 5400 RPM drive instead of a 10,000 RPM drive in a server will make it crash... It makes no sense. Fragmentation has nothing to do with data integrity which is the only thing that would affect stability.

Also, it's "its" not "it's".

Broken Steel. Join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all. Continues the adventure past the main quest. Scheduled for release in March.

Having a game this open ended have a very closed ending is just a clear indicator they want people to pay some cash to have any sort of possible continuation of story, especially those people on a console.

Correct. If you can figure on 3-4Ghz with air, and 6Ghz+ with LIQUID-FREAKING-NITROGEN, then you can conservatively say 4.5Ghz-5Ghz w/ water cooling, which is a wide-spread and ever-increasingly common way to cool a computer. Heck, there is even a company working on retail versions of a computer that is run while inside a tank of mineral oil (Read: MaximumPC Exclusive Article).

Also, remember, AMD has more experience creating processors with integrated memory conrollers and the such. Intel's I7 is the first consumer grade processor to be produced with the same features AMD has been doing for a while, especially with the phenoms. Regardless of the processors success, there is a reason Intel is now designing chips that are remarkably similar to the way AMD has been doing it for a while now.

X.Org 7.4 [...]. Hotplugging support for input devices actually works now, so you can plug in mice and tablets and use them without having to reboot.

Having to reboot? Wouldn't that be a kernel issue and not an X.org issue? I can imagine why you'd have to restart the X server, but the kernel? Haven't the kernel had hotplugging support with hotplug or udev for a few years now?

Improvements to X.Org also allow for the easier to manage display control panel, which allows users to adjust resolutions and screen placement for single and multiple monitor displays easily.

This is next to this image: http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u7/resolution.jpg. Who wants to bet that the control panel is part of GNOME, not X.org?

The new Network Manager is a great improvement over the previous release. It allows your Ubuntu machine to connect to the network before a user logs in.

Still no easy bonding? I submitted a request for that [/me feels indignant].

A bit seriously though: bonding rocks. Wanna pick up your laptop and not break the sshfs connection to your file server? Sure. Wanna have bandwidth that doesn't suck while you're tethered down by the ethernet cable? You can have that too.

But not with NetworkManager unless you hack some of its dispatcher scripts. Only for the techies.

Better Support for Web Video and Audio
Ubuntu now supports the high-quality setting in YouTube! We shall celebrate by watching videos of other people's animals at a better quality level. Additionally, now Ubuntu users can view the programming the BBC puts online in Totem. That's right, you can enjoy fine shows like Scotland Outdoors and The Archers from your Linux PC.

Cool! Uhh... what was updated again? Firefox? Flash? GStreamer? Totem? firefox-gstreamer-totemish-flv-plugin?

Type ecryptfs-setup-private in the Terminal, and you can hide and encrypt a folder in your Home directory. [...] This folder gives a secure location that you can use to store sensitive files, without paying the performance penalty that full-disk encryption incurs.

I wouldn't trust that. Applications may not know to keep data secret beyond umask, and so will store stuff in /tmp. Or your secret data will be put on the non-encrypted swap partition. And in my experience, full-disk encryption works fine, very little is noticable; a few .5s-delays when saving in emacs.

Config-less X.Org

Awesome!!1!

No seriously, I really think it is. Not much use to me now, but it'll probably be in the future.

[I'm still going to have an xorg.conf because it's a great place to cast spells that makes my trackball kick ass. EmulateWheel springs to mind, which is really a must with a Logitech Marble Mouse that has scroll _buttons_ instead of a wheel; no repeated scrolling otherwise, but with EmulateWheel I have it, and I have horizontal scrolling. Check out Battle for Wesnoth with horizontal scrolling, I wrote that :)]

Not the greatest written article. But I look forward to upgrading. Last time I did that, though, something broke. My plan is to pick a new package each day [or maybe every eight hours or so] and upgrade just that one. Then, when something breaks, I can limit it to one package plus dependencies, instead of all $BIGNUM packages.

Has it been half a year already? :)

-- Jonas K

From the article:

Yes.

You forgot the rest of the equation. A Velociraptor benches at about 104MB/s sustained, so even FireWire 16000turboHD+++ can only do that copy in 8.2 minutes.

MPC: So, you said Rage is a 60Hz game. Is it an OpenGL or DirectX game?

JC: Itâ(TM)s still OpenGL, although we obviously use a D3D-ish API [on the Xbox 360], and CG on the PS3. Itâ(TM)s interesting how little of the technology cares what API youâ(TM)re using and what generation of the technology youâ(TM)re on. Youâ(TM)ve got a small handful of files that care about what API theyâ(TM)re on, and millions of lines of code that are agnostic to the platform that theyâ(TM)re on.

MPC: Are you using DirectX 9 equivalent? For Doom 4 as well?

JC: Yes to both. Itâ(TM)s one of those things I get asked a lot. Whatâ(TM)s big and exciting for DirectX 10 or DirectX 11? Thereâ(TM)s not a whole lot of⦠really not a whole lot. The big touted geometry shaders were in many ways, a mistaken belief that people desperately wanted to create stencil shadow volume.

So less than a month ago John said that he's still developing with OpenGL and that DX10 isn't really a worthwhile improvement.

And congratulations on referring me to something he said ages ago, when you find something more recent feel free to reply

Oh and source of interview: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/e3_2008_the_john_carmack_interview_rage_id_tech_6_doom_4_details_and_more?page=0%2C0

According to the Maximum PC Podcast they saw significant framerate hits with single card setups, but that it was much better under SLi. They did stress that they had beta drivers, so things may drastically improve once nvidia gets final drivers out the door.

Right, that's why at this link:
(Posted 05/1/08 at 04:20:57PM | by Michael Brown)

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/gigabyte_geforce_9800_x2

They show Crysis getting 41.4FPS on a Gigabyte GeForce 9800 X2

However from the linked article in the op (which is the same freaking magazine):
Crysis GeForce 9800 GTX: 11.7 FPS, 2x Geforce 9800 GTX: 12.8?

WTF? They think we were born yesterday? They either lied for the first article or they are lying now.

I smell payola and Maximum PC is not to be trusted.

They are either:
A. falsely claiming that the 9800 GTX is the fastest current nvidia processor (what about the GX2?), or
B. Comparing the GTX280 to a lemon.

This benchmark/comparison is worth almost as much as that Brooklyn Bridge deed I have in my wallet... Wow I just sneezed and it sounded a little like "HBULLSHIT!"

This article is suspect at best. I don't own a 9800GTX (I have a GTS 640 from last year) but if I did I'd take this article with a grain of salt the size of a standard rubik's cube.

-Viz

No, 32 bit OSes can address 4GB TOTAL memory, that's including graphics RAM and various caches. Thus, the total RAM addressable by a 32 bit OS is somewhere around 3-3.5GB depending on the configuration of the computer.
This forum post explains it in greater detail, people were asking this so often that they eventually just stickied the post. http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=71236

Performance equal or better than SSDs? Where did you conjure up that idea? Benchmarked Velociraptor vs. a single SSD

Well, Maximum PC took a look at RAID performance of the Velociraptor as compared to a RAID of Raptor X drives (and two SSD drives). Still, it's going to be hard to beat the $300 price/performance equation, even if you string a series of cheaper drives together.

Some of the other reviews to check out:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?type=expert&aid=548&pid=2
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/14583
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_new_fastest_hard_drive_ever

Y'know, it's not that hard to build your own computer. If you're not shooting for a bottom-of-the-barrel $399-plus-cheese-grater model (in which case, you should be shot) you can generally save money that way, too.

In this month's MaximumPC, for example, they have step-by-step instructions with pictures for building your own $1500 gaming rig. PDF Version You can spend considerably less if you don't plan on doing any gaming - cheaper video card, slower processor, and the like. And, it comes with any OS you want! ^.^

Here you go. Found something interesting for you. Have a ball:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_higher_mp3_bit_rates_pay_off?page=0%2C1

Even when cablecards follow the standard it's a botched job 90% of the time. Here, read this article on OCUR. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ocur Microsofts own lead for the program couldn't assist in getting the cablecards working. Shipped by two of the best PC manufacturers in the business, and due to the backwards ass way it's setup, completely unusable on arrival, or with aide from the cable company / microsoft / whomever wants to try. If that's the future of Media Center PC's, I'd rather just get downloadable content.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/ocur
Maximum PC ran an article about trying to get a cablecard installed into an Alienware rig they got to review.
Didn't get it working. They were hoping the bugs would be worked out before consumers could buy them... guess that didn't happen.

Comcast Tech: Hey, this is ** from Comcast. I'm trying to hook up a customer's PC to our system, but I can't get it to work. Can you help me out?

From the article
Microsoft Guy: Yeah, well, we don't have our tiered tech support set up yet, but I can try to walk you through it. What are you hooking up?

CT: Well, he has two computers, one from Voodoo PC and one from Velocity Micro.

MSG: He's got both those machines?! That's $13,000 in computers!

CT: Yeah, he's reviewing them. He's an editor at Maximum PC.

MSG: Oh.... Sh*t, they're supposed to tell us before they send those things out to the press.

CT: Both these machines have internal OCUR cards, too; I've never worked with the internal cards before.

MSG: [Still unaware he's on a speakerphone] Yeah, those are really tricky. But don't tell the guy that, or he'll write it up. You're gonna start seeing Dells like that come through your system like crazy.

this article?
        http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_higher_mp3_bit _rates_pay_off

Here is a newer test or a rehash of the older test.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_higher_mp3_bit _rates_pay_off
This test showed it was hard to pick the differences, but they conclude using vbr with a higher bit rate would improve the sound quality.

Here is a comparison of earbuds using apple's aac formats at 128 vs 256
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/itunes_256_vs_128 _bit
Cheap ear buds expose the differences in compression levels, while expensive earbuds make it hard to tell the difference.

Here is a newer test or a rehash of the older test.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_higher_mp3_bit _rates_pay_off
This test showed it was hard to pick the differences, but they conclude using vbr with a higher bit rate would improve the sound quality.

Here is a comparison of earbuds using apple's aac formats at 128 vs 256
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/itunes_256_vs_128 _bit
Cheap ear buds expose the differences in compression levels, while expensive earbuds make it hard to tell the difference.

Yeah Right. Microsoft has sold so many copies of XP that they've run out of CD Keys which takes some doing when you consider how many they could generate. And the Linux Zealots still think that Linux will prevail over Windows. I don't think that'll be any time soon. XP has still got a couple of years where you'll be able to buy it. They may need to issue another patch.

To the Linux Zealots, a simple suggestion:
If You want to learn how to do an OS and make it popular, look at XP.

The computer that I built myself about 1 1/2 years ago, is almost fanless too, but it does have a small water pump which is a moving part. It has a Zalman fanless water cooling system for the CPU and for the Northbridge chip. It doesn't use water cooling for the video card, because I was able to find a fanless video card which gets by with using heat sinks instead. It also has a fanless Antec power supply, although I probably could have got by with using their less expensive model which is a high efficiency power supply with an almost silent fan. I have a case fan, but can use a knob on the front of my computer to adjust its speed and noise level to something acceptable. It is a very quiet computer.

Zalman Reserator 1 V2 is a fanless water cooling system

I am not a technician or an expert, but I suppose it would be possible to build a computer without a hard drive. I do know of a company which offers the option of plugging a 40-Pin Solid-State Drive into the IDE connector on almost any appropriate computer's motherboard to create a WiFi hotspot controller. Not having tried that myself, I am not specifically recommending that to anyone. I am not sure if it allows for lots of constant rewriting like a hard drive or not?

• Solid state drives
• 40-Pin Solid-State Drive

Here is an example of a computer which, if I am not mistaken, can run Windows XP or Linux from a 1, 2, or 4 GB compact flash (CF) drive. They also offer the option of using a hard disk. I don't know anything about their products and it is not a real powerful computer. I am just using it as an example. I am also not sure how well this compares to hard drives for constant rewriting and heavy usage. As I said, I am not a technician or an expert and don't know much about any of these alternative devices.

Norhtec MicroClient

http://www.maximumpc.com/

I know it won't satisfy you, but you could slipstream those drivers in (think of it as recompiling your custom kernel with a driver.. like I had to do with my wireless usb adapter that wasn't recognised by the latest installer.

Voodoo PC has name recognition for being the Lexus of gaming machines. Hence their $2,800 starting price. They've been on the leading edge of the curve for several years. So much that Maximum PC has interviewed them a few times about some of their techniques.

They lead the pack with everything from IDE cable folding (before rounded IDE cables) to implementing a gaming rig with no active cooling. And they've constantly pushed to the next level by custom-building parts for next-gen rigs. Some of the stuff that Voodoo PC was doing, you couldn't buy off the shelf.

Voodoo has been reviewed in everything from PC Mag to Playboy, Photo Pro and Cigar Aficianado. Buying a Voodoo PC is for the people who can suffer the excess of a custom name-plate on their PC.

Even now, when everyone is jumping in to the HTPC field, Voodoo is already one step ahead of the curve. Their HTPC has top of the line parts and no fans.

Seeing these guys get bought out just breaks my heart. It was long my dream to own a Voodoo PC, but that just went down the tubes today.

In the October issue that just came out, Maximum PC also reviewed Windows MCE versus MythTV, and with Beyond TV as well, a third-party application. They weren't impressed with MythTV in terms of ease-of-use during the install and configuration, and gave it an overall poor recommendation as a result (they ranked it worst of the 3), but they did acknowledge that one of its pluses is the way it records to open, unencumbered formats without restrictions, unlike Windows Media Center. They give the highest recommendation to Beyond TV because it was both easy to install and relatively unencumbered, Windows Media Centre next, and MythTV last. I guess it depends upon what you consider important, such as cost and willingness to fiddle with the setup (I'm willing to forgive alot for $0 :-), and, personally, the DRM in Windows MCE is a HUGE negative).

Unfortunately, it looks like they don't put the reviews on-line for a couple of months after the issue runs (the most recent one with articles visible is August 2006), but I suppose they have to make their money off the paper publication somehow.

Anyway, another review to compare with, if you can get access to it.

Maximum oc has a good article on this..... http://www.maximumpc.com/2006/03/outfit_your_wor.h tml

You can install windows with non-standard raid drivers without a floppy by mucking around with the windows install cd in a process called slipstreaming (for example see http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.h tml or google). I had to learn this when I was setting up a shuttle PC with an Intel RAID controller (no floppy, no windows install support for controller). Of course this solution requires another machine already running to make the cd. Setting up a DIY computer without another working computer around (with internet access) would be pretty damn hard. Thankfully linux and livecd are around.

Slipstreaming is great. The windows guy at work does it for a bunch of our servers and he also rolls in his own device drivers into the system as well so there's no searching for floppy disks to install the RAID/SCSI drivers. He got the idea from this Maximum PC article:

http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.h tml

--Ajay

They haven't gotten perfect reviews, but most of the other sources for reviews of the XPS that I've read admit that it's a serious system and that they were impressed how far Dell's come. For example, MaxPC gave the current XPS 600 a 9/10.

http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/09/dell_xps_600.html

Sounds to me like [Hard]|OCP saw the name Dell and already had its mind made up.

And why are they reviewing a XPS 400 when the XPS 600 is on the market right now? Why are they reviewing hardware that is behind on what's currently available?

Let me put it this way -- they're reviewing a 400 in December... online... when others reviewed a 600 and had sent it to print in time to be physically published in *November*?

How professional and timely of them...

This is not news. Maximumpc did a review three months ago, but Slashdot's lag makes this post appropriately timely. =P

http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/06/hitachi_7k500_d.h tml

Even Seagate's announcement of *their* 500Gig drive, to ship this fall, is weeks if not months old. From what I remember about the spec sheets, the Seagate drive will be cooler, quieter, use less power, and have two more years warranty. If you can hold out, at least wait until reviews of the Seagate drive appear and make your decision then.

people want THE software their are used to use. Unless the other "new" software is identical to the old software they used to use they wont use it.

That's the way I felt when I started using Firefox - the only reason I stuck with it is because MaximumPC wrote such a glowing review of it. It just takes a little bit of time to switch. Now, I wouldn't use IE for anything.

"[The Rio Carbon's] got the right attitude, and the right hardware. Apple could learn a thing or two from this media player."
-- Maximum PC

What, like how to suck?

And by x86 VMware, you mean booting OSx86, right :). That would be quite and ironic twist for Apple.

This reminds me of a product called the MCC Modular PC from MMC Computer Company. It got reviewed by Maximum PC Recently,
although I couldn't say that it was to a standing ovation.

The whole idea is that you CAN use portable media to create a stable live operating system that you can take with you. But it's been done before, which means that this is only a jibe at Apple, although the ubiquity of iPods would help to make portable OSs more popular

And by x86 VMware, you mean booting OSx86, right :). That would be quite and ironic twist for Apple.

This reminds me of a product called the MCC Modular PC from MMC Computer Company. It got reviewed by Maximum PC Recently,
although I couldn't say that it was to a standing ovation.

The whole idea is that you CAN use portable media to create a stable live operating system that you can take with you. But it's been done before, which means that this is only a jibe at Apple, although the ubiquity of iPods would help to make portable OSs more popular

It's amazing to look at the similarity between what illumina+us wrote and Maximum PC's magazine article in it's March 2005 Issue on page 14. The only difference between the two is the opening sentence, and that the magazine's article came first and had more information.

Ya Realy. I started screwing around with our new Windows XP, Id had some experience on a friends 98, but not much. Then for christmas my mom got me a copy of Maximum PC. I downloded some suggested freeware apps to make windows bareable, and then..(bum bum bum bum) I stumbled across their 11 sites every geek should bookmark, one of wich was slashdot so I tried it. I read some article I dont know wich one but it made me want to program. I started with JavaScript and the rest was history.

I use my 2001FP mounted on the wall in the bedroom as a TV. Works great for that.

i agree whole heartidely with the parent. maximum pc is the greates computer magazine out there. period.
2600 takes a close second

I used to read quite a few PC-related magazines, but over the last few years they seemed to target the new or business-type of user. There content was basic and no real information learned.

I started reading Maximum PC about a year ago, and found the magazine agreed with about 90% of my personal hardware choices. I've grown to trust their reviews and recommendations as I don't have the time to research as exensively as I used to.

With relatively few ads, high quality articles, and $12/year, why not?

Dude, you need beer and chicks.

Haha, I second that notion. I would also like to nominate that guy who installed 36+ OSes on his machine. Sheesh, I'd need beers and chicks to calm me down after installing windows 2000 let alone other OSes. Oh and those guys that made C64s play movies should be on that list too.

Consequently, this is also my G-spot, as that's where I'm using my new laptop to write this over 802.11g.

I am not one for flaming, trolling or otherwise making fun of people. However, after quickly reading the title of the article and skimming across a "Geek Quiz" in Maximum PC magazine, I was thinking about attempting to make a funny post confusing D-Spot for G-Spot, and about how maybe you're going a little too far in geek-dom if you think the G-Spot is something that has to do with wireless networking and not the female anatomy.

I think I'll be quiet now.

I'm sure /. covered this when it came out, but this kid got 37 different OSes to run NATIVE on one machine.

In Maximum PC recently there was an article about a guy in the military that had problems getting stuff delivered to an APO/FPO address, as a lot of online web software simply did not support these types of addresses.

I don't have the article in front of me, but basically someone wrote in the next month and stated how they got around this limitation.

Pretty much this: instead of stating 'APO/FPO' for the state, the package would be addressed to the state that handles the mailing of that particular locations mail. I think there were only a few. I believe in the address part (second line, perhaps? was actually where the APO/FPO info was put.

The writer stated that he had never had a problem getting any packages after that.

The above steps were very helpful. I switched the background color to black in my IDE and there was an instant relief in eye strain. Also, once the above steps are followed head on over to Maximum PC and check out their article on tuning up your monitor. They also have a Windows util called DisplayMate that will help, but is not required for the advise in the article.

Anyway, thanks bjb!

JOhn

There's another good review of this in the latest issue of Maximum PC.

It's not exactly Adobe proclaiming a preference for PC's, but rather they are simply presenting the results of one expert's analysis. Is this really surprising, however? Mac's haven't exactly been all about the data-crunching race between Intel and AMD, so it's hardly surprising to see it lag behind a PC in this sort of benchmark. There was a similar article a month or so ago in Maximum PC that had a similar theme...