Geek Tested:

A Decade of Kick Ass

Posted 08/20/08 at 02:00:00 PM by Katherine Stevenson

12—Not 10—Years of Kickassedness

Jon Phillips, current editorial director, former editor in chief (Oct 1999 to Dec 2003)

September 1998 marks the 10th anniversary of Maximum PC, but actually the 12th anniversary of our vaunted Kick Ass award. As our most devoted readers already know, the Kick Ass award first appeared in the premier issue of boot magazine, which we published for two years before renaming it Maximum PC.

In boot, we established much of the content and attitude that perseveres in Maximum PC today: our no-BS product ratings, our exacting attention to technical detail, our humor and spontaneity—and, of course, our overarching credo that if you’re going to build a PC, you should always build the absolute best rig possible. In many ways, the very name of the Kick Ass award embodies much of what Maximum PC stands for: exuberance, enthusiasm, excess, and just plain-old best-of-class awesomeness. That’s what we like in our PC hardware, and that’s what we’ve done our best to provide in the last 120-plus issues.

10 Things Maximum PC is Older Than

White LEDs
Wi-Fi
The Segway
Bad Star Wars movies
Reality television
64-bit desktop operating systems
Napster
Department of Homeland Security
The Nahasapeemapetilon Octuplets
Splenda

Cue Blooper Reel and Laugh Track

Gordon Mah Ung, most senior editor and staff curmudgeon

My days with Maximum PC go all the way back to the beginning with “Big Daddy” Dosland and the legendary “Handy Andy” Sanchez, who set the bar for editorial excellence. In those days, hazing new staffers was the norm, and my first experience was upgrading the POS desktop business-class PC that our company provided us.

Would I get access to those oh-so-sweet Voodoo2 cards in SLI? Hell no! As the low man on the totem pole, I got a Voodoo Rush. Try to get a Rush to work with a machine that has integrated graphics that you can’t disable in Windows 95!

In those days, just as today, the Maximum PC Lab was no clean room where some disconnected technician tested hardware and handed you a report. Everything was hands, eyes, and ears on. Certainly one of the most embarrassing incidents was when we ran airflow tests using a fog machine. The good news is that the test worked well, and we were able to visually record the stagnant areas in a case. The bad news is that smoke alarms can’t tell the difference between smoke particles and fog particles. You can imagine the chewing out we got from the facilities manager after the entire building was evacuated and a fire truck rolled up.

Speaker testing is always a challenge—especially when the Lab was located directly next to an office full of lawyers and accountants. If you think editors are cranky, imagine a pissed-off lawyer/CPA hybrid after you’ve fired up Megadeth on eight Klipsch subs in parallel!

In another memorable speaker incident, former editor Josh Norem literally blew up a 5.1 speaker set doing frequency sweeps. Certain it was a fluke, we had a second set delivered and this time videotaped the test. Sure enough, we were able to capture the tweeter exploding with a puff of smoke.

Breaking hardware has always been a specialty of the Maximum PC staff. We could fill a freight car with all the carnage. Of course, in the old days you actually had to work at doing damage. Today, with liquid cooling, hardware gets waterboarded on a regular basis.

Next: An interactive timeline! Fancy!

COMMENTS:6

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COMMENTS

Thank you all
Submitted by Humpfester on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 7:38am

I would like to say Thank you for all the help and wise advice you've provided over the years and may the next ten years be as good, thank you all @ MAXIMUM PC.

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Boot magazine
Submitted by Honkeychops on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 6:04pm

I remember BOOT magazine very well, but even *that magazine* had a predecessor.

I subscribed to a magazine called "CD-ROM TODAY" for a couple years, in the early 90`s (?) when one day

I was informed my subscription to "CD-ROM Today" was to be replaced by a new magazine called "Boot" magazine!

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The good old days...do NOT beat the new days
Submitted by Scapegoat on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 9:35am

Hardware and software just gets better. Wow. This whole shpeel reminds me of how desperately I need a new computer, and I how I never should have bought the hardware I did. I bought a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz (Prescott so it was pre-hyper-threading) in 2004. I AM STILL USING IT. It's the only computer I have. This anniversary should mark a new era of updated and competitive computing. But, I'm a college student, and I'll have to wait a few more months until I can afford a laptop.

But MaximumPC, thanks for giving me my hopes and dreams for computing.

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Happy Birthday!!!
Submitted by Wildebeast on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 8:49pm

Congratulations on the first 10 years, and on 12 years of Kick-ass-itude.

For me, the review I'll never for get was: a Sony desktop computer that was supposed to free up more desk space for the customer... you said "If you need more space on your desk this badly, you need to get a new desk..."

That one still makes me chuckle. Maybe that should have been the new MPC t-shirt, with an Old Sony logo on it. :)

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Another thing you got wrong
Submitted by DePat on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 10:22am

I Still have the scars of Kenwood TrueX optical drive on my back and in my wallet. What a bunch a @#$%@ that stuff was. But I am off course. I want to point out something to you got "wrong". I am qualifying the wrong because it was not a really a review but part of the article on how to build an HTPC. I am talking about Beyond Media. In your "review of beyond Media" (BM) you mentionned all the niceties it can do.

You forgot to note that BM is extremly slow when it comes to finding or playing music across a home network (Microsoft Window Home Server), that when playing videos with multiple language tracks, it will read all tracks at the same time (imagine watching a movie with the spanish, english and french tracks playing a the same time! yes, exactly), the dvd palyer of BM not playing at all (I had "challenges" from the first day a purchase BM and - Tech support has still not figure it out - we are talking about more than 9 months now) Other softwares play my dvds with no problem, the limited setting options of BM, you can select on their player or software or "windows default" window media player eventhough the world abound with more capable player and I can go on. I do not intend the above to sound as a baching of snapstream. Their
tech people are very customer friendly and I will gladly purchase
another working software from them. BM as just not met my
expectation

However, you got Beyond TV right and that is a step forward out of the
cave as spouse start to realized the "goodness" of an HTPC.

I also think that you are neglecting the Home Theather PC. Apart from the article in last year magazine you have not updated this segment on how to construct or what are the best part for an htpc. Computers are bound to get out the "cave", i.e which ever room of the house we sequested ourselves in, for the family room. So take the lead, show us the way as you did in so many other areas by testing the heck out of the offerings and separating hype from reality.

I am looking forward to the next 10

Happy birthday KickAss

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You had me at 'craptastic'.
Submitted by PhynaeusClaw on Wed, 08/20/2008 - 10:03am

I got my first issue of MPC while I was working at EB in November 1998 (before it became EB Games and virtually stopped carrying PC games) for free. I took it home and read a review in which the word 'craptastic' (or possibly 'craptacular') appeared. I was hooked.

Keep the fun coming.

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