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Last week was the very special premiere of our sister site: MaximumTech.com - which made us look back fondly on the day that Maximum PC made it's first appearance. So, in the name of Old School Mondays, we went ahead and tracked down the sneak preview pages of Maximum PC when they first appeared in the final issue of boot. Gordon Mah Ung took some time to look back on the premiere of Maximum PC:
"To this day, we still get letters from people pining for the good old days of boot. As someone who was there for the last few issues of boot, it was indeed a special time. With the July / August 1998 issue of boot, we began to wind down the old girl and cranked up something that people on the newsstand could understand was actually a PC magazine, and not a shoe fetish mag or worse – a Canadian interpretation of the word.
Maximum PC would make its debut two months after boot went off line. The name was different, but the staff was the same. For trivia buffs, Maximum PC was actually somewhat of a lovechild of boot and Home PC. Our publisher purchased the subscription list from the dying Home PC and those Home PC readers would soon begin receiving copies of Maximum PC. We’re not entirely sure whose idea that was, but if boot readers were upset that boot was going away (in name anyway) you couldn’t imagine the reaction from a Home PC reader who suddenly started getting Maximum PC. Let’s just say that an award named Kick Ass didn’t go over well. Neither did reviews of “violent” video games and reviews of enthusiast PC’s that weren’t fixated on prices. It got so bad that EIC Brad “Big Daddy” Dosland actually wrote an editorial saying, that if the readers were offended, please leave, and here are some alternative magazines you can read.
We’re still here too, almost 13 years later. We’ve survived the Dot.com implosion. The “free PC” craze, the “death” of the desktop. The “death” of PC gaming and a handful of other predicted apocalyptic endings to the enthusiast computing market. It’s funny that we post this preview of the first Maximum PC on the eve of a coming war with ARM and people once again writing the obituary on the PC. So, the next time some latte sipping fool tells you about the “post PC era” remind them that the PC has faced this numerous times before.
So, to renew Big Daddy’s original manifesto from the last millennium, let’s all lift a glass to Pure PC Power."
Comments are closed on this article
maleficarus™
May 11, 2011 at 5:49am
The speakers on this articles mags cover are the exact same speakers I use today. They are Boston Acoustics BA4800. I bought mine in 2001 and they are still sounding great like the day I bought them! I am glad they made the "dream machine" back then!!
blackwatch
May 10, 2011 at 6:36am
I wasn't a reader back when Maximum PC started, but I'm proudly a reader today.
I had those MS Speakers and don't often talk to people who remember them. Fun to see them kicking around in an old Maximum PC.
Basaltine
May 09, 2011 at 4:50pm
...if boot readers were upset that boot was going away (in name anyway) you couldn’t imagine the reaction from a Home PC reader who suddenly started getting Maximum PC...
Heh. Based on the Home PC articles I rememember reading I'm sure there were some burst blood vessels for their target readership long before they finished the first issue of Maximum PC...
That buyout is how I got started with Maximum PC. Let me tell you, I was one HomePC subscriber that was very glad they got bought out by MaxPC (in fact I was unhappy with HPC and was going to let my subscription lapse). Judging by that first cover and after reading Big Daddy's editorial I remember thinking that I was finally going to have fun reading a computer magazine after suffering through what could be delicately described as trite and dull features under HomePC. Still a faithful MaxPC subscriber to this day!
AndroRabbit
May 09, 2011 at 4:41pm
boot truly was awesome and MaxPC has lived up to everything that first editorial promised, and in the process wound up being pretty much the last great computer mag. Most of the rest are junk or still publishing lists of the top 150 most mediocre peripherals.
Only one computer mag still gets my buck every month. Er, uh, this one. Of course. It's the only mag I like prepaying years in advance 'cause I want it to be around for years.
Andy Sanchez would be proud of what MaxPC has become. Is proud.
Maktaka
May 09, 2011 at 4:07pm
"the bible of the Pure PC Power jihad." (top right corner, last page)
Hehehe. Now THERE'S a phrase you wouldn't hear used today.
