Maximum PC 2008 RSS Feed

The New Wave of LCDs

David Murphy — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Buying a new monitor can be tricky. First, you must decipher the manufacturer doublespeak. Not all specifications are created equal, nor are they measured fairly: You truly can’t tell a book by its cover, nor a monitor by its box copy. And then there are the displays themselves. A monitor by itself might look good to you, but you won’t know what you’re missing unless you compare it against the competition.

Westinghouse L2610NM

David Murphy — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Taking a cue from ViewSonic’s playbook, Westinghouse’s L2610NM produces a crappy image out of the box. We haven’t seen a display ship with such a whited-out picture in a long time.

And unlike ViewSonic’s VX2240w, adjusting the L2610NM’s brightness and contrast settings does little to help matters.

IP Rights Fairy Tale

Quinn Norton — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:00:00 -0500

Not very long ago, in a land not at all far away, there was a little company called Blueport. It held the copyright on a piece of software that the US Air Force liked using for logistics. Blueport protected its software with a time bomb—a bit of code that made the software self-destruct when the license expired. That date was approaching, and Blueport wanted to negotiate a new license with the USAF—and you know, get paid.

Hannspree HF289HJB

David Murphy — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Size is important, but so is quality. Hannspree’s 27.5-inch HF289HJB fits the former just fine, but its average performance makes us yearn for a better-quality picture to fill the massive screen.

Dream Machine '08

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:30:00 -0500

A Dream Machine graced the inaugural issue of Maximum PC back in 1998, and the tradition of building an annual no-holds-barred PC beast has continued unabated since then. True to form, this year’s rig is the most audacious, most powerful dream rig to date.

Sons of Minesweeper

Thomas McDonald — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:00:00 -0500

So is PC gaming hosed? That seems to be the case for games that a) are not massively multiplayer, b) don’t have “Sims” in the title, or c) aren’t played by your mom.

But it’s not really as dire as all that. Mass Effect actually made it to number 2, and Sins of a Solar Empire to number 9, on the current NPD PC sales charts.

Steelseries 7G Keyboard

Will Smith — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0500

The SteelSeries 7G looks like a normal, run-of-the-mill keyboard.
But beneath its plain Jane exterior lies a keyboard that we couldn’t lock up.
(click picture for full shot)

A few minor flaws aside, the SteelSeries 7G is a truly spectacular piece of hardware.

Acer P244w

David Murphy — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Acer’s native-1080p display wins points for hitting the widescreen 16:9 formfactor, but the P244w treats its colors with the same unpleasantness it treats its grayscales. The monitor’s color saturation suffers from a reduced range on both the top and bottom ends of the spectrum: Colors lose their vibrancy as they get darker and become washed out as they get lighter.