Maximum PC September 2008 RSS Feed

Thom Davis Has the Best Seizure Ever

Tom Edwards — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:09:20 -0500

A man needs a place of his own, and when Thom Davis found using the family computer for his gaming pursuits to be less than ideal, he set about building the Seizure, the ultimate form-follows-function gaming rig. His goal was to create a rig that was gaming friendly, had no exposed wires, and looked good in the living room. We think he succeeded on all three counts.

While building the Seizure, Thom discovered that connector manufacturers definitely tend to think “inside the box,” and typically don’t make cables suitable for such a large rig, but with the assistance of a local electronics supply store, he was able to create the 6-foot cables he needed to complete the job.

More photos after the jump!

Everything You Need to Know About Photovoltaic Cells

Michael Brown — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:49:11 -0500

In one second, the nuclear fusion process taking place inside the sun produces enough energy to satisfy the needs of the earth’s population for nearly 500,000 years. Photovoltaic cells are capable of capturing some of that energy and converting it into usable electricity; unfortunately, today’s technology can’t do this very efficiently.

French physicist Edmond Becquerel first described the photovoltaic effect in 1839. He discovered that some materials were capable of producing small amounts of electricity when exposed to sunlight. The first photovoltaic cell, however, wasn’t created until 1883, and more than 70 years passed before the next major scientific advance took place, when researchers at Bell Labs developed the first crystalline silicon photovoltaic cell in 1954.

September 2008: Dream Machine 2008!

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:06:51 -0500

In the PDF archive of the September 2008 issue, you can find:

2008 Dream Machine!
Maximum PC's 10th-Anniversary Retrospective
ATI vs. Nvidia
How To: Slipstream Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1
Awesome Product Reviews, including the BFG GeForce GTX 280
Ask the Doctor
Rig of the Month
The Watchdog
And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

Decoding Creative's Drivers

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:21:57 -0500

I used to be able to connect my Xbox 360 to my Audigy Platinum and have it decode the 5.1 signal. However, in my new X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion soundcard, it looks like Creative disabled this feature in the drivers. Is there any way around this to get my computer to decode 5.1? This feature was supposed to be one of the card’s selling points.

—Curtis Leong

Oh yeah, how 'bout that. Answer after the jump!

15 - 37 = 42

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:00:00 -0500

I purchased a 37-inch Westinghouse LVM-37W3SE LCD 1080p HDTV monitor in June 2007. A few months later, I found out that this particular model has faulty firmware that prevents it from working properly with many devices. For example, the Nvidia driver recognizes it as a different model Westinghouse 1080i monitor and refuses to set it in 1080p mode. I contacted customer support and received permission to return it. The monitor was returned in November, and it was received by Westinghouse two days later. I hadn’t heard anything from them until about a month ago, when I finally made a call to find out about the RMA status. (I’ve been out of the country on a business trip.)

I was promised a follow-up by several people, but no one would commit to when the monitor would be sent. They basically asked me to wait until I received my product. It has now been more than seven months, and I believe I have waited long enough! Thank God my trusty 15-inch LCD is still working fine.

—Jeong Lee

What's Next, Opus Office?

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:00:00 -0500

I ran across a site that’s selling something called Opal Office. The site, OfficeBestDeal.com, says the suite is compatible with Microsoft Office, but in reality it’s just OpenOffice! You can find that out when you open the program and it says on the first line of text, “OpenOffice.” Apparently, they’re charging $11.95 for it. Is this even legal?

— Marion Randall

Good question, Marion! Answer, as always, lies after the jump.

Registry Cleaning

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:51:33 -0500

The Dog asked readers for their feedback regarding registry cleaners, and more specifically, RegCure, which the Dog took a hard look at in the July issue. The upshot? The handful of readers who use RegCure reported no serious issues with the application, but only one person felt that it actually improved system performance. While others thought that registry cleaners in general have nominal value as performance enhancers, some saw other reasons to use them.

Reasons? Once more into the jump, dear friends!

The Cloning Wars

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 18:35:51 -0500

I’m trying to upgrade my boot disc drive, which uses XP as the OS. I’d failed twice and hen turned to Norton Ghost 12 to copy my C drive to my new disc. During the clone, everything seemed to be working until about 70 percent of the way through the procedure. At that point, a message appeared stating that my computer was trying to communicate with Microsoft. After about two minutes another message appeared stating that the attempt to communicate failed. Then the computer crashed.

I had some difficulty rebooting and then found that XP failed to recognize the new disc drive. It took me some time to figure out that this drive had to be reformatted. I’ve upgraded discs before but never encountered difficulties like this. I called Microsoft and they suggested I buy a copy of Vista and rebuild from scratch. I don’t want to do this. Am I missing something?

—Marvin Burke

Begun, the Clone Wars have. Answers after the jump.