Posted 01/14/09 at 07:33:47 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

In the PDF archive of the December 2008 issue you can find:

• 2009 Technology Preview!
• Netbook Roundup
• Learn GIMP secrets
• Awesome Product Reviews, including ATI's Radeon 4870 X2
• 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 aarchive today!

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Posted 01/10/09 at 12:20:37 PM by Will Smith

The 4870 X2 outperformed the previous single-card performance champ in most of our benchmarks, delivering playable frame rates at 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 in nearly every game we tested. Naturally, the exception remains Crysis, which, at its highest quality settings, punishes nearly every system we’ve tested. We’re slightly concerned about the accuracy of our Crysis benchmarks; the ATI card seemed to render far-off textures at a higher resolution than the Nvidia card.

As always with high-end cards, if you’re running a low-resolution display—pretty much anything below 1920x1200—you won’t be able to harness the full power of this card. At lower resolutions, the 4870 X2 performs exactly the same as the single-GPU 4870. For anyone running a high-res panel, the X2 truly kicks ass.

Read on for the rest of the review!

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Posted 01/06/09 at 05:00:00 AM by Nathan Edwards

MSI has been moving into the notebook market in a big way over the past few years, with forays into business and gaming notebooks, and, this summer, netbooks, with the Wind U100. We have to say, we’re impressed.

Read on for the rest of the review!

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Posted 01/06/09 at 04:00:00 AM by Nathan Edwards

Asus’s Eee PC kick-started the netbook craze and remains the brand most associated with the category. Early iterations were praised for their low-cost Linux-based architecture, but lately Asus has ratcheted up its product line to compete with higher-end netbooks, like the HP Mini-Note 2133 (http://tinyurl.com/5lu4un). The 901 runs on Intel’s Atom architecture at 1.6GHz and has 1GB of DDR2 RAM clocked at 533MHz.

Read on for the rest of the review!

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Posted 01/06/09 at 03:00:00 AM by Nathan Edwards

In many ways, the Acer Aspire One is like the little sibling of MSI’s Wind. Besides sporting the same Intel Atom N270 processor running at 1.6GHz, 1GB of RAM, and Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics, the two netbooks share a similar look and feel.

Read on for the rest of this review!

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Posted 01/05/09 at 03:00:00 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

We know, you just got your rig right where you want it, complete with a primo CPU, a kick-ass videocard config, and seemingly limitless storage. So forgive us if we dangle the temptation of better, faster hardware in front of your face. We’re just doing our job. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been grilling our industry contacts for news of what computing delights await power users in the months and years to come. And delightful the future is: CPUs with eight cores, GPUs that run games as a pastime, mobos with both SLI and CrossFire support, and hard drives so large your data will feel puny and inadequate. And that’s just part of it.

Look at it this way: Our 2009 technology preview gives you advance warning about the hardware that will soon occupy your dreams, so you can start saving your pennies and plotting your next upgrade path today.

Read on for the full list!

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Posted 01/05/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Chris Comiskey

With outsourced support now the de facto standard in the IT and ISP industries, do-it-yourself computer repair has gone from being an optional luxury to an outright necessity. You might feel hopeless and abandoned the first time your network connection gives out, but don’t fret just yet. Given the right direction, even the greenest of users can fix a number of common network errors. We’re going to give you all the tools you need to become your own network tech support.

You might be skeptical, but LAN/WAN troubleshooting isn’t all that difficult. Upgrades are easy and cheap—if required at all—and the analysis process is brief and painless, even if you’ve never wired a Cat5 cable or run a command line ipconfig. Even better, many of the steps and instructions are identical in Vista and XP, which goes a long way toward easing the troubleshooting transition, should you switch from one OS to the other.

While sometimes a call to your ISP is unavoidable, when you do have to do it, at least you’ll brandish the knowledge to blaze through all the low-level BS and head straight to a speedy resolution. Don’t let the Internet and networking companies bully you any longer—it’s time to stand up and take matters into your own hands.

Read on to find out how to optimize your internet experience!

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Posted 01/05/09 at 11:00:00 AM by Norman Chan

Read on for more of the review. 

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