Posted 04/29/09 at 02:45:22 PM by Tom Edwards

Our initial impression of NEC’s widescreen 26-inch EA261WM LCD monitor was overwhelmingly positive, primarily due to the thought put into its ergonomics. What puzzles us most about monitor design is why—even with obscenely expensive panels—user comfort is so often overlooked. If you’re planning on shelling out a load of cash for a monitor, something as simple as height adjustment (rather than the default homebrew solution of piles of books) seems like an obvious feature. The EA261WM includes not only height adjustment but pivot, tilt, and swivel adjustments as well, making it easy to share information on your screen with coworkers or even switch to a portrait configuration, should the need arise.

The EA261WM is also one of only 26 monitors to achieve EPEAT’s gold rating, the highest standard for environmental friendliness. To further emphasize its green attributes, the monitor includes an ECO mode, which lowers power consumption, and a carbon-footprint reader tells you just how much you’re doing to save the planet by lowering the brightness on your monitor.

Read on for the rest of the review. 

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Posted 04/29/09 at 02:33:56 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

In Win XP, folders automatically display in Explorer in alphabetical order. I want to order folders chronologically by calendar month, i.e., January, February, March, etc., but Explorer displays them alphabetically. Is there a way to change the order that folders are displayed?
—Dave Schaffer

Read on for the answer to Dave's question!

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Posted 04/28/09 at 12:55:05 PM by Gordon Mah Ung

We’re big fans of Flip Video’s incredibly easy-to-use pocket-size video cameras, but it’s been difficult to wholeheartedly recommend them given the superior video capabilities of today’s point-and-shoot digicams.

Flip’s new MinoHD changes that. This svelte camera is the same size as the standard-def Mino (4”x2”x.06”) but can record an hour of H.264-encoded 1280x720 720p video. The quality of the video ranges from fair to good, with noticeable video compression occurring on occasion. The MinoHD puts digicams and other SD-resolution microcams to shame; however, it’s not the right choice for enthusiasts who put a premium on image quality. Footage shot with an HDV 1080i or even 720p cam will easily outclass the MinoHD.

Read on for the rest of the review! 

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Posted 04/28/09 at 12:45:00 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

With viruses spreading on USB drives like they used to with floppies, is there a way to prevent Windows from automatically running the executable when you plug in the USB drive? I would rather be safe than have Windows automatically launch programs on USB drives, DVDs, etc.

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Posted 04/23/09 at 08:45:49 PM by Tom Halfhill

As I’ve noted before, when you’re not playing action games, the killer GPU in your PC is basically a case heater. For the most part, it uselessly sucks power and radiates heat as you perform mundane computing tasks: web browsing, word processing, spreadsheet calculations, MP3 playback. GPUs are the most underutilized resource in PCs.

Finally, that’s changing. AMD now bundles its ATI Stream parallel-processing software in the latest ATI Catalyst graphics drivers. As users download and install these free drivers, they automatically prep their systems to run ATI Stream programs that leverage the GPU as a massively parallel processor. Before, users had to download ATI Stream separately. AMD is following Nvidia, which began bundling its CUDA parallel-processing software with display drivers in 2007.

Although ATI Stream and CUDA are for programmers, anyone can use the application software written for these platforms. When you install and run an ATI Stream or CUDA application, it automatically executes on the x86 CPU and on the GPU, which does the heavy lifting. Most people won’t notice anything different—except better performance.

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Posted 04/23/09 at 08:24:02 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

How can I make a bootable copy of my XP Pro operating system on my 16GB USB 2.0 flash memory stick? Many of the OS files cannot be copied from my computer using Windows Explorer because they are in use. I have tried just about everything.

My computer has an option for USB booting and I would like to have the emergency boot stick as a backup.

Read on for the  answer to Phil's question!

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Posted 04/20/09 at 10:00:00 AM by The Maximum PC Staff

I’m currently debating whether to install XP x64 or Vista x64 on my main rig. I will be playing a lot of games, including Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Far Cry 2, and doing some video editing with Sony Vegas and Adobe After Effects. I’ve tried Vista x64, but issues with Creative soundcards have haunted me for the past week and a half. I still haven’t tried XP x64, but I’ve heard that there’s less support for it compared to Vista x64. I’ve already confirmed that some of my crucial programs do run on XP x64, but what about devices like the printer and camera? I have an E8400 overclocked to 4GHz, 8GB of G.Skill RAM, and an ATI Radeon HD 4850.

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Posted 04/15/09 at 06:20:35 PM by Nathan Edwards

As the price of NAND flash memory drops to record lows, more and more hardware vendors are getting into the solid state drive business—and why wouldn’t they? A standard hard drive has lots of moving parts, but a solid state drive is nothing more than a few NAND flash modules, a controller chip, some PCB, and an enclosure. CSX is well known in Europe as a producer of aftermarket RAM for Apple products, and its Diablo gaming RAM has started making waves in the United States. But this 128GB multilevel cell (MLC) SSD marks the company’s first foray into the solid state market.

Single-level cell (SLC) SSDs typically have better write speeds than multilevel cell drives, but MLCs are more common because they’re much cheaper. We’ve tested a few standout MLCs, including Intel’s X-25M, but most of the multilevel cell drives we’ve benchmarked have suffered from poor write speeds.

 Read on for the rest of the review. 

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