Posted 11/19/09 at 12:30:18 PM by Will Smith

If I asked you in 1993, “What’s a PC?”, you’d probably have pointed to the beige box sitting under your desk at work. In 1999, if I asked you the same question, the odds are good that you’d have shown me a grey box in your den. In 2005, you would probably have shown me a shiny new notebook. But, as I sit here in 2009, I’m finding it difficult to answer this seemingly simple question.

Sitting on my desk, I have four extremely powerful computing devices, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Let’s decide which of these are personal computers together.

Machine A features four CPU cores, and a host of GPUs and coprocessors. Machine B is more modest, with three CPU cores and a decent GPU. Machine C is even more modest, with a dual-core CPU, but a woefully inadequate GPU. Machine D pushes a lot of its workload onto dedicated processors, but still sports a dedicated GPU.

So, what’s all this powerful hardware? A home-built gaming PC, an Xbox 360, a Lenovo X200s notebook, and an iPhone 3GS.

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Posted 10/20/09 at 11:00:00 PM by Will Smith

It all started with a phone call from my mom. While she’s not a regular Maximum PC reader, she read my Windows 7 review online, and called me because she was worried about the, umm, “colorful” comments. I told her not to sweat that feedback—that those folks are fanboys, people who suffer an excess of product-focused enthusiasm.

The conversation got me thinking, though. When I posted my positive review of Win7, I expected a strong response from the fanboy contingent. I expected people to accuse me of being a fanboy (that happened, check), and I expected my critics to attack my opinions (checkerino), expertise (Chekov), and moral turpitude (ditto).

I wasn’t surprised by the Windows XP fanboys, who let me know that their intractable world lacks a place for any new versions of Windows. Also not shocking? That the Apple fanboys are convinced that Snow Leopard is faster, better, and cheaper than Windows 7. And I would have been disappointed if the Linux fanboys didn’t tell me that I’m a dumbass for paying for an inferior, closed-source OS. What I didn’t expect? Well, what I couldn’t prepare myself for was the Windows Vista fanboy.

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Posted 10/02/09 at 12:35:19 PM by Will Smith

You may not have heard of it before, but “augmented reality” is coming, and it’s more than just cool tech—it will change the world.

Augmented reality has been a Hollywood staple for the last 30 years—although it’s more commonly associated with robots and cyborgs than people or PC enthusiasts. Put simply, it’s a technology that overlays a real-world scene with relevant contextual information, directly from a computer. In Robocop and Terminator, augmented reality was used by the movie’s eponymous characters to overlay friend or foe info. In Minority Report, it was used to display targeted ads, unique to each individual, as they walked through a city landscape.

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Posted 09/15/09 at 08:30:00 PM by Will Smith

I suffered a loss recently: My trusty, first-generation iPhone’s touch screen gave up the ghost. On a sunny day in early June, it let loose this mortal coil. And, like every other piece of technology I’ve ever owned, the touch screen stopped responding at the worst possible moment—as I was in a cab on my way to the first leg of a two-week trip.

Upon landing in Los Angeles, my first stop was an Apple store, where one of the Apple-proclaimed “geniuses” explained my options. My first choice was to get a replacement phone for a mere $200 (I hadn’t bothered to buy the extended warranty). My other option was simply to pound sand. I took my busted phone and bid the Apple store and its smug “geniuses” farewell, vowing to never buy another iPhone.

Next stop was AT&T to purchase a new, non-iPhone phone. I put my name on the we’ll-help-you-when-we’re-good-and-damn-well-ready list, and started looking at phones. After an hour or so of waiting, I walked out of the building with a new Blackberry Bold and considered my mission accomplished.

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Posted 09/01/09 at 04:45:11 PM by Will Smith

We computer nerds all have our favorite applications and utilities—you know, the software we absolutely cannot live without. You’re certainly already familiar with many of my personal faves (I always install Firefox, Digsby, and Dropbox), but developers are constantly releasing new software, so my list is always evolving. And so, without further delay, I give you my favorite apps and utilities, as selected during the first half of 2009.

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Posted 08/11/09 at 02:45:11 PM by Will Smith

After 15 years of building and upgrading PCs, I’ve made some awesome upgrades to my own PCs. These hardware updates either opened the doors to exciting new functionality, or served as force multipliers, greatly increasing my rig’s performance in one fell swoop. Best of all, a killer upgrade can even revitalize a tired old rig.

Now, there’s a subtle difference between upgrades and a complete system overhaul, but for my purposes, an upgrade is anything you can do without reinstalling Windows. Here’s my definitive list of My All-Time Top Five Greatest PC Upgrades:

See the list after the jump!

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Posted 07/29/09 at 11:30:33 AM by Will Smith

Battery-life claims never seems to line up with reality. You’d think testing battery life would be straightforward, but benchmark results rarely jibe with real-world results—in part, because there are an infinite number of potential workloads (each tapping power differently), and battery life decays over time. Both Intel and AMD make mobile CPU platforms designed for low power consumption, but due to the massive number of variables involved, I’ve found it nearly impossible to determine which architecture sucks the least juice.

Think about it. There’s a lot of hardware in a laptop that can affect battery life besides the CPU and the battery itself: the LCD screen and backlight, the optical and hard drives, the GPU, chipset, and memory config—to name just a few. The upshot is that if you want to fairly compare Intel and AMD hardware, you really need to test what we’ll call core power draw, isolating all the other variables. There are just a handful of ways to do this fairly, and each comes with its own problems.

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Posted 07/20/09 at 08:00:00 AM by Will Smith

In times of hardship, it’s important that we, the people, step up and do our civic duty. That’s why, in light of the harsh economic conditions we all face today, I implore everyone to spend more money on computers. LOTS more money. With hardware vendors reporting the worst holiday season of all time, they desperately need you to buy more components and build new PCs. And so-called “budget” machines won’t cut the mustard. You need to buy $1,000 CPUs and multiple $500 videocards. Think 6GB of RAM is enough? Think again. Now, all this PC construction will undoubtedly require tough sacrifices in other areas: Your kids may not get to go to “college.” You may need to cut back on your “food” budget. You may need to turn off non-essential services like “water” and “garbage collection.” Just remember that baloney and ramen taste better when you have a rig that can run Crysis at 2560x1600 with everything turned all the way up. Yes, power user, some things are worth tough sacrifices.

Wait. That’s terrible advice.

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