It’s been a while since we’ve seen a proper FEAR game. After Monolith’s 2005 original, there were a couple of very mediocre expansions made by a different studio. When Monolith got the franchise back, we expected great things from its second outing; sadly, FEAR 2: Project Origin never really comes into its own.

As a shooter, it brings nothing new to the table—it tries to excite us with the exact same slow-motion combat system that made the first game captivating four years ago, but is simply not enough this time. Even though the enemies are a little more lifelike than most shooter foes, in that they can realistically vault over obstacles and blind-fire at you from behind cover, fighting legions of mercenaries and clone troopers gets old after a few hours. A few sections with agile wall-crawling enemies are the only engaging moments, but everything else is typical shooter fare—that includes sections where you drive a giant mech and mow down enemy soldiers like cutting grass. It’s been done before, and even though it looks pretty here, it’s nothing out of the ordinary.

The recession is getting so bad that stock market refugees are snapping up Treasury bills at 0.2 percent interest, and car dealers have tried everything but adding immortality to their option packages. So you would think that a hot-selling product would be universally welcomed.

Netbook computers are a rare bright spot in a dimming economy. They’re selling faster than copies of Foreclosure for Dummies. The Asus Eee PC opened the door. Now there are too many to count.

However, critics say netbooks might be a bad thing. Their reasoning is that most netbooks use Intel’s Atom processor, which costs less and has lower profit margins than Intel’s other mobile processors. Atom’s popularity, they say, might actually hurt Intel and drag down profits for system vendors and their suppliers.

Continue reading after the jump!

I’m in the middle of building the Pro Gaming PC from your website (www.maximumpc.com/tags/parts+guide) and I have a question about the operating system you recommend. The Vista 64-bit Home Premium on your parts list is the system builder pack, intended for system builders only. I am a home user.

I went to Microsoft’s website and looked up the OPK preinstallation information. I have to register with my business information, of which I have none.

Should I send it back and purchase the end-user’s version? Please respond... I am on pins and needles waiting for the reply.

—Debra Hodge

That shiny new netbook is light and portable, plays music and movies, and cost less than an iPhone (with service). Problem is: you might be ready to chuck it off a bridge. Running the Intel Atom processor at only 1.60GHz, netbooks are a bit on the clunky side when it comes to actual data processing. No one is going to play World of Warcraft on one of these thin machines, but it sure would be great if OpenOffice, a music player, and Mozilla Firefox could run a little faster.

The answer to the netbook dilemma is: find an alternative operating system. Of course, this is a time-consuming proposition, considering you have to download the OS, burn it to a CD or USB key, load the OS, and then configure it. To find out which OS will actually add pep to your Sony P – or any number of low-cost, Atom-based netbooks – we loaded six different options on the same machine and performed a series of tests – looking at the interface, networking features, the browser and built-in apps, and how much customization you can do and ended up picking a clear winner.

Linux or Windows? Read on to find out which OS is best for your netbook.

PC gaming began on mainframes and research computers. It moved to personal computers when independent developers put their games on floppy disks, sealed them in Ziploc bags with Xeroxed art, and sold them in hobby stores. If it is going to have a future that is not yoked to console design paradigms, we are going to have to recapture those roots and start paying closer attention to the small developers who are designing with us, and not 14-year-old console gamers, as their primary market.

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Imagine having your car serviced and finding 100 unexplained miles on the odometer, plus evidence that burglary tools had been stashed in the trunk. Would you be pissed? I was.

Except it was my computer, not my car, that a repair shop messed with.

We’re so focused on threats coming from the Internet that it’s easy to forget the hazards closer to home. The best antivirus software, firewalls, and spyware scanners are worthless when someone violates a trusted relationship. Maybe you can learn from my experience.

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On my old Windows XP PC, I used Audacity to record music, etc., from the Internet with great results.

Recently I bought a Dell XPS 420 with Windows Vista 64-bit and now Audacity (or even the PC’s Creative Sound recording software) can’t record any audio. I came across some related forums and tried a couple of suggestions (check disabled items on the Sound properties, etc.), which haven’t worked.

In XP I used the Stereo Mix setting in Audacity but in Vista I don’t have that option. And recording from the mic isn’t an option, either. Is this a Vista “feature”? If so, how can I record audio from the Internet? Vista has grown on me so I’d rather not downgrade to XP.

For years, Congressman Rick Boucher of Virginia wandered the desolate wilderness reserved for lawmakers who speak sensibly about copyright and the Internet. Well, given that criteria, the desolate wilderness was reserved for Rick Boucher. He’s been in Congress since 1983 and self-identifies as a techno-geek. Boucher is a different kind of politician—ours—loyal to a technology community few other representatives know exists. He has worked to legalize crypto export, expand rural broadband, support net neutrality, and has pushed back on copyright maximalism.

Boucher went so far as to say, “The recent extension of the copyright term by the Congress was wholly unjustified,” in a Slashdot interview in 2001. That’s right—Slashdot interview. Even Cory Doctorow described him as “the closest thing to a copyfighter in Congress.” (Boucher did vote for telecom immunity, confirming that no one is perfect.)

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I’m building a new system consisting of an Intel Q9650 processor, an EVGA 790i Ultra SLI mobo, an EVGA GTX 280 videocard, 2GB of Corsair Twin 3X2048-1600C7DHXG memory, a SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeGamer PCI soundcard, three SATA 500GB 5000AAKS Western Digital hard drives, and a retail version of Windows XP Pro with SP2. My BIOS is Phoenix Award. I have all default settings for everything in the BIOS except I disabled HD Audio.

When I try to load Windows, I get a generic blue screen that tells me to run a system diagnostic, do a memory check, and remove any mismatched memory or newly installed hardware. I’m wondering if I might have a conflict with the Corsair memory. The motherboard’s spec sheet states that it supports dual-channel DDR3 800/1,066/1,333, and SLI-ready memory up to 2,000MHz.

In a recent review of the 790i Ultra, you used 2GB of Crucial 1,333MHz on the mobo. Was this memory EPP 2.0, or do you need EPP 2.0 at slower speeds? My RAM is rated at 1,600MHz, but the BIOS tells me that EPP 2.0 is not detected. I have the latest BIOS version, but there is no listing for enabling SLI memory under the Advanced Chipset section in the FSB & Memory Config subsection. Does this appear if EPP 2.0 memory is detected? Can I run higher-speed non-EPP 2.0 memory, or would this create a conflict with Windows?

I also read in the “BIOS Tweaks” article (November 2008) that not addressing the AHCI issue could cause Windows to not load. I would like to eventually set up a RAID, but can I disable AHCI to load Windows or do I need to load AHCI drivers at the
F6 point?

Ringu, the movie that kicked off the Japanese horror craze, scared me as much the third time I saw it as it did the first. It’s a moody, unsettling movie that still packs a punch and its signal image of Sadako, a creepy little girl with long dark hair and ashen skin, quickly entered the visual vernacular.

Monolith did a fair job of exploiting elements of J-Horror to create a genuinely creepy FPS experience with FEAR (2005). The developer understood that Ringu was successful because a) it used atmospheric, psychological horror to produce unease, and b) relied on fleeting images of horror, glimpsed as if in passing. This, coupled with the relative freshness of J-Horror and its stock images, made FEAR one of the few truly frightening PC games in recent memory.

Continue reading after the jump!

How much are you willing to pay to upgrade to Windows 7? Microsoft thinks they know the answer. This week, the gang discusses the Windows 7 pricing announcement, comparing it to previous Windows launches and even the pricing of the other computing OS. Gordon clarifies Intel's new Core i3/i5/i7 branding structure, and Will gives his thoughts on the surprise acquisition of id Software by Zenimax. We also answer a few listener questions, and share the results of our Bing experiment. On top of that, Gordon delivers his weekly rant. 

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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The days of ugly Linux desktops are a thing of the past. Modern distros include many tools and options that enable them to look good and be more useful.

Unlike Windows, Linux has several different widget toolkits. The most well-known widget engines are GTK+, (distributed with GNOME) and QT. (pronounced “cute”) Widgets are the various elements which make up a program's GUI: scrollbars, arrows, checkboxes, etc. However, take note that QT or GTK widgets are not the same thing as desktop widgets.

Widgets and other things like window chrome (the toolbars, panels, etc. of a programs interface) and window decoration (the window's title bar, minimize/maximize/close buttons, and the window border) are the various elements that, when joined together, create a theme for QT or GTK. It is possible to modify the various themes in Linux to change how they look or even create your own. This article will address the various resources that are out there to help make your desktop look its best and help you get the most out of it.

After being out of the office last week, the gang is back to talk about this week's biggest tech headlines. Will and Norm recap their adventure at the Electronics Entertainment Expo, Gordon gets riled up over Apple's WWDC announcements, and we collectively anticipate upcoming Facebook's vanity URL service. facebook.com/willsmith, unfortunately, has already been claimed. We also try a bold experiment: using Bing as our default search engine for a week. How long before someone gives up and goes back to Google? And as always, we answer a few listener questions and bring you Gordon's rant of the week. All this plus more in this edition of the No BS podcast!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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Troubleshooting has always been one of the most frustrating aspects of computer ownership. Due to the practically infinite number of potential problems, it would be utterly impossible to write a how-to guide to fix all of them, but in this article we are going to address some of the most common problems and then present more generalized guidelines that will help you troubleshoot your own problems in an emergency.

OS X is out there. You’ve seen it in coffee shops, on TV, in the laps of hipsters at the local taqueria. There‘s no shame in wondering what all the fuss is about. Hell, it’s healthy to mix it up a little bit. If only the idea of sending Steve Jobs and the rest of Apple, Inc. thousands of your hard-earned dollars didn’t send you into a cold sweat that only a game of Left4Dead can cure. Still, OS X is the subject of many glowing reviews. Even hardcore PC users are singing its praises. If you have the itch to try out OS X, but you’re not down with shelling out the cash for a new Mac, we have one word for you: Hackintosh.

When Apple announced the move to Intel processors for its computer lineup, the search was on for a practical way to install OS X on non-Apple hardware. Over the years, the best way to achieve this feat was to patch a retail version of the OS X install from Apple. Users would scour the Internet for the patches—always hoping that what they downloaded was indeed the correct patch, and not some virus or trojan horse ready to wreck havoc on their PCs.

But these days the quest for OS X needn’t be so perilous. Read on to see how an inventive little USB device can let you easily dual boot OS X on non-Apple hardware, using a legitimate copy of OS X.

Imagine a world in which all cars are like the Toyota Prius: four-door midsize hybrids. Sure, they aren’t bad cars, you can paint them any way you want and even modify some parts, but in the end you still just have a generic Toyota with a funky paint job.

That’s the world of personal computing today. It doesn’t matter if you’re running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux. Your machine is almost certainly using Intel chips at its core and almost everything else is fairly generic—even the world’s greatest case mod with water-cooled dual-Xeons and quad-SLI graphics is just a really fast PC.

This was definitely not the case 35 years ago. A quick tour of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, reveals machines that were as varied and unique as the companies that made them.

The microprocessors, if there even was one, were supplied by Intel, MOS, Zilog, RCA, or any number of other companies. Memory was static, dynamic, and shift-register. And without the Internet, programs were loaded from paper tape, punched cards, cassette tape, floppy disks, cartridge, or even manually switched in by hand.

In the following pages, we take a close look at some of the most influential personal computers of the past 40 years. From pre-microprocessor machines to the venerated IBM PC, each of these systems contributed in some way to the modern personal computing era.

No Star Trek talk this week. Scout's honor. Instead, the gang talks about futuristic technology that's here today! Several technology conferences going on this week hosted product announcements from Google and Microsoft. At the I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced their support for HTML 5 and the ambitious Wave service. 550 miles away in San Diego, Microsoft revealed their Bing search engine that will replace Live Search. The team also tries out Hulu's desktop application, and ponders its ramifications for Boxee. As always, we take a few listener questions and Gordon spills his thoughts on James Bond in his rant of the week. Join us for all this and more on this week's No BS Podcast!

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

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