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Release Notes: What Exactly Is a Personal Computer?

Will Smith — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:30:18 -0600

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.

The gaming rig and the notebook clearly fit the classical definition of a PC, but what about the iPhone and Xbox 360? I’m not sure. Let’s see if we can figure out what gives a device its essential PC-ness.

In the old days, it was safe to say that an Intel CPU and a Microsoft OS made your computer a PC. But now other types of hardware and software are gaining ground on the WinTel duopoly. What makes my machines PCs is that they’re platforms—constructs that allow me to run software that does what I need, assuming it follows the basic rules of the platform. Network connectivity is key, as well. Without a connection to the net, computers are much less valuable. For the most part, I use my four PCs to browse the web, communicate with friends, play games, and work.

Does the Xbox 360 meet my essential PC-ness test? It’s definitely a platform that I use to play games and watch video, and it’s connected to the Internet. However, it’s a locked system, so I can only run Microsoft-authorized software on it and connect Microsoft-authorized hardware to it. I can’t write a word processor for Xbox 360 because Microsoft wouldn’t let me run it. Clearly, the Xbox 360 isn’t a personal computer.

The iPhone is a tougher question. It’s a closed platform, but there are mechanisms that let me run apps from a finite, but very large pool. The device is net-connected 24/7, and I find myself using my iPhone for many of the tasks that I once exclusively used a PC for. This is a new class of device that we call the smartphone—but I’d be hard pressed to describe a more personal computer than the one that I carry in my pocket with me everywhere.

Could you?

Release Notes: I Am Not, Nor Have I Ever Been, a Fanboy

Will Smith — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:00:00 -0500

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.

This revelation prompted further study into the fanboy syndrome. I stopped discriminating, and started engaging them. It turns out that the sources of motivation for the modern fanboy can be as varied as the products that they love. Nonetheless, after much study, I was able to classify fanboys into a few major archetypes:

The Underdog: One of the most common fanboy types, the Underdog throws his weight behind the long-shot. As self-described hopeless romantics, Underdogs shift allegiances with nearly every product cycle.

The Investor: With a strict eye toward preserving the capital expended on any particular product, the Investor frequently reads and argues about reviews of products he already owns, and rarely sees value in upgrading a product that he’s invested his money (and thus, his self-worth) in.

The Contrarian/Non-Conformist: Students of fanboyism commonly confuse these archetypes. They share similarities, but to the trained eye the key difference is simple: Contrarians like products because you dislike them, while Non-Conformists like them because everyone else dislikes them.

The Antiquarian: The Antiquarian’s motto says it all: “If it’s new, it’s overpriced crap.” Antiquarians can frequently be found dumpster-diving behind Fry’s, looking for “perfectly serviceable” parts that are “just” 10 years old.

The Historian: You know that guy with the Commodore 64 ticking along in the corner? He’s the Historian. Odds are, he’s still running a crappy Cyrix CPU, because “Cyrix made bitchin’ x86-compatible CPUs in 1993.” Don’t waste your breath arguing with Historians.

So, where do I fit in? I’m not a fanboy at all. I simply buy whatever is fastest and gives me the functionality I need. Where do you fit in?

Release Notes: On the Cusp of an Augmented Reality Revolution

Will Smith — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:35:19 -0500

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.

More recently in the real world, augmented reality has been used in advertisements, rendering 3D animations attached to 2D surfaces you hold up in front of a webcam. (Check these sites for demos: http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/ and http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/mini-augmented-reality-advertising-a-reality.html). The Mini-Cooper ad is especially neat, because you can explore a 3D rendering of a car using a 2D ad and your PC. To date, the applications of augmented reality tech have been cool, but not particularly useful.

That’s about to change. Armed with GPS sensors, accelerometers, and compasses, many smartphones—like the iPhone 3GS and Google Android phones—have the hardware required to determine your position and orientation in the world. With that info, your phone will be able to display a HUD, overlaying info from the Internet atop a direct feed from your phone’s camera.

The first of these apps is likely to be acrossair’s Nearest New York Subway app for the iPhone. The videos we’ve seen of the app are amazing—hold the phone parallel to the ground and you see a traditional 2D map of NYC’s subway system, complete with your location. When you hold the phone perpendicular, the camera turns on. As you rotate, it displays icons revealing the direction to and the key info for the nearest subway stations over a live feed from the camera. (To see the video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps49T0iJwVg.)

As computing becomes more integrated with our day-to-day life, it becomes easy to envision ever-more-interesting use cases. I’d love a presence app—like Loopt or Google Latitude—that lets me see public profile information of people who share my coordinates in meatspace. Right now, I have no way of knowing that the guy standing next to me on the bus is my college roommate’s brother-in-law. But if my phone played a quick game of Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon with his Facebook profile, I might end up talking about something more interesting than the Giants’ game on our shared bus ride. In fact, with a large enough social circle, I may never meet another stranger again.

I can’t help but think that that would enrich my life. Isn’t that what technology is for?

Release Notes: Sometimes It's Good to Buy the Extended Warranty

Will Smith — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:30:00 -0500

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.

Of course, when I returned to my car, it had a parking ticket on it. And, frankly, things went downhill from there. Connecting the Blackberry to my company’s mail server took multiple calls to our IT department, a call to AT&T, and the sacrifice of one chicken. (Well, actually we ate fried chicken for dinner and I dropped a drumstick on the ground by accident, but that still counts.) After more than a year using the iPhone, acclimating to the Blackberry was difficult. I had become accustomed to the convenience of the iPhone. I liked carrying 16GB of music, but I loved having access to thousands of apps in the App Store, so naturally I went searching for replacements. While I found Blackberry apps that connected me to Twitter and Facebook, I didn’t find analogues for other apps I regularly use—the ones that help me manage my expenses, find a good spot to eat, or entertain myself. Hell, the built-in web browser even choked on some pages. While I eventually managed to connect my calendar to the Bold, I mourned the loss of everything else—from Yelp to Flight Control.

After a week of use, it was clear that the Blackberry Bold wasn’t a good fit for me. Yes, it did excel in a few areas—namely, download speeds, mail, instant messaging, and maps—but it still had to go. On the day I returned the Bold, Apple announced a new iPhone and a price cut. And after careful consideration, I swallowed my pride and pre-ordered an iPhone 3GS.

Whether I like the way Apple treats its customers or behaves in general, I can’t argue with good tech. And the iPhone remains one helluva piece of hardware.

Also, this time I bought the extended warranty.

[Editor's Note: This edition of Release Notes was originally published in our September 2009 issue]

Release Notes: My 5 Favorite Apps & Utilities, the Early 2009 Edition

Will Smith — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:45:11 -0500

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.

5. The Magic Folder

This Vista and Windows 7 widget will keep a constant watch over any folder and automatically sort the files in it based on extension. It’s an incredibly simple concept with a ton of killer uses. I set it to watch my Downloads folder and sort out media files, photos, and applications for maximum effect. http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=0ed6a06a-6782-41a7-b68c-2753fad412a5

4. Zune Player

I’ve been an iTunes user since it launched, but as the years have gone by, the Windows version has gotten slower and less responsive. Today, it takes roughly 16 weeks to launch iTunes, and starting playback of a single track can take a fortnight. Lucky for me, the Zune player (which requires neither a subscription to the Zune music service nor a Zune hardware device) is totally rad. Fast search, good browsing, killer visualizations, and it will watch my music folder and automatically add new tracks as I add them. That’s awesome. www.zune.com

3. Remember the Milk

As a person who’s chronically disorganized, Remember the Milk gives me a universally accessible task list that helps me keep my priorities straight. RtM is web-based, so I can add to and update my task list from all my devices—laptop, desktop, and iPhone—without worrying about sync problems. www.rememberthemilk.com

2. Enso

Given the choice, I’d much rather start an application or run a command using the keyboard than the mouse. Moving your hand to the mouse takes time, and using the mouse increases the likelihood of developing repetitive stress injuries. Enso lets you do everything—opening apps or recent documents, performing simple calculations, or anything else you’d like (it’s customizable)—at a convenient command line. www.humanized.com/enso

1. Synergy

I have two computers on my desk, but only one keyboard and mouse. How do I manage it? Synergy. Synergy lets me share the keyboard and mouse with multiple PCs (or Macs, or Linux boxes) using the power of the network. It’s a little bit of a hassle to set up, but once it’s running, it’s OK by me. http://synergy2.sourceforge.net

That’s my current list. Let me know what your favorite apps are! Email me at will@maximumpc.com or shoot a message to @willsmith on Twitter.

Release Notes: My All-Time Top Five Greatest PC Upgrades

Will Smith — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:45:11 -0500

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:

5. Athlon 64 X2 4800 to Core 2 Quad QX6600

When I upgraded my CPU from a dual-core Athlon to a quad-core Core 2, ripping my entire DVD collection suddenly became a real, tenable possibility. Where the X2 4800 took four hours to rip to DIVX or WMV 9, my trusty Q6600 could do more-demanding H.264 encodes at DVD resolution in just about real-time.

4. Voodoo 2 SLI to GeForce DDR

The launch of the original GeForce DDR marked the last time a 3dfx card graced my system. That first GeForce featured a hardware transform-and-lighting engine that was the precursor to today’s infinitely programmable GPUs. That power finally convinced me to retire my trusty pair of Voodoo 2 boards running in SLI.

3. Wang 386 SX 25MHz to Pentium 60

Let’s face it, my old Wang was a slow, slow computer, even when it was brand new. The upgrade to a Pentium 60 opened the door to the world of photo editing and multiplayer gaming, with Doom, Duke3D, and eventually Quake.

2. GeForce 4 Ti 4600 to Radeon 9700

The launch of the Radeon 9700 marked the beginning of the modern programmable graphics era. With support for the nascent DirectX 9 standard in the form of Shader Model 2.0, the 9700 Pro not only opened the door to DirectX 9, it also was a performance beast in the DirectX 8 games I was actually playing.

1. Pentium 2 SL2W8 to Dual Celeron 300a

The SL2W8 was the Celeron 300a’s rich cousin—a 300MHz Pentium 2 designed for a 66MHz bus. It just so happened to run like gangbusters on a 100MHz bus, giving overclockers a cool 150MHz speed boost. I dropped the SL2W8 in a heartbeat when Abit launched the BP6—a dual-Socket 370, 440BX-equipped mobo designed to run two Celeron 300a procs running at 450MHz. It was an incredible machine, and opened the door to the world of Windows NT, CD ripping, and photo editing for me.

What was your best PC upgrade? I’d love to hear, either via email (will@maximumpc.com) or shoot me a message on Twitter—my username is @willsmith.

Release Notes: Notebook Battery Life is a Trap

Will Smith — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:30:33 -0500

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.

The best approach would be to test notebooks that are identical save their chipset and CPU. Indeed, if there were a notebook family with the same battery, display, drives, etcetera, that came in Intel and AMD flavors, that would be perfect. We would be able to test performance and battery life (and the relationship between the two) for results relevant to both test machines as well as the broader AMD-versus-Intel debate. This would be the best-case scenario, but unfortunately, these machines don’t exist.

A slightly more realistic option would be to get reference boards from AMD and Intel and put them in a machine with dual power supplies. The mobo, CPU, GPU, and memory would draw from one supply, and everything else would pull from the other. With this config in place, we’d simply measure the power draw of the PSU connected to the motherboard and the benchmark results of both systems.

This is a totally artificial test, but it perfectly isolates the stuff we want to test. That said, were we to go down this path, we could give readers the wrong impression that the CPU, chipset, and GPU are the only things that matter for battery life. If a reader looks at the benchmarks and thinks, “Oh, vendor A has better battery life,” he’s going to be pissed when he buys a big desktop replacement with the winning architecture, but also a 17-inch panel and a puny 3-cell battery, and gets just 30 minutes off a full charge.

So, you see the dilemma. This is why I always say that battery-life testing is a trap. Either I test in a way that actually measures the performance of the CPU, chipset, and GPU, or I give readers actionable buying advice. But I don’t think I can do both at the same time. What do you guys think? Write an email, or let me know via Twitter (http://twitter.com/willsmith).

Release Notes: Don't Let Economic Woes Keep YOU from Being Maximum

Will Smith — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:00:00 -0500

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.

I don’t want you to mortgage your children’s future or live on reconstituted noodles for the sake of a few extra frames per second. When times are hard—and I know that they’re hard for a lot of folks right now—necessities come first. And as much as we’d all like to think that a 30-inch flat panel and a new videocard are necessities, they aren’t. However, just because times are tough doesn’t mean you can’t continue to follow the basic spirit of our Pure PC Power philosophy. It simply means you’ll need to work on getting more from your existing rig.

That’s what we’re going to do in Maximum PC. Sure, we’ll still tell you all about the latest, greatest hardware, but in addition to that, we’re going to devote more pages to showing you how to get more from the kick-ass PC that’s already under your desk. Our first step is to expand our how-to section, adding pages and running multiple step-by-step DIY guides every single month. We’re also going to ever-so-slightly tweak our approach to product reviews. Maximum PC has always lauded raw performance at pretty much any cost. We’re not changing that, but we are going to seek out and make special note of products that offer great performance for a great value. Finally, due to popular demand, we’ve brought Best of the Best back to the magazine, and made it better than ever. In addition to all the classic categories, we’ve added CPU recommendations and also included budget and midrange suggestions for every category where they make sense. Check it out at http://www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best.

Let me know what you think of the changes we’ve made and be sure to send me your favorite PC performance tweaks. As always, you can reach me at will@maximumpc.com.