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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.

Release Notes: This Column is Brought to You by the Letter T

Will Smith — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:22:50 -0500

In the spirit of trying new and exciting things in the year ahead, this month I decided to upend my column-writing strategy: Instead of writing about whatever’s stuck in my craw, I asked the folks following my Twitter stream to tell me what I should write about—a contest of sorts. The responses of my fellow Twitterinos ranged from mildly kooky to wildly off-topic, and while there’s absolutely no way to write about everything suggested, I’m going to give it the ol’ Maximum PC try. Here we go.

The first respondent, @terryrobinson, wanted to know, “What’s next after we win the battle against DRM and GNU becomes the standard software license?” Well, while I love your optimism, Terry, I think it’s much too early to dream of a post-DRM world. We’ve made good progress against DRM in music, but there’s a long road in front of us with respect to movie and game content. And no one’s even talking about electronic books, like the Kindle and its proprietary locked format. So while I’m sure we’ll one day live in a magical Internet wonderland filled with open content, free software, and unicorns, for now at least, it remains a long way off.
Fellow Rock Band aficionado @strngwys wanted a column about how excited I am to unleash my inner Eddie Vedder when Ten is released this spring. No column required, stranger, just three words: REALLY, REALLY EXCITED.
I can tell @wunderbar that I’ve never met a cupcake I didn’t like, but I recently learned that Sprinkles cupcakes are worth a 90-minute drive—especially if that’s what your wife wants for her birthday. I’m partial to the peanut butter ones; they’re best enjoyed with a tall glass of milk.
One of my coworkers, JT, wanted me to write about one of three subjects I’m wildly unqualified to offer my opinion on: piracy off the coast of Sudan, the International Monetary Fund’s role in diplomacy, or popcorn-eating hamsters on pianos. The hamsters are awesome, JT. AWESOME.
Finally, @johntr wanted me to write about Twitter. While I might not know much about any of the aforementioned subjects in this column, I think I can safely say that I managed to knock this one out of the park. See you guys next month.

P.S.: People who sign up for my Twitter feed will have the only chance of winning in our Win a Tsotchke Trivia Contest. That’s right, I’m giving away all the cool vendor swag that’s sent to me, ranging from mouse pads to T-shirts to netbooks. The contest starts on January 20, so sign up soon!

Why Does Hollywood Give Nerds a Bad Rap?

Will Smith — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:51:30 -0500

I just returned from a special theater screening of War Games—quite possibly the only good film Hollywood has ever produced about computers, computer nerds, or hacker culture. Shockingly, the movie, which was first released in 1983, holds up quite well, despite the use of archaic hardware (acoustic couplers and vocoder boxes), a laughable sentient military supercomputer, and an occasional lapse into typical Hollywood lingo.

The abundance of 8-inch floppy disks also gave people in the theater a laugh, as did the fact that characters were practically chain-smoking throughout the entire movie. Our biggest laugh came when the machine running the projector crashed—it displayed a Windows 2000 Start Menu, sending the nerd collective into hysterics—but none of the showing’s pervasive air of yestertech could take away from the fact that War Games remains awesome. It was well-researched, authentic, and sometimes downright prescient. After all, the main premise of the movie is about people dialing into military networks using modems. Who would have thought that just five years after the movie’s release, the military-focused ARPANET would be opened up to commercial interests, and very soon after that, the Internet as we know it would be born.

After the show, I lingered in the lobby with my fellow sweaty nerds and reminisced about good hacker movies. Well, we tried to, anyway. Aside from The Matrix (which was about a nerd but shares more DNA with Hong Kong martial arts flicks than anything else), there haven’t been any good films that explore the geekiest depths of computing—ever. Think about it for a minute: Hackers was at best laughable, a blatant attempt to capitalize on a legitimate underground phenomenon. Even movies that first appear to add a promising element of nerdom always end up doing something dumb, like tarnishing a tense computer-based drama with idiotic and unusable (but oh so very sexy) 3D interfaces. Yes, I’m talking about the IRIX 3D filesystem featured in Jurassic Park.

Where War Games showed a likeable kid who hacked simply because he wanted a peek at new games, the other movies portray computer nerds as socially inept at best. At worst, they paint computer nerds as dysfunctional, “let the world burn” anarchist types. Over the last 10 years, I’ve met thousands of people who, like me, describe themselves as computer nerds, but I’ve yet to meet a single anarchist hacker. Maybe those guys are all holed up in their moms’ basements, but my hunch is they’re just another fictional stereotype, manufactured by Hollywood to explain anything it fears or doesn’t understand.

I want to see some more good movies about people like me, computer nerds. Have I missed any forgotten classics? Is there anything I need to bump to the top of my Netflix queue? Let me know!

Waiting for a Windows Renaissance

Will Smith — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:55:52 -0500

I’ve written about Apple’s OS X many times before, and it’s no secret that I’ve long been impressed with Apple’s operating systems. This month, I reviewed the MacBook Air, which gave me the opportunity to spend some quality time with Apple’s latest OS, Leopard, and I had an epiphany: Windows users are in the same exact position that Mac users were in 1999.

Think back to the turn of the century. Windows 2000 was fresh and new. Power users were basking in the glow of a fully 32-bit operating system that supported power-user tasks, playing games, and listening to MP3s. It was a golden age for Windows users, with the promise of an even better version of Windows on the horizon. On the other side of the personal-computing fence, Apple folk were either struggling with the laughably antiquated Mac OS 9 or dealing with the not-ready-for-prime-time first release of OS X, which lacked crucial features like a 2D-accelerated desktop and native versions of popular apps. If you bought a Mac in early 2000, you had to choose between the old and busted OS 9 or the new but premature OS X.

Today, PC purchasers are in a similar situation. On one hand, we have XP. Windows XP isn’t quite as old and busted as OS 9 was back then, but it still suffers from security issues and doesn’t support the latest and greatest technologies. Then there’s Windows Vista. While Vista has definitely improved since launch, I don’t think many folks would describe it as a worthy successor to XP—especially people who have to act as tech support for friends and family.

Unfortunately, while Mac users could see the light at the end of the tunnel in 2000, Windows users are currently in limbo. As we went to press, we saw the first public demos of the next version of Windows—code-named Windows 7—and we were underwhelmed. For the sake of our platform, I sincerely hope that Microsoft starts showing us a Windows 7 that will inspire PC users in the same way that OS X inspired Mac users almost a decade ago.

On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to announce that Michael Brown is leaving the confines of the Maximum PC offices so that he can scour the PC universe as our Editor at Large. In his new role, Mike will cover a lot of the hardware products he has always reviewed, as well as write about emerging technologies and breaking news. I’m also pleased to announce that we’re adding another face to the Maximum PC staff. Norman Chan, PC Gamer’s long-suffering intern, has defected to Maximum PC to run our day-to-day web operations. Thanks Mike, and welcome Norm!

Ed Word: Welcome to the New MaximumPC!

Will Smith — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:59:22 -0500

Whew! It’s been a long few months, but I’d like to introduce everyone to the new, redesigned Maximum PC! It seems like just yesterday that I was telling you about the last Maximum PC redesign, but it’s actually been nearly three years. A lot has changed in that period, and it’s important that Maximum PC change with the times. Wait! Before you start writing angry letters, you should know that we haven’t changed the Maximum PC content you know and love, not one iota. We’ve just given the old girl a fresh coat of paint. I wouldn’t dream of changing an editorial formula that’s been so successful for almost 10 years.

What have we done to your magazine? The first thing you’ll probably notice is our brand-new section, The List. I’ve been a big fan of lists ever since I first saw Late Night with David Letterman. After consulting our attorneys, I discovered that there was absolutely no reason we couldn’t have a similar section in Maximum PC, and thus was born The List. Seriously though, we’ve got a killer umm... list of lists lined up, so make sure you check out the section every month. You’ll either laugh or cry, I promise.

I also want to introduce our new columnist. Joining Tom Halfhill and Thomas McDonald is Quinn Norton, who’s very excited to talk to you. Quinn comes to us from Wired News, and she’s going to cover everything from the battle against digital-rights management and crazy copyright legislation to the birth of extra-national data havens. Quinn’s got the digital freedom beat covered, and I’m thrilled to have her aboard.

You’ll also notice boatloads of less obvious changes as you flip through the redesigned mag. Font nerds will have already seen that we’ve switched most of the text in the magazine to a serif font to greatly increase readability, even at smaller font sizes. We’ve also isolated and removed many of the typesetting problems that caused us serious legibility problems in the past—hopefully, you guys can stop writing those angry letters too. We’ve renamed and revamped our Head2Head and In the Lab sections, too. Best of the Best is taking a brief sabbatical, but it will be back in a new form and better than ever in a few months.

So what do you think? Are you nervous? Scared? Slightly turned on? Either way, I’d love to hear your opinion about our new design. Study the mag, check out the changes, and shoot me an email or fill out our survey at http://maximumpc
.com/designsurvey for a chance to win a $250 Best Buy gift certificate.

Ed Word: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the iPhone

Will Smith — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:41:48 -0500

I had been a vocal critic of the iPhone since the beginning. I have very little use for a “smart” phone that doesn’t support third-party developers and the applications they build. I have even less tolerance for a smartphone that doesn’t support Exchange, which my company uses for email and calendaring. The iPhone supported neither of those features, which made it a no-buy for me.

Then, on a glorious morning in March, Steve Jobs erased both of those roadblocks at once, announcing native support for the Exchange ActiveSync protocol and a fully featured (albeit Mac-only) SDK for the iPhone. Coincidentally, on the very same day, the bottom row of keys on my clunky old Windows Mobile phone stopped working. I guess I could have charged on and learned to communicate without using the letters C, B, N, and M, but I just couldn’t sacrifice the comma and period. This was my perfect storm. At lunchtime, I trotted down to my local AT&T store and bought a shiny new 16GB iPhone.

I activated the phone and set up both my personal Gmail and my work Exchange email (using the built-in IMAP client). At this point it would have been handy to know that full Exchange support is coming via a firmware update in June. Oh well. I got the phone working using IMAP and a Gmail hack. I copied some MP3s from iTunes and was on my way.

I spent that evening playing with the iPhone and became simply entranced by the interface’s lightning-fast response time and well-thought-out default options. Even then, with the promise of full version 2.0 firmware just around the corner, it was mere hours before I strayed to the dark side. Lucky for me, jailbreaking new iPhones, and thus enabling the installation of thousands of third-party apps, is simpler than ever before. I downloaded ZiPhone and was running third-party apps in mere moments.

What amazes me most about the entire iPhone experience isn’t the intuitive multitouch interface, the gorgeous hardware-accelerated graphics, or even the slick integration between contacts, calendar, and the phone app. No siree. What amazes me most of all is that even the apps created by unsupported third parties, without the benefit of a real SDK, are polished to a high sheen and eminently usable. Well done, iPhone hacking community!

Of course, it’s not all wine and roses. The biggest downside to the whole iPhone purchase is that Gordon Mah Ung’s anti-Apple vitriol is no longer aimed at associate editor David Murphy but instead spewed directly at me.

Ed Word: The Maximum PC Promise to Readers

Will Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:30:08 -0600

There’s been a lot of Internet hubbub about editorial integrity recently. Exactly what “integrity” means is shifting at many publications—print and online—as barriers between editorial and advertising begin to blur. Luckily for me, Maximum PC still operates under the same rules we’ve had since I started working here more than seven years ago. Lest there be any misconceptions about where we stand, it’s time to reiterate our no-BS standards:

Our editorial and advertising departments operate independently

We maintain complete separation between the folks who create the editorial content and the people who sell the ads. We’re very serious about this, and, in fact, our whole company is structured to protect this separation. I report directly to our editorial director (former Maximum PC Editor in Chief Jon Phillips), and he reports directly to the company president. The germane factor here is that I don’t report to someone in ad sales, and if anyone on the sales team ever wanted to escalate complaints about our content, he would have to go through Phillips, who would take the issue to the president. Thanks to the integrity of our sales team, our church-state separation has remained pure during my entire tenure at Future US.

Maximum PC’s editorial content will be determined solely by the editorial team

We (the editors) determine the content of every editorial page, basing our decisions on what we think readers would be most interested in. The editorial team owns the content from initial conception to final execution, and we are the only ones who edit or modify it. The editorial staff determines which products will be reviewed, and all products are treated equally, regardless of whether they come from advertisers past or present.

Maximum PC will never accept payment for product coverage

Advertisers can’t buy their way onto the cover of the magazine, or anywhere inside it. Accordingly, when choosing hardware for challenges and how-to stories, our decisions are based entirely on product merit and appropriateness.

Our editors won’t take any form of compensation from vendors—be it cash, travel, or extravagant gifts

We don’t take money from vendors, and we don’t accept expensive gifts. We do keep coffee cups and other inexpensive tchotchkes, however, as they make good giveaways. Also, our editors are prohibited from working on advertorial content.

Neither our advertising department nor our advertisers are aware of review verdicts before an issue goes to press

We don’t make vendors aware of verdicts until it’s too late to change them. Likewise, our ad-sales department doesn’t have access to editorial content until after the magazine has shipped to the printer.

Maximum PC will continue to deliver fair coverage of all the products and technologies that you love, free of advertiser influence

Letting you know about great hardware, and warning you off of bad hardware, is why we’re here. We’ll continue doing it as long as you keep buying our magazine and coming to our website.

Ed Word: Do Not Chase Waterfalls

Will Smith — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 12:58:34 -0600

Every few years, the stars align and magic happens. No, I’m not talking about some sort of holiday miracle. I’m talking about those years when all the big hardware development cycles sync up, and we get major releases from a whole bunch of hardware vendors at the same time. That’s why I’m particularly excited about this year’s tech preview!

Starting on page 20 we’ve got the inside scoop on all the gear you’re going to be lusting after in ’08. With new kit just around the corner from Nvidia, Intel, and AMD, it’s an awesome time to be a power user. You can rest assured that the fastest gear you can buy today will not be the fastest gear you can buy six weeks from now. At the time of this writing, I don’t know who’s going to end up shipping the fastest videocard or CPU, and I won’t know until the hardware hits the Lab. The Maximum PC staff can make educated guesses based on architectural design and speeds and feeds, but we really won’t know how hardware dominance will shake out until the metal meets the road.

The inevitable question is, Should I upgrade now or wait for the new gear?

That’s what everyone wants to know—and the answer is always the same: It doesn’t matter what hardware is coming, what’s out now, or even what brand of hardware you prefer, the time to upgrade is the moment your rig is no longer fast enough for you. When your rig is too slow to play the games you want to play, when your videos take too long to encode, when you’re generally unhappy with your rig’s performance, that’s the right time to upgrade.

Here’s the thing: Unless you just bought top-of-the-line hardware two weeks ago, you can always use a little more juice under the hood. If you’re running an 18- or even 36-month-old rig, even midrange hardware in stores today will be faster than what’s running in your rig. And there are big benefits to upgrading just before next-gen gear goes to market. You pay less for “current-gen” parts, and this hardware will typically overclock a helluva lot better than earlier parts off the same production lines.

The moral of this story is simple: It’s fun to read about what’s coming next, but don’t get hung up waiting for it. There’s always something bigger, better, and faster around the corner. If you always wait for the next big thing, you’ll just keep running the same old, same old.