Posted 01/08/09 at 02:17:34 PM by Mark Edward Soper

The economy might be down, but Microsoft's betting a lot of your technology-challenged friends and relatives still bought or received new PCs this Christmas. Want to give them a helping hand - and give yourself more free time to get back to your favorite deathmatch or chat session? Tell them to surf over to Microsoft's new Windows Guides website and download - or email - some help.

Redmond has put together a nice assortment of simple guides for various chunks of the Windows Vista computing universe. Whether your family and friends have questions about Windows Media Center, gaming, working on the go, PC and family security, photo editing and sharing, or just getting started with the Windows desktop, adding new hardware, networking, printing, or getting remote assistance, there's a guide for them.

To learn more, join us after the jump.

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Posted 12/18/08 at 12:00:00 PM by Benson Hong & Florence Ion

In October, we spec’ed out a respectable $800 gaming PC in our monthly Buyer’s Guide feature. While the price and parts looked promising, we had to see for ourselves if this sub-$1000 system could hold its ground against today’s top rigs. After all, if you don’t need to spend your next month’s paycheck on performance parts, why should you?

We had to make some careful choices to keep this machine within our constrained budget, but in the end we were surprised by this little PC’s kick ass performance. Want to learn how to build it yourself? We’ll walk you through our meticulous build process, explain why we chose each component, and give you our final thoughts on the benchmark results this little-PC-that-could throws down.

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Posted 09/08/08 at 07:04:16 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

In the PDF archive of the August 2008 issue, you can find:

• PC vs. MacBook Notebook Battle!
• Ultimate Guide to Firefox 3
• Nvidia's Next-Gen GTX 280 GPU Unveiled!
• How To: Create your own Internet TV Show!
• Awesome Product Reviews, including MSI's new P35 Combo Platinum mobo!
• Ask the Doctor
• Rig of the Month
• The Watchdog
• And a whole lot more!

Click the big giant cover image to the right to download the PDF archive today!

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Posted 04/16/08 at 04:57:50 PM by Michael Brown & Will Smith

Home-entertainment technology has lent new meaning to the phrase ‘home box office,’ but can any of the new on-demand Internet movie services really deliver the big-screen experience? We examine the top eight options to find out .

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