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NewsWhat's going on with Voodoo? Founder Rahul Sood Gives an Update

Posted 09/18/09 at 08:37:46 PM by Ryan Whitwam

After HP acquired high-end PC maker Voodoo, everyone expected to see a lot of their products coming out of HP. That didn’t happen. Dell has kept the Alienware brand highly visible, and they were acquired around the same time. Voodoo’s Rahul Sood has posted an update to his blog to tell everyone just what happened to the venerable maker of really expensive PCs.

According to Sood, Voodoo still exists, and the long silence was something of a transitional period to get the company completely integrated with HP. “Voodoo, as you all know, was to be integrated into the larger business units so we could take some of our ideas and products to a much larger audience,” Sood wrote in his blog.

Indeed, the HP Envy 13 and 15 are good examples of the effects Voodoo has had on HP. Sood explained that the “Voodoo DNA” branding was removed from the laptops because Voodoo didn’t technically design them, HP did. He pointed out that HPs designs have changed dramatically in the last 3 years largely because of Voodoo. The Voodoo founder said the company was changing from a manufacturer, into “something beyond”. The take away seems to be that you’ll probably see some Voodoo branding in the future, but their main goal is to advance HP products as a whole.

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ReviewsBurnout Paradise

Posted 07/20/09 at 07:00:00 AM by Evan Lahti

Don’t tell Newton: Ramming your hot rod full-speed into a concrete block, idling minivan, or in-game ad billboard in Burnout Paradise doesn’t really slow you down. The game is a steady, fuel-injected dose of momentum from spark plug to finish line. Pushing over Paradise City’s 20 square miles of pavement for just an hour means accumulating new cars, completing events, knocking over barriers to find shortcuts or spontaneous jumps, earning license upgrades, setting street-specific high scores, or just streaking a newfound scenic route with rubber.

The game combines the feel of impulsive, mission-based sandbox titles like Grand Theft Auto and Tony Hawk with loose, forgiving, driving mechanics—making for disposable, whimsical racing with a persistent career and surprisingly good online mode. Every major intersection in the city is a gateway to a racing event. Spin your wheels at a stoplight and you’ll activate a point-to-point race or one of four other variations on the standard sprint: Road-rage events have you side-swiping a set number of opponents within a time limit, stunt runs are all about racking up points with long drifts and high jumps, and in our favorite, “marked man,” you’ll try to escape a set of ominous black sedans before they can smear you into the median. There are vehicle-specific challenges, too, and as you spend more time in Paradise City, you can earn the keys to rival cars roaming the streets by pushing them off the road.

Continue reading this review after the jump.

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How-TosHow To: Run Windows Games on Linux

Posted 11/04/08 at 03:00:00 PM by Jean-Paul Connock

It’s OK, Linux users. We understand your pain. Gaming on your open-source platform is, for the most part, restricted to similarly open-source or freeware titles from independent developers. You don’t often receive the same love that Windows users enjoy from triple-A game developers. But your time spent in the dark can now end: We’re going to show you how to play the latest PC-only titles on your Linux distribution of choice.

We’re using a program called Wine to simplify the process of running Windows-based games on a Linux platform. Unlike virtualization applications such as VMware, Wine is not an emulator. An emulator is a wrapper that allows one operating system to run within another. This wrapper hides the primary OS from its windowed love child, creating a software bubble for the second OS to play in. Since emulators run a complete OS within this virtualized bubble, the performance hit can be staggering and hinders gaming on all but the most powerful PCs.

Wine avoids this problem by implementing a set of routines (or APIs) used by applications to communicate with Windows. Rather than emulate them, Wine uses a compatibility layer that translates system calls from Windows to Linux and vice versa. If you’re still confused, relax. You don’t need to understand how it works. You just need to know that Wine is free and easy to configure and will have you up and gaming in no time!

Find out how after the jump.

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No BS PodcastNo BS Podcast #73 The Red, White & Blue Edition

Posted 07/02/08 at 07:45:42 PM by Tom Edwards

Tom, Dave, Norm, and Andy get together to bring you a dose of tech news to listen to as you head out to celebrate the 4th of July. This week, Dave dresses up as Uncle Sam and discusses Microsoft's PC gaming strategy while Norm steps away from the Maximum PC pie-eating contest to discuss the upcoming iPhone launch.

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? 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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