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Slide 2: Release Notes I The Ultimate Tip just finished writing my very first book, and man, are my fingers, hands, and arms tired. The tome is called Maximum PC 2005 Buyer’s Guide and will be in book stores and on Amazon.com at the end of the summer. The goal of the book is to help you make the smartest possible decisions for all of your PC component purchases. We do this by detailing how the Maximum PC editors test and evaluate products in each of 13 different categories: mobos, videocards, hard drives, prebuilt PCs, etc. The book takes a look back at the last 12 months’ worth of innovations and changes in each PC component category. Not surprisingly, this presented several challenges. While product groups like PC speakers changed very little, other categories like videocards, hard drives, and CPUs, changed considerably. I have a newfound appreciation for the writers of contemporary historical nonfiction. Several times during the course of writing the 2005 Buyer’s Guide, I had to go back and make wholesale changes and/or additions. As an example, right when I finished the chapter on CPUs, Intel announced sweeping changes to its short- and long-term strategies for its CPU designs. D’oh! (By the way, for an interesting and alternative perspective on these changes, make sure you read Tom Halfhill’s Fast Forward column on page 14.) I also gained tremendous respect for my upper extremities. Publishing a magazine by day and writing a book by night definitely takes a toll. About a month ago, my right inner elbow started burning and then going numb after about four hours of work. I’ve suffered torn ligaments that hurt less. My doctor diagnosed the problem as the geek’s equivalent of tennis elbow. The cure? Ice, Advil, and less time in front of my PC. As if! Ultimately, I did follow his advice, and the pain has subsided, but the whole experience left me feeling extremely humbled. After all—and if you’re reading this magazine, this probably applies to you, too—if I were to lose the ability to use my arms, my life as I know it would be over. Even more humbling, my doctor told me that over the next five to 10 years, he, along with doctors everywhere, expects to see an “epidemic” of repetitive stress-related injuries. So, while you’ll find a plethora of useful PC fix-it tips in our “Ultimate Troubleshooting Guide” on page 22, my tip is slightly more human: Whether you’re playing games, writing e-mail, or programming, make sure your posture is ergonomically correct, and that you take frequent breaks. Humans aren’t like PCs—when we break, we often stay broken. And, for the time being, it’s impossible to buy a new body. —GEORGE JONES george@maximumpc.com Contents Page 12 The fate of PDAs Page 96 One man’s dream realized Page 18 The Plasma 2 System 08.04 REGULARS 8 In/Out You write, we respond 12 Quick Start PC previews, news, and factoids 18 Head2Head 20 WatchDog This month: Ergonomic office chairs Maximum PC takes a bite out of bad gear 50 Ask the Doctor 52 How To... Symptom, diagnosis, cure This month: Supercharge Windows XP 56 In the Lab A behind-the-scenes look at Maximum PC product testing 96 Rig of the Month It’s amazing what a person can do with a PC! REVIEWS 58 Desktop PC: Marauder Plus 64 59 Laptop PC: Sharp Actius PC-MM20 60 Wi-Fi router: SMC 2304WBR-AG 60 Wi-Fi router: Netgear WGT624 61 PDA: PalmOne Zire 31 61 PDA: PalmOne Zire 72 62 External hard drive: Kanguru Quicksilver Combo 120GB 62 External hard drive: SimpleTech SimpleDrive 400GB 64 Dual-layer DVD burner: Sony DRU-700A 65 Tablet PC: Compaq tc1100 66 External hard drive: DiskGO! 80GB USB 2.0 66 Optical drive: PlexWriter PW-712A 68 Headphones: Sennheiser PC155 USB 69 Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe 70 Universal remote: Harmony H688 70 Monitor color calibrator: Pantone ColorPlus 71 Hitman: Contracts 71 Thief: Deadly Shadows 72 City of Heroes 72 Lineage II:The Chaotic Chronicle GAMES AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 3
Slide 3: MAXIMUMPC EDITORIAL Contents AUGUST George Jones Katherine Stevenson Gordon Mah Ung Will Smith Logan Decker Josh Norem Andrew Sanchez Natalie Jeday Boni Uzilevsky Mark Madeo Samantha Berg EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MANAGING EDITOR SENIOR EDITOR TECHNICAL EDITOR FEATURES EDITOR DISC PRODUCER EDITOR EMERITUS ART ART DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR PHOTO EDITOR ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHER FEATURES 22 CONTRIBUTING EDITORS E. Will Greenwald, Tom Halfhill, Tae Kim, Thomas McDonald CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Alice Hill PRODUCTION Richard Lesovoy PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Glenn Sadin PRODUCTION COORDINATOR ADVERTISING Chris Coelho PUBLISHER Bernard Lanigan EASTERN AD DIRECTOR 646.723.5405 Troubleshooting Maximum PC Lab experts share their solutions to the 34 most common computer ailments. Dave Lynn WESTERN AD DIRECTOR Stacey Levy Anthony Danzi Nate Hunt Jose Urrutia Kathleen Reilly Tina K. Rogers Mimi Hall Angela Martinez Janet Amistoso Siara Nazir 949.360.4443 WESTERN AD MANAGER 925.964.1205 EASTERN AD MANAGER 646.723.5453 NATIONAL ACCT MANAGER 415.656.8536 ADVERTISING COORDINATOR 415.656.8313 MARKETING MANAGER CIRCULATION CIRCULATION DIRECTOR NEWSSTAND DIRECTOR FULFILLMENT MANAGER DIRECT MARKETING SPECIALIST ASSISTANT BILLING AND RENEWAL SPECIALIST BACK ISSUE REQUESTS 1.800.865.7240 REPRINTS PRINT AND DIGITAL Reprint Management Services Maggie French, 717.399.1900 x178 mfrench@reprintbuyer.com 42 PC Believe It or Not Some of the commonly held notions you have about personal commputing are actually myths. How to contact us: All subscription Inquiries 800.274.3421 or maxcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com Editorial staff input@maximumpc.com FUTURE NETWORK USA 150 North Hill Dr. Brisbane, CA 94005 415.468.4684 www.futurenetworkusa.com Jonathan Simpson-Bint Tom Valentino Charles Schug Holly Klingel Simon Whitcombe Chris Coelho Steve Aaron Jon Phillips Brad Tolinski Nancy Durlester Richie Lesovoy PRESIDENT VICE PRESIDENT/CFO VP/GENERAL COUNSEL VP/CIRCULATION PUBLISHING DIRECTOR (GAMES) PUBLISHING DIRECTOR (TECH) PUBLISHING DIRECTOR (MUSIC) EDITORIAL DIRECTOR (TECH) EDITORIAL DIRECTOR (MUSIC) DIR. OF CENTRAL SERVICES PRODUCTION DIRECTOR 34 Browser Booster 13 way to make Mozilla’s Firefox web browser even better. Take that, Internet Explorer! FutureNetworkUSAis part of FutureNetworkPLC FUTURE NETWORK PLC 30 Monmouth St., Bath, Avon, BA1 2BW, England www.thefuturenetwork.plc.uk Roger Parry NON-EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN Greg Ingham CHIEF EXECUTIVE John Bowman GROUP FINANCE DIRECTOR MAXIMUM PC (ISSN 1522-4279) is published monthly by Future Network USA, 150 North Hill Drive, Suite 40, Brisbane, CA 94005, USA. Periodical class postage paid in Brisbane, CA, and at additional mailing offices. Newsstand distribution is handled by Curtis Circulation Company. Basic subscription rates: one year (12 issues) US: $20; Canada: $26; Foreign: $42. Basic subscription rates “Deluxe” version (w/CD): one year (12 issues/12 CD-ROMs) U.S.: $30; Canada: $40; Foreign $56. US funds only. Canadian price includes postage and GST (GST#R128220688). Postmaster: Send changes of address to Maximum PC, P Box 5159, Harlan, IA .O. 51593-0659. Standard Mail enclosed in the following edition: None. Ride-Along enclosed in the following editions: B, C, C1 C2, C3. Int’l Pub Mail# 0781029. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement #40043631. Returns: 4960-2 Walker Road, Windsor ON N9A 6J3. For customer service, write Maximum PC, P .O. Box 5159, Harlan, IA 51593-0659; Maximum PC, 150 North Hill Drive, Brisbane, CA 94005. Future Network USA also publishes PC Gamer, PSM, MacAddict, and Official Xbox. Entire contents copyright 2003, Future Network USA. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. Future Network USA is not affiliated with the companies or products covered in Maximum PC. PRODUCED AND PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 5
Slide 4: In/Out THAT’S NO UPGRADE! In the July issue (“PC Makeovers”), you had three computers ready for makeovers. I understood most of the updates/upgrades to the first PC, as this is a realistic scenario for most of us average geeks. On the second PC upgrade, however, I think you guys went slightly overboard. I mean, the whole idea of upgrading is to keep as many of the older yet still usable parts! The one I disagree with most is the high-end box—you might as well have built a whole new computer, which you basically did. To make over this PC, it would have been more than sufficient to replace the CPU, the videocard, and the case. You write, we respond BTX BOOBOO? I was just reading the BTX article in the July issue (“Behold BTX!”), and was a little perplexed with the top photo in the story. Is the BTX case upside down? I was trying to envision it in my home, and then realized the Intel marking on the motherboard is upside down. If that’s true, will the power supply cables come from the front? If not, does this mean the PCI cards will be facing towards the front? I don’t know if I’m ready for wires coming out of the front of my PC’s case! XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX functionality has been disabled.” So what’s the deal? —PERRY SIKES —MIKE KAISER EDITOR IN CHIEF GEORGE JONES RESPONDS: We certainly understand that not everyone can afford the extravagant totality of the makeovers we presented in our July issue. However, the primary point of the story was to indicate a wide variety of component- and case-upgrading options that both budget-conscious and damn-thecost upgraders can and should take into consideration if they want to improve the performance of their PCs. Of course, we’d have no problems if you went all-out and enacted all the upgrades we suggested. After all, that’s what Maximum PC is all about: configuring the computer of your (and our) dreams. THE WEAKEST LINK-SYS It has been going around the net that there is a major security problem with the Linksys WRT54G router, which received a Kick Ass award in the June 2004 issue. I read online that the problem “may grant malicious people administrative access to a vulnerable device. The problem is that the administrative web interface is accessible on the WAN interface, even though the remote administration TECHNICAL EDITOR WILL SMITH RESPONDS: The particular vulnerability you listed is certainly a problem, but it’s only a major problem if two things happen. —DAVID PAUL For someone to gain control of your router, SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH UNG RESPONDS: We had to do a double-take as they would have to well when we read your letter, David, but the orientation is correct in the photo. know your admin passApparently, Intel silk-screened the name upside down on the board. Based on word—either because the designs we’ve seen, we can assure you that the power cables will not come you never changed the from the front of your PC; they’ll still be routed from the rear of the machine like default or because you they are with standard ATX motherboards and cases. The add-in cards—both use a silly password PCI-Express and PCI—will continue to be rear-mounted as well. And don’t forget, that is easily haxored. BTX cases open on the right side instead of the left. Second, the firewall has to be disabled, and it’s on by default. So, while this is definitely a problem with the ered getting your family members PADS OR PASTE? Linksys WRT54G series of routers, some earplugs and telling them Number 15 of your “15 it’s one that shouldn’t affect most to just deal with it? If they really Common PC Upgrading people, especially Maximum PC loved you they would, you know. Mistakes” (July 2004) states, “If readers who use real passwords As for the “best” headset we’ve your new proc includes a heat that contain numbers and letters. seen, the Plantronics DSP-500 is pad, use the pad rather than Regardless, Linksys should have great but it’s not as good as the removing it in favor of paste.” an updated firmware available for Sennheiser PC155 USB we review Doing this is a huge mistake. download by the time you read this. in this issue. We lauded this prodThe performance difference uct for its comfortable earphones, between a generic thermal pad HEADPHONES BELONG sonic power, and its standard audio and some high quality thermal IN BEST OF THE BEST connectors. We should note that paste such as Arctic Silver can I just had a quick suggestion Sennheiser sells a USB adapterbe as much as 5˚C. That’s a for your “Best of the Best” less version of the PC155 for about huge difference for a little paste. product list: Would you please half the price, which is a steal, in Please let your readers know add a headset category? I liked our opinion. that this is the case. the reviews of the headsets in As for adding headsets to the —JON BECK your June issue, but it left me “Best of the Best” list: It’s somewondering if the Plantronics thing we’ve considered, but have SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH DSP-500, which scored a 9, is held off on because a quality UNG RESPONDS: While we’re the best headset that you’ve headset isn’t high on most people’s certainly proponents of high-quality seen. Because it didn’t get a “Must-own hardware” list. This thermal paste such as Arctic Silver, Kick Ass award, I figure there is rapidly changing thanks to the we still believe you’re best served must be a better product out growing popularity of online gamby using the thermal pad that comes there somewhere. I’m all about ing and the increasing viability of with a heatsink. Of course, we are headsets since I have a family VOIP. putting a certain amount of faith in and I don’t like keeping them And hey, maybe you’re not the heatsink manufacturer, which up into the wee hours of the the only one Chad. If any readwe trust is not using a generic pad night with a blaring 7.1 system. ers are interested in seeing a and thereby hurting the image of its —CHAD headset category added to the product. But by all means, if you’ve “Best of the Best,” let us know at already consumed the thermal pad MAXIMUM PC INTERN TAE K. KIM input@maximumpc.com. that comes with the heatsink, we’d RESPONDS: Chad, have you considrecommend using a quality heatsink 08 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 5: paste and not trying to reuse the pad. GEEK QUIZ UNFAIR? I feel the Geek Quiz [June 2004] is demeaning, and in no way helpful for us geeks as you suggest. No matter what level the person taking the quiz achieves, there was some kind of derogatory comment. Especially in the first category [“Geekus Ignoramus”], which I guess is the level most of your readers and staff made it to. I count myself as a geek, although I failed miserably at your quiz. I took the whole thing ignoring the fact that I failed each section and got about 80 percent right overall. Perhaps next year you should divide the quiz into categories: networking, PC building, software knowledge, etc. Any geek would CD/DVD to input any needed drivers during an install? WHITHER THE HD WONDER An issue or two ago, you mentioned a new product called the ATI HD-All-in-Wonder, but it was MIA in the July issue. I have been researching the parts for a Media Center PC, but no one seems to have a do-everything tuner card for Digital/HDTV subscribers. Hauppauge comes close with its WinTV-HD product, but the software doesn’t match the robustness of ATI’s suite. And ATI’s HD Tuner requires a second videocard, which would be tough to fit in most of the SFF cases I was considering using. Plus there’s no FM tuner like the All-In-Wonder 9600. Is the All-In-Wonder HDTV card the Holy Grail? —RICHARD ASSOCIATE EDITOR JOSH NOREM RESPONDS: The message we were referring to is the one displayed by Windows upon a fresh installation. It reads: “Press F6 to install a thirdparty SCSI or RAID driver.” But this message also applies to Serial ATA controllers. Typically, if you want to install Windows XP onto a Serial ATA hard drive you have to press F6 to load the drivers for the controller, even if it’s an onboard chip (depending on the board). With the MSI board though, the SATA controller is native to the south bridge, so this step isn’t required. It sees a SATA drive without any special drivers required just like any motherboard would see a Parallel ATA drive without special drivers installed. COMING IN THE COMMITTED-TOFRESHNESS NEXT MONTH SEPTEMBER ISSUE OF MAXIMUMPC THE DREAM MACHINE Our annual foray into PC greatness is finally here! Next month you will be dazed, dazzled, and mesmerized at the fastest PC you’ve ever seen. Here’s a tantalizing hint: Can you say DDR2? THE GREAT CASE ROUNDUP Looking for a new chassis to house the brand-new PC you’re building? We’re rounding up more than 15 different cases and building a PC in each of them in order to discover which is best. Tune in next month to find out! MP3 PLAYERS Testing MP3 players sounds fun, doesn’t it? Well, it is. But along with this fun comes a great deal of responsibility. Thankfully Features Editor Logan Decker is up to the task. His mission: to determine which of the newest crop of portable audio players is best. And whether any of them holds a candle to the iPod. PLUS Our second programming How-To, Intel’s new CPU naming scheme, and hardcore reviews of digicams, hard drives, wireless devices, and more! —FRANK SCHIAVONE JR. “ OF COURSE, WE’D HAVE NO PROBLEMS IF YOU WENT ALL-OUT AND ENACTED ALL THE UPGRADES WE SUGGESTED. AFTER ALL, THAT’S WHAT MAXIMUM PC IS ALL ABOUT. STUCK IN THE LAND OF RADEON 9800 I want to upgrade my videocard relatively soon before the new shader games like Doom 3 and Half Life 2 are released. However, I do not want to buy nVidia’s or ATI’s best card. Does either company plan to release budget cards based on their newest chipsets, or am I stuck buying a Radeon 9800 Pro? be hard-pressed to know things from the broad subject range in each section. In any case, I hope I don’t see a fifth annual quiz unless it’s presented along with the scores of your staff so I can laugh at you as you are no doubt laughing at me! —STEVE WHAT’S SATA GOT TO DO WITH IT? In your review of the MSI K8N Neo Platinum Mobo in the July 2004 issue, you said “The presence of native SATA means you won’t need a floppy and fast fingers to perform the dreaded ’F6’ driver combo just to install Windows XP.” What in the world does native SATA have to do with getting around the fact Microsoft wants a floppy disk instead of a TECHNICAL EDITOR WILL SMITH RESPONDS: The problem with current HDTV solutions is that they just don’t work with digital cable or satellite HDTV transmissions. We received an All-in-Wonder HDTV just as we closed this issue, so we’ll definitely review it next month and give you the full scoop on HDTV for your PC. ” –NICK SIMONETTI TECHNICAL EDITOR WILL SMITH RESPONDS: Both companies are releasing loads of new cards designed to fit any budget. In fact, we are currently waiting to receive a batch of budget, midrange, and highend 3D cards. You can look forward to at least two pages worth of videocards in the next issue Nick! CUT, COPY, PASTE  In our June 2004 LCD roundup, LETTERS POLICY: MAXIMUM PC invites your thoughts and comments. Send them to input@maximumpc.com. Please include your full name, town, and telephone number, and limit your letter to 300 words. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the vast amount of e-mail we receive, we cannot personally respond to each letter. we mistakenly called Planar’s monitor the PL170; the model number is actually PL1700.  In the July 2004 PC Makeover story, we incorrectly stated the price for Hitachi’s extravagant 400GB Deskstar drive as $160. That was some kind of wishful thinking—the real price is about $410. We apologize for the error.  We also confess to the following sin: In our first look at Windows Longhorn’s 3D interface (July, page 15), we printed a screenshot with a naughty word in it. We apologize to anyone who was offended. AUGUST 2004 XXXXXX 2004 MAXIMUMPC 09 MAXIMUMPC 00
Slide 6: QuickStart The beginning of the magazine, where articles are small Are PDAs Dead? Smartphones are stealing the spotlight from handhelds— but will they kill them off altogether? PDA enthusiasts everywhere shuddered when Sony recently announced it was discontinuing its line of Palm-based Clie handhelds in all markets except for Japan. Is this the beginning of the end for handhelds? Maximum PC examines the evidence. Requiem for a PDA. YES Smart phones are on the rise, particularly Handspring’s Treo 600. The stats may be modest (144MHz ARM proc, 32MB RAM, 160x160 resolution, 0.3 megapixel camera) but the execution is right on. Thumb typing on the built-in keyboard is a breeze, yet the entire unit weighs just 6 ounces and is about the size of a deck of cards. Running Palm OS 5.2, you’ve got an all-in-one phone/PDA that can surf the net without the kludgy connectors required by handheld/phone interfaces. NO Let’s face it—PDAs will always boast brawnier processors than their smarty-phone rivals. And brawnier processors mean you can run more complex apps, search faster, and play cooler games. When a laptop is overkill, PDAs step up to the plate. Even the nominal handwriting recognition on PDAs is better than fumbling with T9 English text messaging. But foldout keyboards, like Think Outside’s Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard ($150, www.thinkoutside.com), could swing the balance back in favor of phones. Text messaging, e-mail, and tedious blog entries via cell phone are now a piece of cake. Smartphone screens are necessarily small, and that doesn’t cut if for most work. Most handhelds offer easy-on-the-eyes 320x240 visuals, and Toshiba’s e805 ($600, www.toshiba.com) is the first PDA to shine at 640x480 resolution—high enough to do actual work rather than jotting a few notes on the go. It’s only a matter of time before miniature hard drives with low power requirements make their way into smartphones. When they do, handhelds will look even less attractive compared with the knockout combination of phone, PDA, and massive storage capacity—all in a Treo-size package. The PDA can use its fast processor and large capacity storage options to take on some of the entertainment capabilities of laptops and become portable media centers. Windows Media Encoder (free, www.microsoft.com) allows you to compress video to fit on a Pocket PC, SnapStream’s Beyond TV 3 ($60, www.snapstream.com) will format recorded television for your PDA, and apps like DVD to Pocket PC ($25, www.makayama.com) automate the process of compressing your DVDs to fit on external media of any size. Games, MP3s, and movies wherever you want them—suddenly the Treo looks a like a wuss, doesn’t it? OUR VERDICT Ultimately, the threat to PDAs comes from both sides. Smartphones will continue to appeal to folks who want mobility and convenience, and will inevitably co-opt more and more PDA-style functionality. Meanwhile, power users will gravitate towards ultra-mini PCs running full versions of Windows XP that are just around the corner from Sony, FlipStart, and OQO. With smartphones on one side and mini PCs soon to be on the other, we see the PDA market eventually getting squeezed to a sliver. Bummer! 12 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 7: Quick Start Ask the Expert: CRT Monitors What does the demise of Sony’s legendary F520 monitor say about the future of CRTs? oped a product that meets Sony’s F520 21-inch flat the needs of this market screen CRT was a vision at an appropriate and to behold, boasting affordable price point. the visual clarity that While the GDM-F520 has comes from an unparalleled fabulous “front of screen per0.22mm aperture-grille pitch. formance,” making this model The F520 reigned supreme into an Artisan type product as a Maximum PC favorite would have put the street price in its category for an beyond the market threshold unprecedented three years. for our target market. Unfortunately, early this summer, Sony announced it In respect to raw hardware was discontinuing our most capabilities, did consumer beloved monitor, which CRT technology reach its Bob Stevens, made us wonder about pinnacle with the F520? Sony IT Product the company’s future Manager plans in this category. Sony spent the past 30 After all, Sony’s patented years developing and fineTrinitron technology is quite literally tuning CRT technology, especially for synonymous with CRTs. So what the critical IT user. Sony’s CRT techgives? Here’s what Sony IT product nology continued to advance even manager Robert Stevens had to say. beyond that of the GDM-F520 [and continues in earnest in the area of Sony is keeping only one CRT model in CRT televisions]. The GFM-F520 was the best technology Sony could offer its IT-display product line, the GDMat the appropriate price/performance C520. Will Sony continue to make ratio for our IT display customers. We other CRTs for branding by other comare now focused on LCDs for companies? And if so, will Sony continue puter display technology. ALT.OPINION.RANTS BY JON PHILLIPS In with the Dream, out with the Dream N ext month, Maximum PC will begin its ninth year of publishing. I’ve been with the magazine from jump street—holding stints as a monthly columnist, executive editor, and editor-in-chief—and the hardware I’ve seen has delighted, surprised, and even disgusted me. But it hasn’t left me jaded. For this, I can thank the forward march of technological progress, which has kept the PC scene fascinating throughout the years. Consider that the Dream Machine we showcased in our very first issue (September 1996) was spec’d to include a 200MHz Pentium CPU and 32MB of memory. Today, a Dream Machine-caliber rig might include a 3.4GHz CPU (about 17 times faster from a pure clockfrequency perspective), and 2GB of memory (that’s 64 times the size of an old-fangled 32MB module). But these number comparisons are just simple abstractions. The important thing to remember is that Dream Machine 1996 wouldn’t even be able to run most of the software we take for granted today. That rig didn’t even have MMX support. Never heard of MMX? My point exactly. And how’s this for quaint: Our inaugural issue included the cover line, “First Look! 200MHz Monster Systems with Onboard 3D.” What innocent times we once lived in. Legitimate 3D acceleration wasn’t yet on our radar, and it would be a few more issues before we championed 3dfx’s Voodoo card as the must-have 3D accelerator. Actually, to say we “championed” 3dfx vastly understates what really happened: Our editors fought over Voodoo boards like cockney schoolchildren squabbling over golden Wonka tickets. We even took turns bringing cards home for the weekend. That’s how rare and coveted the Voodoo boards became. As for 3dfx, the company became a fallen giant in due time, a development that seemed impossible in 1997 and 1998. Ironically, Matrox—whose 4MB Millenium board appeared in Dream Machine 1996—still lives today, though only because its 2D video still kicks ass. And so, on this eve of the launch of another Dream Machine project, it’s time to reflect, and also say goodbye. This column marks my last regular, monthly writing contribution to Maximum PC, breaking a chain that has spanned all 95 issues we’ve published to date. FWIW, having access to the coolest, neatest, most cutting-edge PC hardware hasn’t been the best part of being a monthly contributor. No, when I look back on my nine-year stint, I expect my fondest memories will be of co-workers and diehard readers. PC enthusiasm is, after all, a human passion, all the silicon and PCB notwithstanding. Jon Phillips was formerly editor-in-chief of Maximum PC, and now serves as the magazine’s editorial director. AUGUST 2004 to develop new Trinitron technology for its partners? The growing trend in the display environment is to replace CRTs with LCD displays. With advancements in technology and the bottom-line savings for consumers, we have shifted our focus to the production of LCD displays. We will continue to support and offer the Artisan CRS, model GDM-C520 [reviewed in Maximum PC, July 2004]. Sony will remain involved in this segment because the Artisan Color Reference System is critical for color-focused graphics users. We are no longer manufacturing OEM products. The GDM-F520 boasted the finest aperture-grille pitch (0.22mm) of any consumer CRT, yet Sony opted for a 0.24mm grille pitch for its GDM-C520. What motivated that decision? Sony invested considerably in the color market and as a result devel- The end of an era: Discontinuing the top-notch F520 leaves just a single CRT—a high-end reference model—in Sony’s catalog. Will other manufacturers rush in to fill the gap, or will CRTs go the way of the dodo? MAXIMUMPC 13
Slide 8: Quick Start FAST FORWARD BY TOM R. HALFHILL The CPU’s Evolutionary Detour Nearly everyone is ecstatic over Intel’s decision to cancel some future single-core processors and replace them with dual-core chips. Who doesn’t like a two-forone deal? However, I consider it a detour in microprocessor evolution. Since the 1970s, microprocessors have benefited from numerous architectural innovations: pipelining, branch prediction, speculation, hardware-assisted simultaneous multithreading, and more. Almost every new microprocessor generation has introduced a new way to run programs more efficiently—that is, to increase the number of instructions executed per clock cycle. Integrating two or more processor cores on a single chip does that, too. But does that mean progress will consist largely of slapping down more cores on a chip? Let’s hope not. Symbolically, it would signal the end of microprocessor evolution as we’ve known it. Pragmatically, it would soon yield little performance improvement beyond the usual increase in clock frequency. Here’s why. Multicore processors try to boost performance by executing multiple tasks in parallel. There are two types of parallelism: instruction-level parallelism and data-level parallelism. Most PC software has very little instruction-level parallelism to exploit. Too many instructions in a program need the results of previous instructions before they can execute, so they must wait until those previous instructions finish computing their results. Imagine a factory worker on an assembly line trying to mount the car’s wheel before the axle has been installed, and you’ll grasp the problem. Even if your CPU chip had 100 processor cores, it wouldn’t run most of your productivity apps much faster than they run now. Data-level parallelism is easier to exploit, at least with programs that have lots of graphics, audio, video, or other large data sets. A great example of data-level parallelism is the SETI@Home (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project. It uses the Internet to distribute chunks of digitized radio noise received from outer space to about 500,000 computers around the world. Each PC independently analyzes its chunk of data, looking for patterns that might indicate an intelligent radio signal. A virtually unlimited number of processors can work in parallel on this task, because one chunk of data doesn’t necessarily depend on a result from another chunk of data. That’s why graphics-rich games, image editors, sound editors, and other data-intensive apps stand to benefit from multicore processors. Most other kinds of programs will hardly benefit at all. So the future progress of computing still depends on the evolution of the processor itself, not simply on replicating many processors on a single chip. Tom Halfhill was formerly a senior editor for Byte magazine and now an analyst for Microprocessor Report. Presenting PolyLED Philips unveils the display of the future, and it looks bright In a few years, your laptop display will be visible from all angles, not just head-on. Your PDA will be legible even in direct sunlight, thus minimizing the crow’s feet around your eyes from chronic squinting. Your phone will last hours longer because the display doesn’t require any backlighting. And even your lightweight, low-profile desktop display will be able to show brilliant detail in movies and keep up with fast-paced action games without blurring or smearing. Sounds Minority Report futuristic, right? Well, Philips’ prototype 13-inch TV, shown below, is a living, breathing demonstration of PolyLED’s change-everything potential. PolyLED is Philips’ take on OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. This technology dispenses with the relatively bulky semiconductors used in today’s LCDs, which are also difficult and expensive to manufacture. Instead, PolyLED uses a proprietary recipe of polymer materials that are sprayed onto a single layer of glass substrate using inkjet technology. The result is a bright, self-emitting display that, in addition to using much less power, is cheaper to manufacture, and capable of producing full-color displays less than a millimeter thick. Philips anticipates that PolyLED televisions and monitors will debut in five years, but we suspect market pressure from laptop, PDA, and phone manufacturers—all of which are straining to eke out as much battery life as possible—could accelerate development. Presenting the first image of Philips’ prototype 13-inch high-contrast television. We’re assuming that’s the Discovery Channel onscreen.   FUN-SIZE NEWS GREEN TEA—BEVERAGE AND HARD DRIVE POLISH! If you’ve ever looked inside a hard drive, you know the platters have good for your hard drive. a mirror-like finish. That’s because they’ve been ground down and polished to the point where surface variations are less than a single nanometer. Traditional polishing fluids are a toxic slurry that must eventually be discarded somewhere (not in our backyard). But Ventana Research has created a kinder, gentler polish using synthetic proteins and an extract from good ole’ green tea, the favorite beverage of wise men everywhere. Because the “Ventana fluid” binds naturally to particle debris, it’s also being considered for use in wastewater treatment. Green tea: Good for you, WINDOWS MOBILE 2003 SE DEBUTS Dell’s Axim X30 is the first handheld to ship with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, an update that includes support for 640x480 (VGA) displays in landscape or portrait mode. Other tweaks include support for dual-function cards (such as SanDisk’s Connect Plus, which combines 128MB of storage with a Wi-Fi adapter), an update for Pocket Internet Explorer, and support for WPA (WiFi protected access) encryption. For more dirt on Windows Mobile, check out our review of the Axim X30 next month. HD-DVD STANDARD DEFINED The DVD Forum steering committee has approved the first physical specification for HD-DVD (high-density DVD) read-only discs, and the spec requires that manufacturers of HD-DVD playback devices include three video codecs: MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and the VC-9 technology used by Windows Media Player 9 Series. Although the specification gives Microsoft’s codec a boost in credibility, it faces competition from two competing standards—Blu-Ray, and a Chinese format called EVD. All three are vying to establish themselves as the standard for large-capacity DVD as high-definition television rolls out. Whether we’ll get one standard or a dreadful three-way tie remains to be seen. 14 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 9: We See Dead Products These three technologies seem destined for not-so-greatness We sympathize with industrial designers. After all, our own attempts to build a combination cellphone/taser resulted in an unfortunate and quite painful testing mishap, proving that even the best ideas are sometimes unworkable. But occasionally, companies quixotically refuse to cancel products despite every conceivable warning sign. Maximum PC rubbernecks three concepts currently charging toward the edge of extinction. Quick Start + GAME THEORY PCs and Consoles: Unlikely Bedfellows? BY THOMAS L. McDONALD The iVue Biometric security company VeriTouch got together with Swedish design firm Thinking Materials to create the iVue, a “handheld audio/video player capable of biometrically encrypting and decrypting digital media content.” Yes, that’s right—an MP3 player that requires your fingerprint to use. The company claims the fingerprint sensor will be used to “unlock and play back files in real time” and will include technology to prevent the extraction of files from the internal hard drive. How and why these features would be of any interest to consumers is anybody’s guess. But we hear the RIAA is interested. The iVue prototype drawing. That’s reason enough right there to steer Don’t let strangers get their clear of this concept. hands on your Avril Lavigne DVD-D playlist! Sensing consumer frustration with having to return DVDs on time or pay late fees, FlexPlay came up with an ingenious solution with its EZ-D discs. You buy the discs at the rental store, and open them whenever you want. Once opened, exposure to air causes the discs to slowly disintegrate, giving you about 48 hours of viewing time, after which you toss them into the trash. Unfortunately, Disney set a doomed-to-fail price of $7 per disc during the company’s trial run with the new format. Sales were disappointing, to say the least, and you’d think that would be the end of it. But nooo…. FDD Technologies apparently came to a different conclusion about what caused the launch to fail— the discs simply didn’t disintegrate fast enough! Enter DVDD, the disc that becomes useless in just eight hours. Want to get burned FDD is currently looking for marketing partners. by your DVD? “Hello…? Anybody…?” Polaroid Image1200 Polaroid, the company behind what was once the Coolest Thing in the World, is introducing the Image1200, the instant camera with an LCD viewfinder. Now, instead of buying a digital camera and uploading images to your PC and then e-mailing them to your friends, you can: Buy the Polaroid Image1200 for $170, buy a 10-pack of film for $14.95, take the picture (hoping to get it right in one shot), wait for the image to appear, scan the image, and resize it for e-mail. And what’s the LCD viewfinder all about? The best argument Polaroid could muster in favor of its old-skool format is that its cameras are “standard equipment for many law enforcement officers.” Is Polaroid going to trot out James Garner for this? When I first began covering games back around 1989, there was this strange and immature antipathy between computer gamers and video gamers. A generation wet-nursed on the first video games left their consoles behind for computers. Throughout the 1990s, computer and video game design took very different paths, only to converge again at the turn of the millennium with the dawn of Xbox and PS2. A good example of this cross-pollination can be found in Thief: Deadly Shadows (which is on shelves now) and Splinter Cell 3 (due this fall). Some would argue that the stealth-action genre was born in 1998 with Metal Gear Solid or Tenchu, both PSX titles. They, of course, would be wrong. 1998 was the same year Looking Glass finally published its monumental, longawaited epic Thief: The Dark Project, the first “firstperson sneaker.” From the ground up, it was designed to challenge players to use their wits, stick to the shadows, and avoid conflict in order to achieve a goal. PC gamers were still getting use to this radically new game style when they were blindsided by another 1998 title: the original Rainbow Six, pater familias of the entire tactical shooter genre. Rainbow Six begat Raven Shield, and Raven Shield begat Ghost Recon, and Thief and Ghost Recon laid together and begat Splinter Cell, which proved that the Xbox could indeed have a life beyond Halo. And Splinter Cell was ported to PC, and PC gamers saw that console-style third-person stealth-action was good and they could now forget all about the club-footed Metal Gear Solid PC port. Now we come full circle. Despite having Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow and various Splinter Cell ports on its plate for the past year, Ubisoft shocked everyone at E3 by showing a fairly advanced build of Splinter Cell 3. The game looked truly gorgeous, with the kind of detail that stealth games demand. In fact, it looked better than any Xbox game to date, and there was a good reason: It’s being developed for PC. The power of the new generation of graphics cards was simply too tempting for the developers, who needed the hard horsepower of the PC to create the most detailed Splinter Cell game to date. Meanwhile, Thief: Deadly Shadows has ambled on over to Xbox, giving console gamers their first taste of this landmark series. Splinter Cell 3 will eventually, maybe next year or so, find its way to console systems, with the PC graphics duly downconverted, of course. But since we are all one big happy electronic gaming family now, sharing game design styles and techniques, PC gamers wouldn’t even dream of gloating. Tom McDonald has been covering games for countless magazines and newspapers for 11 years. He lives in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 15
Slide 10: Quick Start TechnoFile Quick takes on technology trends Infinium Labs Phantom Console and Controller W e’re quite skeptical about any kind of “PC-based console” but we have to pay props to the whiz kids Infinium Labs’ Lapboard in repose. down at Infinium Labs. The Lapboard is the company’s unique new controller for the Phantom Gaming Service— the PC equivalent of an Xbox or PS2—and it kicks ass. We got a chance to play Unreal Tournament 2004 using this keyboard/ mouse hybrid, and the experience was sublime. Dig this: The keyboard is mounted at one end to a hinge, which can hold the entire keyboard up above the surface that rests on your lap. When the keyboard is tilted up, the keys are at a perfect angle for comfortable deathmatching, while the lower surface is available for mousing with your right hand. The entire keyboard pivots, so it’s suitable for left- or righthanders, and the entire assembly folds down for easy storage. If only we could buy one for our own living room PCs. For the latest launch information and pricing, go to www.infiniumlabs.com The Phantom Console main unit. The Lapboard in action. It might look a little wonky, but it plays like a dream. 16 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 11: Head2Head P I HERMAN MILLER AERON CHAIR A showdown among natural PC competitors THIS MONTH: Ergonomic Chairs! DAs were once nothing but electronic organizers, f you’re they ultimately grew into do-everything wirebut like us, the chair you use at work is the standard “two arms and a seat” variety.These no-frills office trapless devices, complete with web browsing, e-mail support,aren’teven modest cell sit in, but they also won’t pings and exactly painful to phone capabilities. Cell earn you meanwhile, startedyouras mere mobile tele-particphones, any accolades from out arse.That’s a shame, ularly if your rump puts in even more time playing computer phones, but are now meeting the most satile PDAs games after hours.Thus, we wondered if an “ergonomic” halfway. solution might not make first such “smartphone” to the Ericsson brought the for a more gratifying experience. U.S. in the form of the R380, which uses a customized To answer this question we compare two different approaches to ergonomic desk chairs. In one corner we have version of smartphone concept, Nextel loads Java-based PDA apps into aAeron chair, whichThese appsyears ago was Herman Miller’s Motorola phone. until a few are authored in the Java 2 Micro Edition dot-comprogramming lanthe symbol of the decadent (J2ME) office environment. guage, which offers handhelds compatibility with any2 In the other corner we have Health Postures’ Plasma device that runs one the block that uniquely allows the seat system, a new kid on of the burgeoning be adjusted along Let’s have a look at the two and arms to varieties of Java. a vertical arc, so you can competing within easy reach of your keyboard and mouse. stand or sit phones to see which one packs the most features chairs offer more comfort and features than your Both into the smallest space. regular chair, but only one can be king. Let the throne throw—ROB PRATT down commence! —JOSH NOREM Features: The Aeron specs include a whole host of comfort technologies, so to speak, such as PostureFit for lower-back support and Kinemat Tilt for, well, adjusting the seat’s tilt, but in plain language these are the features you’d expect from any chair billed as “ergonomic. Something the Aeron lacks is any kind of lower leg or ” foot support, which the Plasma 2 chair offers. Winner: Plasma 2 Adjustability: Despite the Aeron’s conventional formfactor, the chair is highly adjustable. Its seat moves up and down, the backrest tilts forward and back and can be locked in at any angle within its range. You can also adjust the amount of resistance you feel when you lean back. The armrests slide up and down and pivot both inward and out, and even lumbar support is adjustable. The Plasma 2 offers fewer specific adjustments in favor of a more radical whole-body approach. Winner: Aeron Comfort: On first contact, we weren’t blown away by the Aeron; in fact, we were a little disappointed by the absence of any cushioning. But we definitely came to appreciate its taut mesh suspension seat over time. The firmness of it eventually gives way to a feeling of flexible support. The Plasma 2 is much more soft and plush, but its squishy nature feels less supportive than the Aeron, and therefore less comfortable. Winner: Aeron Craftsmanship: Both chairs are sturdy and well made, but the Aeron’s build is clearly superior. Whereas the Plasma 2 is constructed from standard materials such as cloth upholstery, foam, and thick metal, the Aeron’s makeup is more elegant, specialized, and refined. Everything from its curvy recycled-aluminum frame to its porous-membrane suspension system make the Aeron as pleasing to look at as it is to use. Winner: Aeron Desktop integration: The Aeron integrates easily with a typical workspace as its size and dimensions are roughly those of a standard desk chair. This was a welcome change after all the rearranging we had to do to accommodate FIBER the Plasma 2 “seating Very adjustable, excellent support, all-day comfort. system’s” motorized display podium, which inciFIBBER dentally limits users to a Could use a support for the knees and/or feet, no single-display setup. option for a standing mode. Winner: Aeron $800, www.hermanmiller.com MAXIMUMPC VERDICT 9
Slide 12: HEALTH POSTURES PLASMA 2 SYSTEM Features: The Plasma 2 system is essentially one big feature—that being its incredible range of motion. With the pull of a lever, your body can be transformed from a seated to standing position (or anything in between), while head-to-toe support aligns the rest of your body accordingly. What’s more, the chair works in conjunction with a motorized monitor/keyboard stand so your desktop can be easily adjusted to suit the changing stations of your chair. The Plasma 2 also features add-on risers for both sides of the keyboard tray that can hold a phone, speakers, documents, and other items that need to be close by. Winner: Plasma 2 Adjustability: Although the Plasma 2 is unique in its ability to move along a vertical axis, the seat itself has limited adjustability. The area that holds your rear can be raised or lowered and it’s possible to manipulate the armrests, but overall, you’re not given many options for personal fine-tuning. Winner: Aeron Comfort: After long-term use of both chairs, we prefer the Aeron’s firm support and extensive adjustability to the Plasma 2’s cushy vertical action. Sure, it’s nice to work in a prone position when your legs feel cramped or your bum needs some blood flow, but we spent the majority of our time with the Plasma 2 in the “normal” position, where its comfort was easily exceeded by the Aeron. Craftsmanship: The Plasma 2 chair is wellconstructed and feels solid, but the desktop accoutrements seemed flimsy. And considering the cost of the Plasma 2 system, we’re disappointed that it’s not more stylish or sophisticated. When compared with the Aeron, it’s clear that one chair was “designed” and the other was simply created, if you know what we mean. Winner: Aeron MAXIMUMPC VERDICT ERGONOMIC ERGOMANIAC 8 Desktop integration: Once you’re firmly ensconced in the Plasma 2 system, it’s best to stay put, because the leg support in particular can make exiting it difficult. Don’t get us wrong: It’s a comfortable way to sit, but because you are sort of wedged into the seat, you’ll need to have everything on your desk within arm’s reach. To this end, the Plasma 2 is sold with a variety of arms and platforms for holding various desktop items, but they require an additional layer of planning and rearrangement. Winner: Aeron Comfortable, and the ability to stand is a nice touch. Crude shape, limited adjustability, and pricey. $1,995, www.healthpostures.com THE UPSHOT Despite theas it is to move your chairof Nextel’s i85s, we prefer s cool speed and convenience from a sitting to a the Ericsson R380, with justease, in matters of overall comfort, standing position with one reservation—the Ericsson’s steepfeatures, costs $600. Forergonomic benefit, thefull-featured price. It and perceived $300, we could buy a nod goes to Herman Millers’ Aeron chair. As PDA. Freeing up a little more cell phone and a Palm OS-based much as we love the Aeron’s space in our backpacks definitely isn’t worth an additional $300. A sexy lines, expensive materials, and instant office cache, our have The smartphone category shows a lot of promise, but we butts made the final decision.The Aeron is simply more comyet to see anything even remotely close to perfection. fortable than the Plasma 2 system, and doesn’t require the accompaniment of a cumbersome display elevator. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 19
Slide 13: WatchDog THISMONTH: The WatchDog goes after... Rebate? What Rebate? The Dog has heard his fair share of rebate horror stories. Like the one about the guy who purchased a notebook, submitted the claim forms, and was later told his rebate was held up because he failed to include a piece of information. Then he was told he was too late to submit for the rebate. Other readers have complained about the months of badgering it often takes before companies will make good on a rebate. And what about consumers who purchase rebated items but have only one receipt with which to redeem the rebates? This bleak picture may change (in California, at least) if state Senate bill 1154 passes this summer. Proposed by California state Senator Liz Figueroa the bill would: Require rebate checks to be mailed to consumers within 30 days of receiving the rebate form. Require rebates offered by retailers to be redeemable at time of purchase. Allow at least 60 days from the date of the purchase for the consumer to submit the rebate claim form. Require that a phone number be made public for consumers to check the status of the rebate. Make it illegal for companies to ask for more personal information beyond the name, Say hello to Koa, WatchDog of the Month. Maximum PC takes a bite out of bad gear >Rebates >Monsoon >EZ Electronics address, and home phone number. Allow copies of receipts to be submitted for rebates and allow that only the model number be written on the rebate form if the name of the product is not included. These certainly sound like good reforms, but not everyone agrees. Wireless phone providers, grocery stores, and the Promotional Marketing Association have said any changes to the existing law are wrong for a number of reasons. First, by allowing people to submit copies of receipts, the law opens the companies up to increased rebate fraud by people who make a living running rebate scams. Companies also argue that consumers will ultimately suffer because Californians will simply be excluded from rebates because of the changes. For their part, the phone companies argue that rebates associated with wireless, land line, and data service often require more than a name and address to establish credit. What does the Dog think? These are valid concerns, but the companies need to recognize that consumers are increasingly frustrated by rebates that never materialize or are impossible to obtain because they have only one receipt. If companies are going to rely on rebates to entice consumers to buy products, they need to stand behind them 100 percent. Sadly, many don’t. SB1154 is currently in committee for a rewrite. Rebates have become the bane of electronics buyers everywhere. Monsoon Experiencing a Drought DEAR DOG: Is Monsoon one more manufacturer to give up the ghost and leave its customers without a warranty? My Planar Media 9 subwoofer just bit the dust, and Monsoon is nowhere to be found. — MIKE KEYES THE DOG RESPONDS: Bad news, Mike. The Monsoon brand may be just as flat as its beloved satellite speakers. Despite its popularity in the speaker market, the brand hasn’t been doing well. The original maker of the Monsoon speakers, Sonigistix Corporation of Canada, went The maker of Monsoon speakers may be drier than the Atcami desert. under receivership in September 2001 after it ran out of capital, according to the company that helped liquidate Sonigistix’s assets. A majority of its assets and intellectual property were purchased by Eastern Asian Technology of Singapore, but the Monsoon brand lived on under the auspice of Level 9 Sound Designs. At the time Level 9 President Jack Fatum said, “the acquisition marks the creation of a unique player in the audio industry. Level 9 is now the only major multimedia speaker company that integrates its manufacturing and proprietary technology development, giving us the strong competitive advantage of faster speed to market, extremely tight quality control over production, and guaranteed supply to our growing customer base.” Apparently, that advantage did not materialize. At press time, Monsoon’s web site, www.monsoonaudio.com, provided no information about how to contact the company for service or support. Phone numbers for the company were either disconnected or not functioning. Messages left with Jack Fatum, former president of Level 9, were not returned. Although Monsoon’s web site promises a return, the Dog suggests that consumers steer clear of Monsoon products until the storm clouds dissipate. Woof. 20 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 14: $29 Pyramid DEAR DOG: EZ Electronics’ web site claims that it provides wholesale prices, but how on earth could they sell an Alienware Area-51 PC for 100 dollars? I think you need to warn readers. —JOSIAH THE DOG RESPONDS: An Alienware PC for $100? An Xbox for $25? A Panasonic 42-inch plasma TV for $200? The Dog tried to investigate the outrageous claims by first going to EZ Electronics’ web site (www.ezelectronics.net), which was temporarily disabled. A Google search however pointed the Dog to some functional pages beyond the home page. It appears that EZ Electronics asked consumers to pay EZ Electronics offered such things as an Alienware for a “report.” According to the web PC for $100 and a Microsoft Xbox for $25 if site: “After purchase of report, you will consumers paid for the privilege of being on the recieve (sic) a password to view your product waiting lists. position on the list. When your name moves into the ‘Next to receive’ box, you’ll be conmeans, so we have chosen to do the honorable tacted by e-mail to verify shipping info. Enjoy your thing and clear full refunds at our own expense, free electronics.” rather than the dishonorable thing, which would Although it’s not entirely clear how EZ be to file bankruptcy and steal money from innoElectronics operated its business, Robert cent people (as this would go greatly against my FitzPatrick president of PyramidSchemeAlert.org, personal values).” said it has the characteristics of a pyramid The anonymous source did not respond to the scheme—a form of fraud that’s been on the rise Dog’s request for details about how the network on the Internet. operated. The Dog did receive another e-mail Whether through “gifting clubs,” a clasfrom a person who identified himself as Michael sic pyramid arrangement, or a straight-line Dunteman from Ez-Toyz.com who said: “I am the matrix, someone is going to lose, FitzPatrick contact for the hosting and domain registration. said. You might be promised the opportunity to Ez-Toyz initially held hosting services for several recoup your investment plus a handsome profit, sites, this site was one of several that were hosted FitzPatrick said, but it’s all just a mirage. by the organization. Unbeknownst to Ez-Toyz, the One web site, Cockeyed.com, works out the web site www.ezelectronics.net was registered, numbers based on people who paid $29 to line up paid for, and operated by a minor. Upon that being for a laptop from another defunct web site that brought to the attention of Ez-Toyz, via customer offered people a “cheap” deal. If you’re first in complaints, the site was removed and the domain line, you won’t actually get a notebook until 77 has been maintained for the sole purpose of allowpeople pitch in $29. If you’re the twentieth person ing customers to contact the company for refunds. in line, 1,540 need to join before you reap any “I cannot offer any further insight, as I do not rewards. If you’re number 100, 7,700 people must have that information at my disposal. Thank you join. You get the idea. Overall, 98.7 percent of the for your understanding. Please refer any cuspeople lose their $29. tomer inquiries to staff@ezelectronics.net so as to FitzPatrick said that while most states have ensure prompt refunds. laws against “endless chains,” they’re not a “The site for EZ Electronics will not reopen on top priority of law enforcement agencies. The Ez-Toyz hosting at any time in the future. This user Internet age has spurred tons of quick-cash sites violated our user agreement… in the interest of that use pyramid schemes to offer notebooks and ensuring that the customers of that site receive their other electronics for low prices. due refunds, we will only host the site for e-mail EZ Electronics did respond to two e-mails from purposes and not for any new sales. Thank you for the Dog. In one, an unidentified company rep said: bringing the page to our attention. We will ensure “EZ Electronics is closed and will never again that the posting information for the site is changed.” reopen. Therefore warning people off has become Well that clears things up a bit. n a moot point. Problems with our payment processing service as well as other difficulties with computer attacks have rendered the site inoperable… Got a bone to pick with a vendor? Been spiked without the ability to take orders, the system canby a fly-by-night operation? Sic The Dog on not work. We are proud of the electronics that we them by writing watchdog@maximumpc.com. have sent out; though, now that we are processing The Dog promises to get to as many letters as full refunds to our customers, those electronics possible, but only has four paws to work with. are coming directly out of pocket. Our intentions are and were pure. However we are limited by our
Slide 15: e Ultimate Th TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE BY THE MAXIMUM PC STAFF
Slide 16: Got PC problems? Maximum PC is here to help with answers to the 34 most common computer ailments! Our cardinal rules of engagement regarding the troubleshooting of any PC problem can be succinctly stated: 1) Know the symptoms. 2) Isolate any and all variables 3) Double-check the obvious—like cable connections. 4) Diagnose the problem 5) Fix the problem. If only it were as simple as this. PCs are complex creatures and as such, fixing them is often an arduous, head-banging task that feels more like guesswork than an actual repair. But with this said, we frequently receive the same questions about the same problems. Thus, we’ve bundled up answers to the most common questions. So let’s dispense with the pleasantries and jump into the problem-solving ASAP shall we? , GENERAL SYSTEM TROUBLESHOOTING There are a few possible causes here. The most likely is that your system and fans are clogged with dust, which makes them less efficient. If this is the case, the fans have to work harder to keep up with the load. To fix it, clean your fans. After you clean your fans, check the temperature around your PC. Some computers get louder as they get hotter because the fans spin faster to keep the system cool. You can fix this by cooling down the climate around your system or by adding fans that are quieter. PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS My fan is whirring loudly. What’s up with that? I have four pieces of RAM installed and I’m pretty sure that at least one is bad. What’s the best way to test RAM for errors? Since you have four pieces of RAM, you can install just one DIMM in your mother- PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS board at a time and run the machine until it crashes. This isn’t a completely reliable way to test RAM, though. As an alternative, download Memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) and create a bootable CD. Memtest86 does a fair job. It runs several test patterns through the RAM. If a piece of RAM passes these tests, swap it with another DIMM and continue your tests. Even better than Memtest86 is Ultra-X’s RAM Stress Test Pro 2, which is a self-booting diagnostic plug-in card. This card uses a comprehensive set of test patterns to assess your memory, and we’ve found that it finds bad pieces of RAM that other testers miss. Keep in mind that it may not actually be a stick of RAM that’s bad. The problem may in fact be a bad DIMM slot. If all four pieces of RAM pass the test, you may have to rerun them in each individual slot on your motherboard. Finally, your motherboard’s BIOS usually sets RAM timing by reading the SPD setting on the module. If the SPDs are set too aggressively (we’ve seen this), it may cause problems. You should consider going into the BIOS and manually tweaking settings such as your CAS latency to a more conservative setting. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 23
Slide 17: The Ultimate TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE DIAGNOSIS BIOS and set your memory on Auto or at a more conservative setting and see if the reboot problem goes away. OUTDATED BIOS: Make sure you have the latest BIOS for your board. You can easily determine if your CPU is supported by browsing the BIOS updates of your motherboard vendor. If you are running a P4 Extreme Edition and you notice that it’s only supported with the latest BIOS update on your board, this may be the culprit. INADEQUATE POWER: If you’ve recently performed a major component upgrade and changed everything on your PC except the power supply, your PSU may be overstressed or simply failing due to age or heat. “FRANKENSTEIN SYNDROME”: Finally, hardware isn’t always the cause of spontaneous reboots. If you have a Frankenstein (that’s pronounced Frankensteen) installation of Windows XP that has moved from machine to machine, or has simply been in use for two or three years, it’s time to perform a clean install. PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS My PC spontaneously reboots. If rebooting occurs in a PC you just built, try reseating the CPU heatsink or making sure you used the proper thermal paste between the CPU and heatsink. Many times inadequate amounts of thermal paste that have been improperly applied, or lowquality thermal paste can cause spontaneous rebooting as the CPU heats up. You should also make sure you removed the plastic sticker from the bottom of the heatsink. As dumb as it sounds, it happens. While you’re at it, make sure your heatsink is actually approved for your CPU. If, for example, you are trying to use the same all-aluminum heatsink that you bought for your Athlon XP 1600+ on your shiny new Athlon XP 3200+, you should consider a heatsink that’s rated for the new CPU. If your heatsink and thermal paste check out, it’s likely the problem is caused by one of the following: OVERCLOCKING: This is kind of a no-brainer, but if you’re overclocking any component, stop doing it or back it down to a “reasonable” level. MEMORY TIMING: This is also a likely cause of reboots. Dig into your PROBLEM Sometimes when I play games for a long time, my computer just randomly crashes to the desktop. Random crashes in games can be the result of a few different problems. Typically, it’s a heat issue, a driver issue, or a problem with the game. The first thing you should do is check for a patch for any of your games that are crashing. It seems like common sense, but frequently we receive complaints from people trying to run games that have been patched three or four times. Once you’ve updated your games, you need to update your videocard and chipset drivers. Get your videocard driver from the company that manufactured your card’s chipset, either ATI (www.ati.com) or nVidia (www.nvidia.com). You should also check for newer drivers for your motherboard’s chipset whenever you update your videocard drivers. Outdated motherboard chipset drivers are one of the main causes of general system instability. If you’ve updated all your hardware, but are still having problems, you may have a heat issue. Open your case and look at your AGP card. Is there another card right below it? If there is, you should consider moving that card to another slot. A card directly below a high-end videocard can disrupt airflow enough to cause overheating issues with today’s top-of-the-line videocards. If freeing the neighboring slot doesn’t alleviate your problem, try adding a fan that fits into one of your PCI slots and exhausts hot air from the bottom of your PC. Hard Drive Hassles PROBLEM I just got a new Serial ATA hard drive, but when I try to load the image of my current drive onto it, the drive-imaging software doesn’t recognize my new hard drive. I just plugged in a brand-new hard drive but it’s not showing up in Windows XP . PROBLEM PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS This is a problem that has vexed us as well, and it comes down to the fact that most drive-imaging software programs don’t recognize Serial ATA controllers and therefore won’t let you image the drives connected to it. We’ve tested practically every imaging program on the market in the Lab, and the only one that successfully moved an image to a SATA drive and made it bootable was Symantec’s (formerly Powerquest) Drive Image 2002. DIAGNOSIS My system crashed, and when I rebooted, my RAID array was no longer working properly. All brand-new hard drives are sold unformatted and thus don’t show up in Windows until they’ve gone through the formatting process. To get up and running, connect the drive, boot your PC, and at the Windows desktop rightclick the My Computer icon and select Manage. Click Disk Management in the left-hand tree, and every drive connected to your system will show up. Simply right-click your new drive and select New Partition. Then follow the steps to get your drive up and running. DIAGNOSIS RAID arrays can stop functioning for several reasons, but it’s usually a case of a cable coming loose or something in the BIOS being reset. Serial ATA cables easily come out of their drives, so check them first. If everything is connected properly, you should also check to make sure that the ports your array is plugged into are set to “RAID” rather than “IDE. Because these ports often ” double as either standard IDE ports or RAID ports, they must be set in the BIOS to one or the other. Be sure to check here first if your array suddenly disappears. 24 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 18: PC Building Woes PROBLEM I just built a new machine and am experiencing totally random crashes. What are the possible culprits? DIAGNOSIS Does your system crash frequently while you play games? It’s likely that an overheated videocard is the cause. PROBLEM My new Athlon XP system is telling me that my brand-new Athlon XP 3200+ is only an Athlon 2200+! DIAGNOSIS It sounds like your motherboard’s bus speed is set incorrectly. You see, you probably bought an Athlon XP 3200+ that runs on a 400MHz bus (which is actually a double-pumped 200MHz bus). For the motherboard to recognize the CPU as a 3200+, the CPU has to run at 2.2GHz, or 2,200MHz. The CPU reaches that speed only if the motherboard is set to an 11 multiplier and with a 200MHz bus. So, 11x200=2200. If your motherboard’s frontside bus is set to run at 166MHz, the CPU would boot at 1833MHz. It’s no coincidence that this is the same speed as an Athlon XP 2200+. To correct this, reboot your machine and go into the BIOS by hitting DEL or F2 during boot. Look for the section that lets you change the bus speed. Hopefully we’re right and it’s set for 166MHz. Increase it to 400MHz, save the settings, reboot and you should have a 3200+. Get yourself a can of compressed air at the local geek emporium, and eject the disc tray. Spray into the drive with quick, short bursts at an angle (so the dust is more likely to be expelled from the drive). Do not spray continuously or with the can upside down, because that could introduce moisture into the drive. Give the dust a minute to settle, and spray the innards again. Random crashes are always hard to diagnose, so let’s cover all the bases. The first area to check is your drivers. Make sure you have the latest drivers for all your hardware, especially the motherboard chipset drivers. You should also make sure you’ve downloaded all Windows Updates. Next, consider your power supply. If you’re running a midsize 300-watt PSU, and upgraded to a late model Pentium 4 CPU or Athlon FX, or are just running several hard drives and PCI add-in cards, you should upgrade your power supply to a 400 watt or thereabouts model. Inadequate power to your components can cause the entire system to lock up at worst, or just cause certain components to malfunction or stop working. The final consideration is cooling. Ideally, you should have a decent size fan in the lower front of your case sucking in cool air from outside, and a large exhaust fan above your AGP card to pull air out of the case. PROBLEM I just bought a new PC, and now my Pocket PC refuses to connect via the USB port. PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS PROBLEM This is a common issue. You’ll have to buy a new Pocket PC. Just kidding. This problem occurs if you plug your Pocket PC in before installing ActiveSync. Check the Device Manager by right-clicking My Computer, selecting Properties, clicking the Hardware tab, and then selecting Device Manager. If you see an Unknown Device entry, delete it by right-clicking it and selecting Uninstall. Restart your PC, install your Pocket PCs drivers from the manufacturer’s disc, and plug it in again. I’m building a new PC and have the motherboard mounted inside the case. When I push the AGP card all the way down in the slot, the end of the metal tab on the slot cover hits the bottom of the case, preventing me from inserting the AGP edge connector all the way. DIAGNOSIS My optical drive has suddenly slowed to a crawl reading discs, and it refuses to read some discs. PC AUDIO AND MP3S DIAGNOSIS Optical drives usually don’t expire gradually; most simply stop working without so much as a death rattle. It’s much more likely your drive’s lens has accumulated a layer of dust. PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS I’m only getting sound out of one speaker. This usually happens when the mini-jack coming out of your speakers is not fully è Even though every ATX motherboard and ATX case should be exactly the same dimensions, there are still small variances that can create problems when transplanting your hardware into a new environment. It’s fairly common for the videocard to not quite fit, and when this happens the solution is to simply bend the end of the metal slot cover away from the board ever so slightly. This will afford it the extra millimeter or so of clearance the card needs to fit all the way down into the slot. But be careful! AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 25
Slide 19: The Ultimate TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE plugged into the soundcard input slot. Reversed polarity of a speaker can cause some weirdness as well, so make sure the positive terminal on the actual speaker is connected to the positive terminal on the subwoofer (or wherever the speakers connect to the amplifier), and vice versa for the negative terminals. One final possibility: Pet owners should routinely check speaker cables for teeth marks and replace the cables when Mr. Bigglesworth eats through the outer layer. to remove or re-encode the track. If an errant track is not the problem— you’ll know this is the case because it won’t crash on the same song/s—you may be able to rehabilitate your player by reformatting the drive. You’ll find instructions at the Creative Labs web site. Go to Support, click Portable Audio, and select “Troubleshooting the Nomad Jukebox 3 as a Standalone Unit” (also known as Solution ID #7392). Reformatting will delete the contents of your player, of course, so make sure you have all your music backed up before you go for it. If your MP3 player keeps crashing, an improperly encoded song is probably the cause. PROBLEM PROBLEM The remote control for my PC speakers suddenly stopped working the other day. I installed new batteries but it still won’t work. Is it dead? I can burn audio CDs and listen to them on my PC, but my portable CD player and car stereo can’t recognize them. DIAGNOSIS DIAGNOSIS Probably not. It sounds more like a sleeping remote. To wake it up, simply remove the batteries and press every button on the remote in a sequential order. Then just replace the batteries and your remote should work again. PROBLEM original and the rip, it will extract the data again and again until it has determined that the result precisely matches what’s on the disc. If the error correction is unable to compensate for a flaw in the disc and the data is irretrievable, Exact Audio Copy will let you know, sparing you from unpleasant surprises later. Oh, and did we mention Exact Audio Copy is free? Life is good. Sometimes I’ll rip a worn CD, only to find later that some tracks have skips in them. DIAGNOSIS This is a common problem, and can be easily fixed. Go to www.exactaudiocopy.de (don’t worry—the site is in English). We’ve brayed about Exact Audio Copy before, and here’s why: When Exact Audio Copy rips audio, it double-checks the data for accuracy, and if it detects any discrepancies between the PROBLEM My Creative Labs Jukebox Zen Xtra keeps crashing. Is it broken? DIAGNOSIS If a single bit in an MP3 file is out of place or errant for any reason, it can make many MP3 players lock up or crash. You’ll know this is the case if your player crashes on the same track every time. If so, you’ll have Commercial CDs are literally stamped from extruded masters, creating pits and lands that CD players have been designed to read. Burned CDs, however, create darkened areas that mimic the pits and lands of commercial CDs. As you’ve noticed, not all players—especially older ones—can deal with these kinds of discs. But all is not lost. Your best bet is to burn at a slower speed, 4x or below. This creates slightly more prominent differences between the burned and non-burned areas. If you have a Plextor burner, though, you have an even better option. The bundled PlexTools includes VariRec, which allows you to subtly alter the burning strength of your optical drive’s laser. By experimenting with various discs and burning strengths, you will almost certainly find the right combination for your CD player. VariRec is supported by both Nero and Easy CD Creator. We’ve used it to make audio CDs playable on otherwise uncooperative boom boxes. è MP3 Madness PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS I can’t rip songs into the MP3 format using Windows Media Player. You’ll have to purchase a plug-in that enables MP3 ripping. You can find these plugins at www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9Series/GettingStarted/ Personalization/Plugins.asp. But why bother? Just download iTunes with its free MP3 encoder, or download Exact Audio Copy and the superior LAME MP3 encoder. Both are free and easily located via a five-second Google search. Experiencing problems with your ripped songs? Try using Exact Audio Copy—it flawlessly rips songs. And it’s free! 28 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 20: The Ultimate TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE WI-FI NETWORKING PROBLEM My wireless laptop will not connect to my wireless router. It can’t even see it! DIAGNOSIS Usually Wi-Fi connection problems are the result of configuration errors, incompatible firmware, or interference with another router. It’s easy to fix firmware issues—all you need to do is download the latest firmware for your wireless router manufacturer’s web site. If you’ve installed the firmware update and still can’t connect, your next step is to temporarily disable WEP or WPA. If you can connect to the router when security is disabled, check all your WEP settings. You need to use exactly the same key on your router and any machines that connect to it wirelessly. Also make sure the Authentication Type on each of the PCs matches the setting on the router. Troubleshooting interference issues is more complex. First, you should move your router off of the default channel. Most routers shipped today are set at channel 6 by default, and the sheer traffic can create a lot of interference. You should also uncheck the field that says, “Automatically connect to non-preferred networks”—there is no advantage to the feature and it can cause your computer to behave erratically if you’re in the proximity of other networks. If you’re still having problems connecting, there may be a hardware problem on your laptop. Check Device Manager and make sure there isn’t an exclamation point beside your Wi-Fi card. You should also try connecting to another router that you know works properly. Finally, try connecting to your network using the same settings, but a different brand of Wi-Fi card. If all else fails, contact your router manufacturer’s tech support line. You may actually have a faulty router. Disabling the Wireless Zero configuration service can stop your wireless connection from dropping randomly. Unfortunately, disabling the service will also stop your PC from automatically configuring Wi-Fi access when it “sees” new access points. Windows to configure my wireless network settings” at the top of the tab. After that you should also go to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services, and disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service. That will prevent Windows from automatically switching your machine to unwanted wireless networks, but it will also prevent you from connecting to any other Wi-Fi LANs—like the ones at Starbucks or your office. If you have a sure-fire, works-everytime solution to fix this wireless networking problem, we want to hear it! Send it to input@maximumpc.com. PROBLEM I can’t see the other computers on my home network from my laptop. What can I do to make it work right? out there that claim to “improve your broadband speed” but we don’t know of anything that actually works. If your performance is significantly slower than the advertised claims of your provider, you should complain to your ISP For services advertised as full-speed, . we expect a minimum of 50kB/s download speeds and prefer to see our speeds top out over 100kB/s. If you are paying for a high-speed broadband connection, but are seeing less than 50kB/s downloads, you should switch ISPs! DIAGNOSIS PROBLEM My wireless laptop keeps “detecting” wireless networks in my house. Every time it does this, it drops my existing connection until I reconnect. How can I prevent this from happening? DIAGNOSIS PROBLEM My broadband connection feels like it’s downloading really slow. DIAGNOSIS 30 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004 Sadly, there isn’t much you can do to improve your broadband connection’s performance without spending more money to upgrade your existing service. Sure, there are a whole lot of products Nearly everyone on the Maximum PC staff has experienced this problem at one time or another, and we’ve had varying levels of success fixing it. The first thing you should do is open the Properties page for your Wi-Fi card, go to the Wireless Network tab, and click Advanced. Uncheck “Automatically connect to non-preferred networks. This will ” prevent your machine from automatically connecting to your neighbors’ networks. If your router is configured in a stealth mode so as not to broadcast your SSID, this can sometimes confuse Windows’s built-in Wi-Fi configuration tool. We recommend disabling any options that prevent your router from broadcasting your SSID. If that doesn’t fix your problem, wait until your machine is connected successfully, then go back to your Wi-Fi card’s Properties pages and uncheck “Use First, you need to make sure that each computer you want to connect to belongs to the same workgroup. Open the Start Menu and right-click My Computer. Go to Properties, then Computer Name. If your workgroup name doesn’t match, you can change it by clicking the Change button. Some versions of Windows only show the computers that actually have shared folders or printers, so make sure you have at least one folder shared on every computer you’re trying to connect to. The next step is to disable your firewall. By default, most firewalls block the ports used by Windows networking, keeping even legitimate users—like you—from connecting to your machine. If all your machines use the same workgroup and your firewalls are disabled, and you’re using a wireless router, your problem could be the router. If your wired machines can all see each other and your wireless machines can see each other, but a wired machine can’t see a wireless machine, it’s almost certainly the router’s fault. Barring a firmware update that fixes the problem, there’s no easy way to connect your machines if this is the case. Check with your router manufacturer for a newer version of the firmware. If that doesn’t work, you may need to get newer hardware. Here’s one last tip: You can try to connect to your computer’s specific IP address instead of its name. To find the IP address, go to the Network Connections control panel, right-click your network card, and select Status. The IP address is on the Support tab. Once you have the IP you can , go back to your other computer and put // IP .Address.here/ into Explorer. If you have shared folders on the PC you’re trying to connect to, they should pop up immediately. è
Slide 21: The Ultimate TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE WINDOWS XP PROBLEM My computer is acting odd. Loads of windows open all the time, and I’m getting a bunch of popup windows that don’t look like Internet Explorer windows. If one of the applications detects spyware on your PC, it will either automatically remove it, or give you instructions that allow you to remove it. DIAGNOSIS Your problem is most likely caused by incoming Messenger service messages. In a networked corporate environment, Messenger is used to send time sensitive messages about server outages, and software updates, but there’s really no reason to leave Messenger running at home. To disable it, go to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, and then Services. Scroll down to Messenger, right-click it, and select Properties. Change the Startup Type to Disabled and then press OK. Note that this Messenger service is different from Windows Messenger. You can disable this service and still receive instant messages! PROBLEM My e-mail frequently stops working—it often stalls when receiving and sending. And no matter how many times I change the e-mail settings, it reverts to “localhost. ” DIAGNOSIS PROBLEM A couple days ago, my computer began behaving very oddly. The disk runs a lot, even when I’m not using the computer, and my browser homepage is reset to a site I’ve never been to before. There’s an outside chance the problem could be a virus, but the most likely culprit is your antivirus program or your spam filtering program. These apps work by situating themselves between your mail program and your e-mail server, then taking a look at every piece of mail you receive. But if one of those programs crashes or needs input from you, it will hold up the e-mail download and your mail program will think the connection has died. If this happens, just restart your antivirus program and spam filtering program and try downloading messages again. dashes! Alternately, you can remap the em-dash shortcut to something a little more convenient. Go to Tools, Customize, Commands, and click the Keyboard button. Then, under Categories, scroll down to Common Symbols and click Em-dash in the right pane. Change the hotkey to whatever you’d like. We like Ctrl+M. To get back the menu items that you’ve lost, go to Tools, Customize, Commands, and drag the elusive commands back into place. PROBLEM I keep accidentally e-mailing my friend at her old address because the program created a shortcut for me. DIAGNOSIS This is an easy fix. When you’re typing the name into your To: field, scroll up and down until you get to the one you want to delete. When it’s highlighted press the Delete key and it will be gone forever! DIAGNOSIS This sounds like a classic case of spyware infection. There are two apps we recommend for combating spyware: Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware. You can download Spybot from www .safer-networking.org and get Ad-Aware from www.lavasoft.de. Both applications scan your hard drive for potential spyware and will help you remove it if detected. We recommend using both apps, because sometimes one application will detect a new spyware program that the other won’t. PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS I keep losing menu options in Microsoft Word. PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS I get a ton of spam every day. Our bet is that you really like to use emdashes. The default keyboard shortcut for an em-dash is Ctrl+Alt+the numpad Dash, but people often mistakenly press Ctrl+Alt+ the Dash on the primary keyboard, which is the default keyboard shortcut for “Remove item from the menu. After you call up that shortcut, ” your cursor will change to a bold minus sign and the next menu or shortcut you click will disappear from Word. The solution? Don’t use so many em- There are a couple really good, free anti-spam utilities available today— SpamPal (www.spampal.org) and Popfile (popfile.sourceforge.net). They use slightly different approaches, but each can reduce your spam intake by up to 99 percent. SpamPal analyzes every e-mail you receive and compares the path it took across the Internet with the servers and IP addresses of known spammers. It’s very effective right out of the box, but if you frequently receive e-mail from countries where spam is known to originate, such as China, Russia, and Taiwan, or from webmail services like Yahoo, which are frequently abused by spammers, you may see a lot of false positives. On the other hand, Popfile uses a technique called Bayesian filtering to determine which letters are spam based on the content of your e-mails. Every time you mark a message as spam, the contents of message are added to the database. This is highly effective once the filters are fully trained, but it can take several weeks of flagging each incoming message as spam before you start seeing greater than 90 percent accuracy. 32 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 22: The 6 Most Common WinXP Annoyances Take charge of your OS with these quick fixes AUTOPLAY By default, Windows will automatically play or open any disc you put into your optical drive. Either the OS will automatically load media into its preferred player, or it will open a dialog box asking what you want. It’s one of those neat features that aims to be convenient but can actually be extremely annoying. Thankfully, there’s an extremely flexible way to fix this little feature. Microsoft’s TweakUI (conveniently available as part of Microsoft’s PowerToys add-on for WinXP which can be found , on Microsoft’s web site), has tons of handy tweaks for fixing annoying Windows quirks just like this one. In TweakUI, open the Autoplay menu under My Computer and you’ll find a set of menus that lets you enable or disable Autoplay for certain drives, and even customize your Autoplay choices for different types of discs. ERROR REPORTING Windows wouldn’t be Windows without some kind of irritating display every time a program crashes. In WinXP, it’s Windows’ offer to report crashes to Microsoft. You can easily turn these off. Right-click My Computer and click Properties. Under the Advanced tab, click Error Reporting and you’ll see a menu that lets you set error reporting for just specific programs, or turn it off entirely. THE DISAPPEARING INTERNET EXPLORER STATUS BAR While you can bring the status bar back by clicking Status Bar in IE’s View menu, it’s irritating when you have to do it with every single window. Here’s a functional, if somewhat convoluted, fix. Open Internet Explorer and make sure the status bar is visible. Hold Ctrl and close Internet Explorer. This forces Windows to remember your viewing settings for that window. Open Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) by right-clicking a folder and clicking Explore. Make sure Windows Explorer’s status bar is visible by checking it in the View menu. Open the Folder Options dialog box from the Tools menu and click the View tab. Click the button marked “Apply to all folders” and close the dialog. Hold Ctrl and close the application. Now any time you open new windows in Internet Explorer the status bar will be there. FILE ASSOCIATIONS Sometimes file associations can get mixed up. New programs often take control of files, hijacking the association to their default, preferred programs. Fortunately, you can fix these fickle file fixations easily. All you have to do is rightclick any file of the offending type and click “Choose You can use TweakUI to customize—or remove— Program…” under the Open WinXP’s Autoplay settings. With menu. You’ll get a dialog box that lets you choose which program opens that type of file. CurrentVersion\Uninstall to find all the Check the box marked “Always use the programs listed in the Add\Remove selected program to open this kind of Programs menu. Delete the keys to profile” to ensure you don’t have to go grams you don’t have anymore, and through the arduous process again. they will never haunt your menu again. INCOMPLETE UNINSTALLS Sometimes—who are we kidding, many times—programs don’t completely uninstall. The files are deleted and their Registry keys are removed, but their ghosts haunt the Windows Add/Remove Programs menu. Exorcise these demons by opening the Registry Editor (click Run in the Start menu and type regedit). Go to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ SLOW WINXP BOOT TIMES Windows can get bogged down when too many programs load at startup. Many of them can be disabled by simply deleting them from the Windows Startup folder, but some are trickier, hiding in the depths of the Registry. Open the Run menu and type msconfig. This handy little configuration program lets you choose what runs when Windows boots. n MSConfig lets you tweak the fine details of how Windows boots. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 33
Slide 23: BROWSER By E. Will Greenwald BOOSTERS Firefox, Mozilla’s next-generation browser, is far more powerful than Internet Explorer. Maximum PC presents 13 ways to make it even better. Your web browsing will never be the same after you use this collection of upgrades, tweaks, and hacks! “The browsers clashed, and so Netscape was smited by Internet Explorer, and the progeny of Microsoft reigned over the land. But lo, for Netscape had a brother, and that brother was named Mozilla. And Mozilla begat the mighty Firefox, and Internet Explorer trembled in fear.” If there were an Internet Bible, this would be the latest passage in the Book of Browsers. Netscape and its Mozilla offshoot have long been regarded as the ugly cousins of Internet Explorer ever since Microsoft won the browser war of the 1990s. Open source coders working on Mozilla never quite gave up, though, and they ultimately created a full-featured, immensely expandable web browser that quite simply kicks ass. A longtime favorite of the Maximum PC staff—we named
Slide 24: it our favorite software application of mand the browser to go back a page, 2003—Firefox is Mozilla’s ongoing nextopen a new tab, or any one of a number generation web browser project. Rather of commands. than trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades All-in-One Gestures is the Firefox extenand loading the browser with features sion that enables these handy little most people won’t ever use, Firefox promouse gestures. It’s completely customvides a strong core with useful touches izable, and lets you assign almost any like tabbed browsing—which allows gesture to almost any browser function. you to scan through multiple web sites After a bit of practice you’ll be laughing within the same browsing window—a at the clunky, snail-like browsing of your pop-up blocker, and immunity to maliold-school colleagues. cious VBScripts and ActiveX controls. AUTHOR: MARC BOULLET Add an extremely flexible extension VERSION 0.9 COMPATIBLE system that allows users to pick and choose their own add-ons, and you’ve got a very attractive browser. And still you’re at just the tip of Firefox’s iceberg Give Firefox a new name every of goodness. time you open it Through plugin-like extensions, independent developers have created a Remember when Firefox was called slew of browser tweaks, web developFirebird? How about when it was named ment tools, and even games that intePhoenix? Who can guess what other grate with Firefox. These extensions let names Mozilla’s next-gen browser will be you edit a site’s CSS on the fly, search forced to adopt because of trademark conAmazon’s product database with a kiosksiderations before it reaches the big v1.0? like interface, or even browse by simply Firesquid? How about Lightning swishing your mouse back and forth. Pony? Or maybe Moonstarfish? Thanks Here are our favorite Firefox extento Firesomething, you no longer have to sions. Some are handy, some are funny, lie awake at night wondering what your and some are absolutely essential. Note: browser’s next name will be—you can find The following extensions were origiout every time you open a new window. nally tested with Firefox v0.8. As of press Firesomething randomly generates a time, Mozilla had just released v0.9 of name in your browser’s title bar every the browser. It’s almost certain that the time you load Firefox. Instead of Mozilla extensions mentioned here (or facsimiFirefox, your browser might say Mozilla les thereof) will be ported to the new Wateryak, or Mozilla Moonkangaroo. browser in little time. We have indiIt’s not the most useful extension, but it cated the extensions we know for a fact to be v0.9Firesomething compatible as of this writing. To download Firefox, go to does lend a nice bit of variety to the web browsing experience. AUTHOR: MICHAEL O’ROURKE VERSION 0.9 COMPATIBLE TABBROWSER EXTENSIONS Enhance tabbed browsing It’s hard to improve on an already great feature, but Tabbrowser Extensions does just that. It takes Firefox’s beloved tabbed browsing feature—which allows you to scan through multiple web sites within the same browsing window—and gives it a nice big shot of what we like to call usefulcillin. With Tabbrowser Extensions, you can highlight, duplicate, and even drag and drop your tabs. It supports automatic refreshing for specific tabs, and can even bring a tab back to life after you’ve accidentally closed it. It’s a great addition to Firefox’s already excellent tabbed browsing functionality. AUTHOR: SHIMODA HIROSHI FIRESOMETHING ADBLOCK Block all web ads Firefox comes with a capable pop-up blocker, but it won’t protect you from every ad. Sure, you might not see another annoying, unwanted pop-up, but that won’t stop the minivans driving across your home page, Ë www.mozilla.org. ALL-IN-ONE GESTURES Control your browser with gestures, not clicks Mouse gestures are the latest craze to hit web browsers. Instead of clicking toolbar buttons, you control your browser with elegant swipes of the mouse. By holding down the right mouse button and drawing symbols with the cursor, you can com- Maybe Mozilla should have named its next-gen browser Project: Element-Animal. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 35
Slide 25: BROWSER BOOSTERS EditCSS begging you to punch him. AdBlock remedies this situation by adding a slew of advertisement-blocking features. Once installed, this handy extension displays a button in the corner of any potential ad. With a few clicks, you can block just that ad, or any ad from that server, or any ad of that size. It works on JPEGs, GIFs, and even Flash files. Talk about useful. AUTHOR: THE ADBLOCK CREW VERSION 0.9 COMPATIBLE EDITCSS Rearrange your site— or someone else’s—in real-time EditCSS lets you remix web sites like the best HTML DJ, and learn something about HTML and web style sheets in the process. Commonly known as CSS, cascading style sheets have taken over the web. They control the vertical and the horizontal, the italic and the bold, the header and the div. He who controls the CSS controls the page, and he who uses Ë Firefox’s extension system is still in development, and can be finicky at times. Some extensions can conflict with others, rendering the entire browser unusable. For example, All-in-One Gestures may start to act funky if you load another mouse gesture extension like Optimoz Tweaks or RadialContext. Keep similar extensions to a minimum, and disable them if you think there might be a conflict. Be wary when installing extensions. Many are useful, but much like IE’s ActiveX controls, it’s possible to damage your browser or system by installing a malicious Firefox extension. We’ve yet to see i happen, but if Firefox continues to grow in popularity, it won’t be long before we see spyware coded specifically for Mozilla. Extensions available on Texturizer.net are considered safe, though, and we’ve personally tested every single one mentioned here. WHERE CAN I GET ALL THESE EXTENSIONS? On the Internet, that’s where! Firefox extensions may be mind-blowingly useful, but you need the Firefox browser to take advantage of them. Thankfully, Firefox is available free from Mozilla’s web site (www.mozilla.org). Keep in mind that while it’s extremely stable and many Maximum PC staffers swear by it, Firefox remains a “pre-release” version, which means it doesn’t work perfectly. Mozilla insists that Firefox is intended as a “technology preview,” and guarantees nothing as long as the browser version is less than 1.0. That’s OK—we still think it’s great. As of this writing, Firefox v0.9 was just released, and it looks to offer even more stability and control than its predecessor. While the majority of extensions at this time are for v0.8, we expect to see our favorites updated for Firefox 0.9 in the near future. Most extensions can be found at the Firefox Extensions page on Texturizer.net. There, simply click the install link of the extension you want, and accept it as if it were a browser plug-in. The extension will install automatically, and should appear as soon as you restart the browser. Extensions for v0.9 are available at www.update.mozilla.org. You can manage your extensions in Firefox’s Options menu. Click Options, then click the Extensions button. You can enable or disable various extensions, and modify specific settings in each one’s option menus. Click “Install, and ignore that pesky ” “unsigned” stuff. Firefox’s Options menu will let you control or disable most of your extensions. 36 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 26: BROWSER BOOSTERS Needlesearch EditCSS controls the CSS. EditCSS is a radical little extension that lets you edit any site’s CSS, then see how your changes affect the site in realtime. You can rearrange elements, alter text formats, and turn any page into the nastiest beast or the prettiest beauty with a few keystrokes. EditCSS is perfect for web developers who want to find just the right look for their pages, or inquiring minds who just want to understand what this whole CSS thing is all about. AUTHOR: PASCAL GUIMIER NEEDLESEARCH Use multiple search engines at the same time NeedleSearch can search anything, from web pages to PHP functions. NeedleSearch is like a search toolbar on a separate window and lets you search steroids and caffeine. Other search tooland browse Amazon’s sizeable catalog of bars might let you search Google for web products in a snappy, kiosk-like interface. sites and images, but not many let you Enter a term into MAB’s search bar, look up PHP functions—a form of scriptand all matches on Amazon’s site will ing used on the web. NeedleSearch can pop up in moments. Click an item and, search the web, domain names, phone just like the online superstore’s web site, books, and even development databases. you’ll see product information, reviews, It supports Google, AnyWho, Devguru, Sourceforge, and several other search engines and specialty sites. Mozilla Amazon Browser The toolbar is expandable, and the built-in editor lets you add your own favorite search engines to its list. Enter the engine’s name, search URL, encoding and input method, and you’ll see your own search engine on the toolbar. If that’s not enough, NeedleSearch includes context highlighting. Enter any word into the search bar, click the highlight button, and every instance of that word on the page is highlighted in bright yellow. AUTHOR: EELCO VAN KUIK price, and sometimes even a photo. You can refine your searches by author, publisher, category, or even a specific Amazon.com storefront. MAB offers every bit as much search flexibility as Amazon.com’s web site with a quicker, cleaner interface. AUTHOR: FABIO SERRA Ë MOZILLA AMAZON BROWSER (MAB) Customize your Amazon.com interface Mozilla Amazon Browser is different from the dozens of Amazon tool bars spread across the web, mostly because it’s not a toolbar. MAB is an applet that opens in MAB’s nifty interface can make you feel like the world’s most powerful bookstore clerk. 38 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 27: BROWSER CHECKY BOOSTERS Extension Uninstaller Check your web site’s compatibility There are a lot of web page standards out there: HTML, XHTML, CSS, RSS, BBQ, to name a few. Just because a page you designed looks good on your browser doesn’t mean it’ll look the same, or even work, on everyone else’s web browsers. Checky adds dozens of validation robots to Firefox’s context menu. With three clicks, you can see if your page passes W3C’s HTML standards, or test the validity of your RSS feed. “Compliant” will be your web site’s middle name after you’ve validated it with Checky. AUTHOR: JOACHIM SCHREIBER Jeremy Gillick’s Extension Uninstaller helps v0.8 users remove unwanted extensions quickly and easily. SPIDERZILLA Download entire web sites to your hard drive Spiderzilla is an extremely handy little extension for downloading and saving web sites. It uses an open source program called Httrack Website Copier to download entire web sites to your hard drive. All HTML, all pictures, all linked media and files on the site are saved to your computer for later examination. It’s a great tool for archiving and preserving your favorite web sites. Our only hope is that future versions include a downloading progress bar. AUTHOR: LENROCK extensions. Extension Uninstaller automates the process of removing Firefox extensions, letting you uninstall them in a few clicks instead of several minutes of tense system file editing. AUTHOR: JEREMY GILLICK works by uploading your bookmarks to an XML file, which is then uploaded to an FTP server of your choosing (your ISP usually grants you a few MB of space for free). Once this transaction has taken place, you can retrieve your bookmarks BLOCKFALL Blockfall Play Tetris and other games Tetris is the sport of kings, gods, and everyone who’s ever touched a computer. Alexey Pajintov’s greatest work is now available as BlockFall, a minigame extension on Firefox. Whenever a page is slowly loading, just pop open a game of BlockFall and watch the hours blow by! BlockFall and other Firefox extension games are interesting because they demonstrate the remarkable flexibility of this browser’s extension system. Rather than using simple forms, scripts, and robots, Firefox extensions allow the development of full-fledged applets and games. Other Firefox games include Minesweeper and Solitaire clones, and a text adventure emulator called Gnusto. AUTHOR: STEPHEN CLAVERING EXTENSION UNINSTALLER Remove your extensions Firefox’s extensions system is unbelievably useful for web-goers, but it suffers from one major flaw: You can’t uninstall extensions once they’re loaded. Extensions can be removed manually, but it’s a tricky procedure that involves fiddling with several files that are critical to Firefox’s overall well-being. Firefox is supposed to support extension removal in its next release, but until then we have to use an extension to remove BOOKMARKS SYNCHRONIZER Take your bookmarks with you anywhere you go This extension is essential for anyone who works on multiple computers. It Firefox extensions can even play games! Is a Firefox Quake port far off? 40 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 28: from any computer connected to the Net, and browse as if you were using that terminal for years. It’s not the flashiest extension, but it’s incredibly useful for anyone who uses different computers for work and play. AUTHOR: TORISUGAR VERSION 0.9 COMPATIBLE THINGS THEY LEFT OUT Take control of your browser The only thing better than having a streamlined set of web-browsing options is having a multitude of web-browsing options. Things They Left Out adds just that to Firefox. All the little Advanced tab options you barely remember from Internet Explorer are back. This browser extension lets you manage certificates and MIME file types, debug web pages, and even tweak the mouse wheel’s performance. It’s the perfect add-on for those of us who feel compelled to control every single aspect of our web browsing experience, no matter how small or technical. AUTHOR: !CDN n INTERNET EXPLORER-BASED ALTERNATIVES Not ready to part with IE just yet? Here are two custom enhancements for Microsoft’s more mainstream browser Internet Explorer might not come with useful features like tabbed browsing and pop-up blockers, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft’s browser is a lost cause. Third-party titles like MyIE2 and AvantBrowser take Internet Explorer’s base web browsing technology and pump it up with new features and better performance. Here are two excellent alternatives for users who aren’t ready to part with IE just yet. MyIE2 MyIE2 is the IE-based Swiss Army knife for the web. MyIE2 (www.myie2.com) enhances the plain-Jane IE web browser with luxuries Microsoft left out, and a few the company never thought of. MyIE2 has most of Firefox’s built-in features, like tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and skin support, as well as a ton of other functions. A look at MyIE2’s Tools menu will reveal a handful of useful commands. Tabs can be made to auto-refresh regu- larly. Pages can be translated between languages with both Babel Fish and Worldlingo. Paranoid browsers can even clear their history, cache, cookies, and form information with a few easy clicks. AvantBrowser Like MyIE2, AvantBrowser (www.avant browser.com) builds on Internet Explorer’s founda- tion, and includes features like tabbed browsing, skin support, ad blocking, and mouse gestures. A basic email client is also included in the browser, as are Googlebased translation tools and a Yahoo!/Google search bar. Speed and security are both given a boost with AvantBrowser’s built-in media blocking. ActiveX controls, Java applets, scripts, and even pictures can be blocked from loading. Thanks to AvantBrowser, an IE-based web browser can finally be protected from spyware. AvantBrowser isn’t quite as robust or powerful as MyIE2; rather, it specializes in being quick, easy to use, and secure. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 41
Slide 29: Are you doing irreparable harm to yourself or your future progeny by using a CRT monitor?
Slide 30: Do you know the difference between fact and fiction? Maximum PC investigates 11 common computing myths F orget alligators in the sewers. The technical world is jam-packed with powerful and highly believable myths that have been best- ing wide-eyed techies since computers first roamed the earth. Some myths refuse to die no matter how nonsensical they’ve become. Some have only begun their journey of misinformation and bewilderment. Skeptical? Inside these pages we’ll explore tales of overclocking a Fat Table, and the joys of sending anonymous e-mail while downloading free songs that the RIAA cannot trace. Sound fishy yet? In other words, if you haven’t toned your technical-myth muscles, consider this quick workout your ticket to avoiding a few embarrassing moments down the line. And if we missed one, by all means send it to us for a follow-up at input@maximumpc.com. BY ALICE HILL CRTS EMIT HARMFUL RADIATION Back when a color TV weighed as much as a motorcycle, homemakers warned their children to sit far from the set, lest they be exposed to excessive radiation. Was there something to their matronly warnings, and more chillingly, what can be said of the fact that today millions of us sit mere inches away from our computer monitors for hours and hours of every waking day? Here’s what we know for sure. Radiation is present in our environment in many forms, and all radiation is based on frequency and wavelengths. Frequency is the measurement of oscillations per second, while wavelength is the measurement of wave peak to wave peak, or rather, one is the measurement of how fast and the other is a measurement of how far between. In a CRT monitor, a heated cathode tube shoots a stream of electrons at a screen coated with phosphorous material. The phosphor glows in relation to the electrons hitting it and produces the light of pixels seen on the front of the monitor screen. Deep inside the monitor X-rays are produced, but these are shielded by the picture tube and by the fact that electron energy is fairly limited in wavelength strength. Basically, the amount of radiation inside a monitor is a tiny fraction of the radiation we receive throughout the day from other products and even our own bodies—the food we eat produces radioactive traces that stay in the body for days. The combustion of natural gas and other fossil fuels, and the radiation absorbed from masonry and other building materials is actually so much higher in magnitude than monitors that even using a CRT for eight hours daily puts you at much less risk relative to other factors. So while you may hear talk about the dangers of having electronic devices such as cell phones or monitor screens in close proximity to your head, we have yet to see a study that definitively proves these devices are harmful. Now that ham sandwich you’re eating is another story... DEBUNKED! Ë AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 43
Slide 31: ALLOWING YOUR BATTERIES TO DRAIN COMPLETELY BEFORE CHARGING THEM INCREASES THEIR LONGEVITY Another myth that refuses to die comes straight from the far-off land of Nickel Cadmium. NiCad batteries had a nasty little flaw called the “memory effect. When ” these older rechargeable batteries weren’t fully discharged between charge cycles, the battery “remembered” the shortened cycle, and thus its total capacity was reduced. If you ever bought a cordless Dust Buster and placed it back in the charger base a few seconds after sucking up a piece of lint, you quickly learned what memory effect was all about—even the most diligent dischargers quickly lost battery capacity. Today, however, most batteries for advanced devices—like laptops and cell phones—are made with Lithium Ion, which has greater immunity to the memory effect besides being more powerful and lightweight. But Lithium Ion batteries aren’t invincible; they can suffer from power leakage when not being used. YOU CAN MAKE YOURSELF INVISIBLE TO THE RIAA ON FILE SHARING NETWORKS A recent wave of RIAA crackdowns has caused panic among casual music downloaders, and driven hardcore file-sharing junkies to new anonymous file-sharing networks. But is it really possible to be safe from prying eyes? From what we can see, technology may solve some problems, but it’s pretty much a safe bet that if the RIAA wants to track you down, they still can. Three new attempts are underway to make file-sharing identities anonymous. Blubster.com, EarthStation5.com, and Filetopia.com networks use a variety of IP cloaking techniques, third-party proxies, and advanced encryption. But the effect is more like throwing obstacles in the way rather than actually creating a truly foolproof solution. It still doesn’t prevent the RIAA from suing everyone on the network or getting the ISP to cough up the names. According to Optisoft, creator of Blubster, its new network will offer two layers of camouflage. “Each user has multiple Internet protocol (IP) addresses to mask themselves, a spokeperson claimed. ” ”Files in the network are disguised to look entirely generic to the outside observer. The multiple IP addresses are taken from other users on the network and distort individual activities. ” The odds of getting caught certainly decrease when you move to a more cloaked solution and millions of people are involved, but in true technical terms, you can run but can’t hide when it comes to anonymous file downloading. Oh, and did we mention that downloading or sharing copyrighted songs you don’t own is illegal? in magnitude. If you defrag a hard drive and it saves you a second or two each time you access a file, you should notice the improvement. A memory defragging utility (which also uses precious system memory, by the way) might get you 1,000 nanoseconds extra, or one millionth of a second, which you will never notice. DEBUNKED! OVERCLOCKING YOUR PC CAN SHORTEN THE LIFE SPAN OF YOUR SYSTEM This one is true, but only for the clueless. Overclocking is the task that separates alpha geeks from fumbling amateurs. For starters, incorrectly overclocking your system can not only fry the CPU and crash your hard drive, it can also heat the inside of your case to unheard of temperatures, and make everything from memory to add-in cards instantly lose their warranty protection. In other words, don’t try calling Dell after you’ve melted your new Dimension. The lure of overclocking stems from the fact that CPUs are not manufactured in predetermined clock speeds. The chips are simply tested and given a speed rating based on a theoretical assumption about how much performance each CPU is capable of delivering reliably. The key word here is “reliably. One man’s reli” able is another man’s wasted horsepower. Overclockers are willing to roll the dice and gamble on the fact that if cooled properly and housed in the right motherboard, most CPUs can provide extra performance for basically no charge. The downside is that increasing voltage and amping up the PCI and AGP buses on the motherboard can do all sorts of damage to the components in your system. Older Maxtor drives, for example, are known for being unable to run above a 33MHz PCI bus. For this reason, we recommend that overclockers do their research. We also understand that while blowing out a system sucks, the pursuit is noble. DEBUNKED! LEAVING YOUR MONITOR ON 24/7 WASTES ENERGY Technically speaking, leaving any powered device on consumes energy in some form. But monitors with the EPA’s Energy Star certification offer a power-down feature that saves energy when your monitor stands idle for some time. A monitor set to conserve power can drop to 15 watts and then down to 8 watts depending on how long it is left undisturbed. According to the EPA, if every U.S. monitor used the Energy Star powerdown mode, the amount of energy conserved would translate to 11 billion kilowatt hours, or roughly $935 million per year saved. That’s enough energy to power more than one million households for a year. Unfortunately, most monitors don’t ship with power management turned on. You can learn more about this setting from the Energy Star’s web site: www.energystar.gov, or take it a step further and get a flat panel LCD (with power management enabled, of course), which uses even less power than a CRT. DEBUNKED! DEFRAGGING YOUR RAM IMPROVES PERFORMANCE As the old saying goes, there’s RAM and then there’s RAM. OK, so we made this saying up. Our point is this: While it’s true that defragging your hard drive can help with performance, defragging your memory is a sucker’s game. There are all sorts of white papers you can read on memory addressing holes, page file swapping, and so on, but we like this plain and simple explanation: Hard drive speed is measured in milliseconds, while memory is measured in nanoseconds—essentially a 6x difference BELIEVE IT! BELIEVE IT! INTERNET SPEED BOOSTERS INCREASE THE SPEED OF YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION Once upon a time, modems doubled in speed every few years. This made Internet connections something you 44 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 32: could feasibly upgrade. Today 56K is basically the end of the line. This means that unless you get some sort of highspeed access, your upgrading days are over. Or are they? Internet speed boosters like AOL’s Speedboost promise to make your dialup experience faster than ever, but don’t be fooled. The majority of speed boosting technology is really just smarter graphic and page handling. All this means is that the sites you visit often are preloaded and cached for faster delivery, and/or that graphics are downloaded in smaller sizes and lower resolutions. While this may feel speedier, you’re technically only getting an optimized solution—not a faster connection. For the AOL crowd not ready to take the high-speed connection plunge, we suppose an accelerator is better than nothing, but you’re simply delaying the inevitable. As more and more sites serving broadband visitors add more and more graphics, the whole web will only get slower for modem diehards in the slow lane, no matter how many features these so-called accelerators strip out. DEBUNKED! IT’S POSSIBLE TO DIE FROM SITTING IN FRONT OF YOUR COMPUTER FOR TOO LONG File this under “strange but true, ” because a 31-year-old gamer from western China literally perished in front of his PC this year after a particularly rousing 20-hour nonstop session of the online multiplayer game Saga. Internet café employees reported that the victim usually played for 10 hours a day nonstop. But it caught up with him. Doctors speculate that the actual cause of death was an embolism resulting from physical inactivity that moved into his heart. While video game haters are quick to blame the medium, we have this to say: Doing anything for an abnormally long period of time without sleep or proper nutrition will probably do you in. BELIEVE IT! Ë Are your online activities ever really free from prying eyes? AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 45
Slide 33: IT’S POSSIBLE TO SEND AN UNTRACEABLE E-MAIL Let’s rephrase this one to make the issue crystal clear. It’s possible to send fake email to a 90-year-old lady who uses AOL dial-up. It’s not possible to send fake e-mail to an entity that knows anything about e-mail. As one of our sources told us, “ Totally anonymous e-mail is impossible—if it got from you to there, it could be traced back from there to you. There are measures you can take to make your e-mail effectively untraceable, (keyword: wingates) but as it involves breaking the law in at least three countries—no kidding—I think it would be unwise to detail them. ” The most popular way to send nearly anonymous e-mail is to use a remailer that essentially forwards your message from a generic address. Even that method is prone to failure because the host of the remailing system is bound to turn you in if the Feds come snooping around. As the anonymous owner of Anonymous.To, one such remailing site, cautions, “Do not use remailers for illegal purposes. Sending death threats and harassing e-mail is extremely obnoxious and illegal. Most remailer operators will assist authorities in determining the correct name and e-mail address of users who abuse the system… as noted in Anonymous.To’s Terms of Service. ” Bottom line: If you need to hide, that’s your business. If you need to break the law and do it via e-mail, that’s nasty business that probably will come back to haunt you. Any questions? because it never really did anything with all the smart inventions it was financing. As the legend goes, Steve Jobs visited PARC and became determined to use what he saw there for his own computer design, which kick-started the graphical OS frenzy that Apple is known for today. A lesser-known twist to this story involves the creator of the Apple OS, Jef Raskin. Raskin claimed that while the PARC guys were heading in the right direction, he was already onto the whole graphical thing and actually came up with other enhancements that made his GUI better than what PARC had cooked up. As he put it: “Clickand-drag methods were invented at Apple and not at PARC (or elsewhere, as far as I know). I created this method for moving objects and making selections after finding the Xerox click-move-click method prone to error. Bill Atkinson extended the paradigm to pull-down menus. This all happened relatively early in the history of the Mac. The way my insight got extended by [Atkinson] was typical of how things developed then. ” Bottom line: PARC was first (sorry, Jef), but Apple was better at innovating over time, which reminds us of another OS story that started with a little program called QDOS…. PLACING SPEAKERS NEAR YOUR HARD DRIVE WILL ERASE ALL OF YOUR DATA With virtually every office desktop and home computer happily using some sort of speaker system in close proximity to hard drives and sensitive monitor screens, it’s surprising that anyone is still worried about this one. But myths often have a life of their own. That’s why we’re here to tell you once and for all that it would take a stack of incredibly powerful magnets to do a number on your hard drive. Here’s why: Hard drives are magnetic devices, meaning the platters are manufactured with a small layer of magnetic coating. The key word here is coercivity. In other words, the magnetic field of a device like a speaker coil must be strong enough to reduce the magnetic field of a device like a hard drive to do any damage. Or in more practical terms, an unshielded speaker has a magnetic field length of about 1,000 Gauss. Sounds large, but even a stack of 10,000 Gauss rare earth magnets atop your hard drive would be incapable of causing coercivity. DEBUNKED! n DEBUNKED! Is your speaker system putting your hard drive data at risk of total destruction? DEBUNKED! APPLE INVENTED THE GUI There’s a simple one word response to this one and that’s: HOOEY. Technophiles know that the graphical user interface got its start at the legendary Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). In the 1970s, PARC was like a technology think tank on steroids. The smart men and women who worked there invented everything from Ethernet to the computer mouse to a user interface that could be maneuvered by clicking icons with a mouse. Unfortunately, Xerox was the ultimate loser 46 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 34: Ask the Doctor RESOURCE HOG My computer started acting extremely sluggish recently, and when I checked the Task Manager, I noticed that a process named vdrrib.exe was using 100 percent of the system resources! I don’t know what this program is or where it came from and I have no recollection of installing a program that might be related to it. I’ve tried to uninstall it but can’t locate it on my system. Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware are both unable to detect it. I also have a fully updated copy of Trend Micro’s PC-Cillen 2003, which fails to detect the app. McAfee Stinger and Virus Checker, which I ran using a DOS disk, also don’t discover anything. Can you please help shed some light on the situation? Symptom Diagnosis Cure RESETTING REFRESH RATES Every time I shut down my system, the monitor’s refresh rate gets reset to 60Hz, forcing me to reset it to 75Hz. I have a Sapphire Radeon 9600 videocard with 128MB of memory and I’m running Windows XP Pro with the latest ATI Catalyst drivers installed. I also have a GeForce3 Ti 300 videocard, but I haven’t experienced this problem with that card. What could be causing my refresh rates to reset? Also, is it better to run your monitor at a high refresh rate such as 85Hz or is it better to run it at a low refresh rate such as 60Hz? And do higher refresh rates put extra strain on you monitor? —BRYAN L. This is a problem the Doctor’s never seen before and couldn’t replicate in the Lab. Our best guess is that the culprit isn’t your videocard driver, but your monitor driver. To be sure, however, you should first completely remove your old videocard drivers, reboot your PC, then reinstall your videocard drivers. (ATI has a handy utility that will remove all traces of old drivers at www.ati.com/support/drivers/misc/ catalystutils.html.) Only then should you go to your monitor manufacturer’s web site and download the latest version of your monitor drivers. Another possible culprit could be a videocard configuration utility—such as Powerstrip. It might automatically change your refresh rate every time you restart your computer. The optimum refresh rate varies among individual users and monitors. As a rule of thumb, we recommend you test each refresh rate your monitor supports, then use the lowest setting that doesn’t Setting your monitor’s refresh rate can be tricky. Set it too high and your image quality will suffer, but set it too low and you’ll suffer flicker-induced headaches. —MIKE DELISA Well, we’ve never heard of vdrrib.exe before, and neither have the folks at Symantec’s online antivirus center, or any of the spyware sites we checked. We also did a quick Google search on the executable’s name, and came up with nothing. That leads us to believe it’s probably an ill-behaved app, not an actively malicious one. Now it’s time to play PC sleuth. First, let’s find out where the file lives. Go to Start, then Search, and scan all your drives for vdrrib.exe. It will probably be buried in your Program Files directory or your Windows directory. If it’s in Program Files, the directory it’s stored in will probably be a great big clue about the origins of the program. If it’s in your Windows directory, you’ll probably have to dig a little deeper. Right-click the file name, then go to Properties. Click the Version tab and explore the contents of the box labeled “Item name.” Often the proper name of the application and the company that authored it will appear in one of those fields. You can use that information and Google to track down the file’s origin. If all that fails, you should probably just stop the application from loading automatically. After all, if no one on the Internet has written about it, it can’t be vital for stable Windows produce noticeable flicker. Higher settings will decrease the lifespan of your monitor, and can produce blurry onscreen images. To adjust your refresh rate, right-click your Desktop, go to Properties, then go to the Settings tab and press the Advanced button. Click the Monitor tab and adjust your refresh rate using the drop-down dialog. To test for flicker, stare at a point about a foot right or left of your monitor. This should put the display in your peripheral vision. The human eye is much more sensitive to flicker in the peripheral vision than when you are staring directly at a monitor. We usually find that a setting between 70Hz and 80Hz is sufficient to minimize flicker without decreasing image quality. operation. Note: if your PC is connected to some sort of specialty hardware, like a drum scanner or an electron microscope, you shouldn’t disable the app outright. To stop the app from automatically loading, go to Start, then Run, and type msconfig. Then go to the Startup tab and look for vdrrib.exe or any variation thereof. Uncheck the box next to it and restart your computer. That should take care of the problem. PROPER PREFLIGHT PROCEDURES I’ve built three computers over the last couple of years and they’ve all run properly right off the bat, but they don’t do what I really want them to: kick ass in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. I’m not sure if I’m buying the wrong parts or what, but my current box has an AMD 1.2GHz processor with a gig of RAM, a Western Digital 120GB hard drive, and an nVidia GeForce 5200 256MB videocard with the most current drivers. Unfortunately, Flight Simulator still jerks along at an agonizingly slow frame rate unless I turn the detail levels way down. This is very annoying when attempting to land a helicopter on a moving ship and such. So, my question is, when acquiring the hardware for my next system, what should I purchase to run flight sims at their max resolution and detail levels? —KEVIN R. THORNTON You’ve got two problems. First, Microsoft Flight Sim is a notoriously hardware-hungry application. It will use every ounce of computing power your system has to offer. Second, the computer you describe in your letter is suffering from an advanced case of slow-pokiness. Your old 1.2GHz pro- 50 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 35: cessor and GeForce 5200 simply don’t have the legs for a modern flight sim. While your system is well within the minimum system requirements for Flight Simulator 2004, it just won’t work with all the details turned up. If you want a system that can run Flight Sim with the features turned up to a reasonable clip, we recommend at least a 2.5GHz processor and a Radeon 9600 XT or GeForce 5700 Ultra. WHICH IS THE BETTER RAID CONTROLLER? Which is better: an onboard RAID controller or a PCI-based RAID controller card? My system scored 73MB/s in SiSoft Sandra’s benchmark with two Western Digital 36GB 10,000rpm Raptors hard drives running off the onboard motherboard RAID controller. Will I see a performance gain if I switch to an add-in RAID controller card? AND HERE’S A SIMPLE ANSWER Here’s a simple question: Will the Asus K8V SE Deluxe motherboard allow you to boot from a SATA drive? —DILSHAN Absolutely not! Your RAID controller can pump data only as fast as the bus it’s riding, and as a general rule onboard controllers have faster connections than the PCI bus provides. An onboard RAID chip runs at whatever speed the south bridge can communicate with the CPU, which varies among chipsets but still always exceeds the PCI bus’ 133MB/s maximum. This means a PCI add-in card can actually be slower than an onboard solution if you’re satu- The performance difference between an onboard RAID controller and a PCI add-in card such as this Promise FastTrack unit is negligible, unless your PCI bus is a limitation. —RICHARD STAUFFER The simple answer is yes. The complex answer depends on what you mean. Can you boot from a SATA drive connected to the computer? Yes. Can you boot from the motherboard without using a floppy and hitting F6 to install other drivers in Windows XP? No. (At least not the last time the Doc tried it on a board equipped with the same south bridge as the K8V SE Deluxe.) rating the PCI bus with traffic. Of course, this is only a concern if the other PCI cards on the bus are themselves speed demons—such as Gigabit Ethernet or additional RAID arrays. Otherwise, you won’t see a significant speed difference between an onboard RAID controller and a PCI device. Expect that to change with the upcoming advent of the PCI Express 1x slot, which will chug along at a whopping 500MB/s—a welcome development, for sure. RUBBING YOUR CPU THE WRONG WAY I recently cleaned off my CPU and heatsink but I mistakenly used rubbing alcohol from the medicine cabinet rather than pure isopropyl alcohol. My system is now experiencing random freezes and pauses. Did I damage my CPU and heatsink? I read in a recent issue of Maximum PC that rubbing alcohol has some oil in it that may cause problems. What kind of damage could I have done to my CPU? was looking to get a 3000+ Barton processor 333FSB and a new videocard and making my system last for another year or two. —CLAIR W. SMART The one caveat with overclocking (even with the most overclocking-friendly CPUs, motherboards, and RAM) is that it may not work. Sure, it’s worked for the 20 guys who’ve posted on 3dover clockerzhardwarevideocards.com, but is it going to work for you? If you’re willing to gamble the $125 price of a new CPU to give it a whirl, there’s a good chance you’ll succeed. After all, the board has an established reputation for reaching 333MHz frontside bus speeds. Just remember there’s always a chance it won’t work. In which case, you may have to shell out another C-note for a current-generation VIA or nForce2-based motherboard to get the best performance from the CPU. the amount of drive space you want dedicated to this process. To change the amount of space the Recycle Bin reserves, right-click the Bin on the desktop, go to Properties, and adjust the slider to your liking. CAPTAIN COMMANDO OK, I’m a bit of a clumsy case commando and while fumbling around with my system, I managed to totally snap off the SATA connector on my Western Digital WD740GD 10K SATA drive. Because this drive costs much more than I typically part with for a hard drive, I would prefer to repair it rather than replace it, especially since the circuit board hard wired to the SATA plug can be easily removed. If I could obtain the part, I could easily replace that particular portion of the hard drive but I’m having trouble locating a replacement part. Also, Western Digital says the card is firmware specific and therefore a replacement part wouldn’t work. So what’s the prognosis, Doc? Is fixing my drive truly impossible? —GREG G. While it’s always best to use pure isopropyl alcohol, the Doctor has never injured or destroyed a CPU by cleaning it with the cheap stuff. But it’s quite likely your PC was aversely affected by the recent cleaning in another way. Did you wrench on the machine in the process? Did you remember to use thermal paste when you reapplied the heatsink? Is the heatsink flush with the processor? Did you do anything else to the machine between cleaning the CPU, or did you simply remove the heatsink, clean the CPU, and put the heatsink back on? Any of these questions could lead to the answer. THIS SPACE IS RESERVED Every time I defrag my hard drive with Diskeeper 8.0, I see green/white areas labeled Reserved System. What is this space on a hard drive for? Can it still be used for storage? If not, is there any way I could reclaim the space for storage? —JONATHAN PONDER Yours is a lesson that should be noted by all. You must always treat hard drives with the utmost care and respect! They are very fragile devices, as you have discovered, and once something goes wrong, you’re typically up a creek without a paddle. We contacted Western Digital regarding your problem, and the first person the Doc talked to was skeptical that the company would sell individual parts to customers who had broken their drives. As of press time, we had still not received a definitive answer, but we don’t recommend that you hold out hope. Our advice: Say three “Hail Marys,” write “I will be more careful with my hard drive” on the chalkboard 100 times, and then go buy a new drive. n STRETCHING YOUR MOTHERBOARD I have a system with an Epox EP-8K3A+ motherboard and an Athlon XP 2000+ processor. This board has been great for overclocking and just plain tweaking. I recently read that the adjustability of the motherboard’s BIOS makes it capable of running later 333 FSB Athlon chips. Is this true? Will the board run a Barton CPU with the larger L2 cache? I —IVAN ROSENBREYER Reserved System is primarily made up of System Restore points and/or files located in the Recycle Bin. By default, Windows allocates a significant percent of your drive’s capacity to these functions. If you want to reduce the amount of space used by System Restore, rightclick My Computer, select Properties, then click the System Restore tab. Click the drive in question and adjust the slider to reflect If there’s something strange under your PC’s hood, Who ya gonna call? The Doctor! E-mail the Doc at doctor@maximumpc.com AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 51
Slide 36: How To... BY WILL SMITH A step-by-step guide to tweaking your PC experience SUPERCHARGE Windows XP 10 THINGS TO DO TO YOUR BRAND-NEW PC and 1 Get your Internet connection upPC is running. Without net access, your damn near worthless! drivers for your 2 Install the latestbe at your mobo motherboard’s chipset. They’ll manufacturer’s web site. Many system crashes can be traced directly to either old chipset drivers or evil, evil gnomes. drivers for 3 Download and install the latestThey’ll work your videocard and soundcard. with the chipset drivers to have your PC performing at its peak potential. all the 4 Install Windows XP Service Pack 2 andDon’t updates from Windowsupdate.com. ask questions, just do it. 41 tips, tricks, and top-secret web sites that will turn even a puny PC into a powerhouse 10 EASY WAYS TO TOUCH UP WINDOWS XP 1 CLEAN OUT YOUR SYSTEM TRAY: Every unnecessary app running on your PC saps precious CPU cycles and memory. checked. Then drag your favorite shortcuts to the Quick Launch bar for easy access, anytime. 2 3 4 5 6 UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS: New videocard and chipset drivers can help you reap performance dividends. ENABLE DMA FOR YOUR DRIVES: Go to the Device Manager and take a look at the properties of your Primary IDE Channel. On the Advanced Settings tab, make sure that DMA, if available, is checked for both devices. Rinse and repeat for the Secondary IDE Channel VISIT WINDOWSUPDATE.COM REGULARLY: Patches don’t just protect your PC, they also improve performance. 7 8 9 SPEED UP YOUR UI: Bells and whistles are great, but faster is better. Go to the Display control panel, click the Appearance tab, and hit the Effects button. Uncheck the first two options, as well as “Show shadows under menus.” ONE CLICK TO DEVICE MANAGER: To open Device Manager in Windows XP without the hassle of going to System Properties, just create a shortcut to devmgmt.msc. FIRE UP THE ONSCREEN KEYBOARD: If you need to type something and your keyboard’s not available, Open My Computer and browse to C:\Windows\System32 and double-click osk.exe. You can use the onscreen keyboard by pointing and clicking at individual characters. DEFRAG: Regular defragmentation can improve your machine’s hard drive performance by massive amounts. To start Defrag, right-click your hard drive in My Computer, select Properties, go to the Tools tab, and then click Defrag. 5 Restore your precious data to your new machine. 6 Install and tweak allanthose apps youa use every day. Install Winzip, MP3 player, word processor, your e-mail app, and Mozilla Firebird. all your apps—or 7 Activate Windows, registeragain” butclick the “Never bother me ton—and make a backup image of your minty-fresh system. favorite benchmark 8 InstallPCyour a test spin. app and take your for help ferret 9 Burning in your PC willyou a pretty out faulty of components and give good idea your system’s stability. We like SiSoft Sandra’s burn-in utility. Download the free version at Sisoftware.net. tasty your 10 Open aand letbeverage, fire up Your favorite game, the frags roll in. PC is ready to rumble! CONVERT YOUR DRIVES TO NTFS: Get the most from your drives by converting them to NTFS. Open a command line, and type convert x: / fs:ntfs, but replace x with your drive letter. Back up your important files first! 10 USE QUICK LAUNCH: Instead of cluttering your Desktop with loads of shortcuts, right-click the Taskbar, go to Toolbars, and make sure Quick Launch is 52 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 37: 1 2 3 4 5 SOFTWARE TOOLS EVERY PC SHOULD HAVE COMPRESSION UTILITIES: Winzip is the best utility around for managing pesky zip files. You don’t have to settle for the puny Compressed Files tool built into XP anymore! Get it at winzip.com. ANTIVIRUS: In today’s dog-eat-dog Internet world, you must have antivirus software. We recommend Norton AntiVirus 2004 (www.norton.com). It’s easy to use and provides excellent protection. FIREWALL: Running a PC without a firewall is like using a bloodbased sunscreen in shark infested waters. We recommend Zone Alarm (www.zonelabs.com). BROWSER: Only schmucks are still using Internet Explorer. Download Mozilla Firefox 0.8 (www.mozilla.org) and browse with the power users. See our feature on page 34. 5 One of the best ways to keep your PC purring along at peak performance is to frequently defragment your drive. You can even set Diskeeper (shown here) to run automatically! DEFRAG: The hard drive defragging utility built into Windows XP is acceptable for your grandmother, but if you want to keep your disks in tip-top shape, you need a more powerful tool. Get Diskeeper from www.executivesoftware.com. 5 TOP-SECRET REGISTRY HACKS Adding new functionality to Windows is as easy as opening regedit.exe and making some minor changes. Changes here can break Windows, so make sure to back up your system before you touch anything! 1. MINIMIZE OUTLOOK TO THE SYSTEM TRAY: Browse to HKEY_ CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Office\10.0\Outlook\Preferences. Add a new DWORD value named MinToTray, and set it to 1. Next time you restart Outlook, it will minimize to the System Tray! 2. MAKE PASSWORD PROTECTED SCREENSAVERS LESS ANNOYING: You enable a password protected screensaver to help keep meddlers out of your machine, but you’re annoyed when the screensaver starts and you’re locked out. The solution: Add a grace period. If the screensaver activates, but you move the mouse during the grace period, you can get right back to work, without typing your password again. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon and modify ScreenSaverGracePeriod. The value is stored in seconds. We like to set the value somewhere between 5 and 30 seconds. 3. SECURE YOUR PAGEFILE: The pagefile can contain anything that might be in RAM, including sensitive data like passwords. To set XP to automatically erase any info contained in it, go to HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and add a DWORD value named ClearPageFileAtShutdown. Set it to 1, reboot your PC, and your machine will automatically erase the contents of your pagefile when you shut down. Be aware that this will make your PC take longer to shut down. 4. REMOVE THE ANNOYING COMPRESSION OPTIONS FROM THE DISK CLEANUP WIZARD: The Disk Cleanup wizard is a handy way to find out what unused files you can get rid of, but it also calculates the space you’ll save by compressing your drive. We don’t like to use compression, so we’re going to disable it by browsing to HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ VolumeCaches\Compress old files. Clear the value from the Default key. The next time you start Disk Cleanup, it will skip the compression analysis. 5. CUSTOMIZE THE FOLDERS LISTED IN YOUR OPEN DIALOG BOXES: Whenever you open a file in Notepad or Paint, there’s a default list of folders on the left side of the Window. Unfortunately, those folders are just not that useful for most people. To customize them, point Regedit to HKEY_CURRENT_ USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ Current Version\Policies\comdlg32 and create a new key called Placesbar. Inside that new key, create a String called Place0 and point it to the folder you want to appear on the open dialog, say, C:\ CurrentWork. Create another String called Place1 and point it to another location on your drive. You can use variables (%USERPROFILE% will point the folder to the profile of a currently logged-in user) or URL’s, so you can even use network shares. This hack won’t change the same dialogs in Office, but if you have Office XP you can add new folders to the , Placesbar by going to File, Open, and browsing to the folder you want to add. Once you have it selected, go to Tools and click “Add to My Places. ” AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 53
Slide 38: How-To 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 30 MINUTE WEB SITES THAT EVERY GEEK SHOULD BOOKMARK always five minutes ahead of the rest of the web. GOOGLE.COM: It’s the only web site we know of that’s used as both a noun and a verb. Learn to make Google work for you, and you’ll never regret it. WINDOWSUPDATE.COM: Update Windows regularly! It’s good for you, it’s good for your friends, and it’s good for those tiny baby seals that live down by the sea. Really. ARSTECHNICA.COM: Hardware- and software-agnostic computing news is only a bookmark away. Ars Technica has something for computer geeks of every persuasion. SLASHDOT.ORG: “News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. Slashdot’s tag ” line says it all. SHACKNEWS.COM: If it’s gaming, Shacknews covers it. Get all the latest news about games here. THEINQUIRER.NET: More than 90 percent of computer-related news on the net originates here. OK, we made that up, but The Inquirer is 7 8 PENNY-ARCADE.COM: Every once in a while we all need a laugh. The wacky-asses at Penny Arcade will provide just that, if you read the column too! GIZMODO.COM: If you ever wondered where that gadget-savvy pal finds out about all his wonderful toys, it’s probably Gizmodo. Get the latest on PDAs, wireless tech, and just-plain-cool stuff. HYPERDICTIONARY.COM: Every word a link. Every link a definition. This is the way dictionaries should be. WIKIPEDIA.COM: The Internet’s own free encyclopedia. With more than 170,000 articles, the Wikipedia holds answers to many of your burning questions. 9 10 11www.maximumpc.com MAXIMUM PC FORUM: With 2 million-plus posts, the Forum holds the collective wisdom of hordes of helpful Maximum PC readers. Go to and click Forums. How To... SET UP A RAID ARRAY Why settle for a single hard drive when you can easily pair it with a second drive and have yourself a RAID array? It’s an upgrade that’s accessible to anyone! Here’s what you need to run RAID: At least two hard drives of the same capacity (and preferably the same make and model) and a RAID controller, which can be either an onboard chip or an add-in PCI controller. Once you have these ingredients, you must prepare your system for a fresh install of your operating system, so back up all your files and make sure you have drivers for the RAID controller on a floppy disc (this is crucial). Got the files on a floppy? Great. Now attach the hard drives to the RAID controller, insert your XP CD into the optical drive and boot your PC. During boot, a screen following the POST screen will identify the RAID controller and the drives attached to it along with a prompt to set up your array. Press the buttons as instructed on the screen (usually Ctrl+F) and select “auto configuration” in order to streamline the array creation process. You will then be prompted to select whether you want a striped or mirrored array. (Striping breaks data into chunks and paints it across both drives to share the workload, and mirroring simply writes everything to both drives so you have a backup in case one drive fails.) Once the wizard finishes creating the array, it will reboot your PC. When you press F6 to install drivers, you’ll see a screen like this. Upon reboot, enter the BIOS and make sure the boot sequence starts THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND: with the CD-ROM drive holding the XP è Running a two-drive striped array CD. Your PC will then commence the XP doubles your chances of suffering data installation sequence; have your finger loss because if one drive fails, you lose poised over the F6 key because you will the data stored on the entire array. suddenly be prompted to press F6 to Running this type of configuration install RAID drivers. Once XP finishes without a reliable backup method is like its loading process, you’ll be prompted running next to a pool with a pair of to insert the floppy disc containing the scissors while you’re staring directly at RAID controller drivers. If all goes well, the sun. It just isn’t smart. your PC will examine the floppy disc, prompt you to select the correct drivers è A hard drive’s worst enemy is heat, for installation, and then “see” the RAID so if possible leave a gap between the array for the first time. two drives when you mount them for Once this process is complete, optimum air circulation. Installing a you should be able to install XP as if case fan in front of the drives is also a you were using a single hard drive. good idea. n Congratulations on installing a RAID array—here’s your cookie!* *cookie not included 54 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 39: In the Lab Socket 939 Exposed I f you’re not confused enough by the myriad CPU offerings from AMD and Intel, here’s one more change to push you over the edge: AMD’s Socket 939 will likely be the standard bearer of AMD’s performance-oriented CPUs for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, fans of AMD haven’t been caught off guard by the news; AMD has always indicated its plans to consolidate around the Socket 939. To get you up to speed, we put together a short brief on the new socket— including AMD's plans for the older sockets. What’s the key difference between Socket 939 and 940? Socket 939 may look nearly the same as Socket 940, but there’s one key difference: Socket 939 CPUs don’t require expensive and hard-to-find registered DIMMs to function. Socket 940 CPUs (which were really just Opteron server CPUs) could only work with registered RAM. I noticed that AMD has introduced Socket 939 CPUs for both the FX and the normal A64 series. I thought they were different. One aspect we appreciate about Socket 939 is that it finally brings some much needed harmony back to the AMD universe, something that has been missing since its 64-bit CPUs came out. In the old days, you could buy a Socket A motherboard and choose between a Duron or Athlon XP CPU. Intel’s world was the same; you could pick a motherboard that would allow you to buy a low-budget Celeron now and plan for a faster Pentium 4 later. This didn’t work in the Athlon 64 world because the CPUs used different memory controllers. Athlon 64 memory controllers were single channel, while the Athlon 64 FX was dual channel. If you bought a Socket 754 motherboard and Athlon 64 3200+, for example, you could never upgrade to an Athlon 64 FX. In the new Socket 939 world, you can. A behind-the-scenes look at Maximum PC testing The big news: AMD is rapidly dismissing socket 940 for Athlon 64 CPUs If both Socket 939 CPUs have the same memory controllers, what’s the difference between an FX and a normal A64? The main difference right now is cache. With the new CPUs that AMD has introduced, the Athlon 64 3800+ will receive 512KB of L2 cache, while the FX will remain at 1MB. I thought Athlon 64s already had 512KB of cache? Yes. AMD actually has two cache sizes in its older Socket 754 Athlon 64s. The Athlon 64 3400+ and the new 3700+, for example, have 1MB of L2 while the old Athlon 64 2800+ has Can you tell which of these is Socket 939? just 512KB of cache. Making They look nearly the same, but Socket things even more confusing, some 940 (top) and Socket 939 (below) are most versions of the Athlon 64 have the definitely incompatible. same speed rating but different clock speeds and cache sizes, like the Athlon 64 3200+. The same “3200+” 939 and Socket 940 versions), AMD now is available as either a 2GHz CPU with says the support will only come through 1MB of L2 cache or 2.2GHz CPU with Opteron upgrades. Because Socket 940 512MB of L2 cache. will still be the home for Opteron, Athlon 64 FX users will theoretically be able to What happens to the older interfaces? upgrade to the next spin of the Opteron. When we spoke to AMD officials, we were told that Socket 754 will continue to be But, umm, Opteron comes out in slower cycles. supported. Rumors have also indicated Doesn’t that mean FX users get screwed? that AMD may actually introduce a 32Well, yes, but at least the Opteron is bit only version of a CPU in Socket 754. cheaper. An Opteron 148 at 2.2GHz costs Socket 940, however, isn’t being treated about $400; the 2.2GHz FX-51 still costs similarly. Backpedaling on previous about $700. But we have to admit that we pledges that it would support Socket 940 are a little disturbed that AMD appears to through the year with parallel launches be dismissing its previous pledge. We’re (the FX-55 version of the Athlon 64 FX hoping the company reconsiders its was supposed to ship in both Socket support for Socket 940. DARE TO COMPARE: ATHLON 64 SOCKETS CPU Clock speed Interface Memory controller Type of RAM L2 cache 64-bit support? Old Athlon 64 FX 53 2.4GHz Socket 940 dual / 128-bit Registered 1MB Yes New Athlon 64 FX 53 2.4GHz Socket 939 dual / 128-bit Unbuffered 1MB Yes Old Athlon 64 3700+ 2.4GHz Socket 754 Single / 64-bit Unbuffered 1MB Yes New Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz Socket 939 dual / 128-bit Unbuffered 512KB Yes 56 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 40: Zip-Linq Wireless Phone Charger Kit The Leatherman of phone chargers Zip-Linq helps clear up cable clutter and free your precious power outlets with its USB phone charger kit. Instead of using the giant cell phone power brick that blocks two or more outlets, you can just plug your phone into a nearby USB port. While we found charging our phone off USB to be a bit slower than plugging it into the wall, it’s a great way to salvage some extra power outlets. Each kit includes a set of phone adapters, an AC adapter for wall outlets, a car adapter, a retractable USB 1.1 cable, and a nylon baggie for storing it all. It’s a great deal, considering that $30 gets you a car, wall, and USB charger for a handful of phones, and a retractable USB 1.1 cable for any other use to boot! www.ziplinq.com � Reviews A Legend Is Born Viva Aria! These mobos are compatible with Antec’s Aria SFF box You know how we gushed about Antec’s Aria small formfactor case in the June issue but said we couldn’t get a list of compatible micro ATX mobos from Antec? Well, it turns out we actually had the list the whole time. In the interest of setting the record straight, here’s a short list of boards that should work in the Aria: MSI K7N2GM-L, MSI RS3M-IL, Intel D865GLC, Intel D865GLCL, Asus A8N8X-VM, Asus P4P800-VM, and Abit IS-12. Antec says it can’t actively endorse any of the motherboards listed above but the company is more than happy to steer customers in the right direction should they need help selecting a compatible board (www.antec-inc.com). e Guitar y that our sister magazin We were green with env e. Even worse, it a special “legends” issu World produced e lobby, magazine in our corporat was positioned next to our stealing all the glory. Best of the Best As of August, 2004 A momentous event for archivists: Sony has introduced the world’s first dual-layer DVD burner: the DRU-700A. While dual-layer media isn’t cheap or plentiful, we can’t see any reason to want a single-layer burner at this point (for holdouts we recommend Plextor’s new PX-712A as the best single-layer burner.) We’ve also given the nod to NEC’s popular FE21111SB as the best CRT monitor, after it edged out Sony’s CRT in the July issue. We have two other CRT reviews coming next month that could change this verdict, so stay tuned. On hold this month is our Athlon 64 FX motherboard pick. With the introduction of Socket 939 CPUs and mobos, it doesn’t make any sense to buy a Socket 940 board at this point. And, while we think highly of Asus A8V, we’re reserving judgment until we can get test time with other Socket 939 motherboards with competing chipsets. There’s a shocking development in gaming this month: While the staff won’t admit it, several editors have been spotted playing Singles: Flirt Up Your Life! High-end videocard: ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition Budget videocard: ATI Radeon 9800 Do-everything videocard: All-in-Wonder Radeon 9800 Pro Soundcard: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Serial ATA hard drive: Western Digital 740GD/ IBM 7K250 Parallel ATA hard drive: Hitachi 7K400 CD-RW drive: Plextor PlexWriter Premium DVD burner: Plextor PX-708A LCD monitor: Dell 2001FP High-end CRT monitor: NEC FE2111 Budget CRT monitor: Cornerstone P1750 P4 motherboard: Abit IC7-MAX3 Athlon XP motherboard: Hold Asus SK8V Athlon FX motherboard: Asus SK8V Portable MP3 player: Apple iPod 40GB Not wanting to be outdone by a bunch of long hairs, we put our heads together and tried to come up with a PC-based cover that would rock as hard as Guitar World on the newsstand. They will rue the day they went head to head with the most kick-ass PC magazine on the planet! Photo printer: Canon i9900 Pocket PC PDA: HP iPaq 5555 Palm OS PDA: Palm Tungsten C 7.1 speakers: Creative Labs 7.1 Gigaworks S750 5.1 speakers: Logitech Z-680 4.1 speakers: Logitech Z-560 2.1 speakers: Logitech Z-2200 PC LEGENDS ������� � � � �� � � ����������������� ���� ��������������� ���� And just like that, a new magazine was born! For our first issue, we caught up with PC Legend Gordon Mah Ung on his “Ung-Rebooted” tour and have the exclusive deta ils on his stage rig, his thoughts on the “Piccard versus Kirk ” debate, and more. Don’t miss it! ������� �� ������ � � ��� ����� Our current gaming favorites: Thief 3, City of Heroes, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life!, Painkiller AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 57
Slide 41: Reviews Marauder Plus 64 What a shame—this PC is fast, but lacks stability he Maximum PC Lab receives many high-end systems for review, most of which are quite similar in terms of components and performance. So when we receive a system that manages to set itself apart from the others, it’s always a welcome breath of fresh air. Marauder’s Plus 64 system immediately distinguished itself by being one of the quietest systems we’ve ever reviewed—one editor even had to open the case to convince himself the machine was actually on. The Plus 64 is also one of the first systems we’ve received that features a next-gen videocard, namely an e-VGA e-GeForce 6800 Ultra that made mincemeat THE BRAINS of our gaming benchmarks. CPU AMD Athlon64 3800+ (2.4 GHz clock speed) Sadly, the Plus 64 Mobo Asus A8V Deluxe (Socket 939, made a less-thanVia K8T800 Pro) RAM 2GB Corsair XMS (4 x 512MB favorable impresmodules) sion by faltering I/O ports Six USB 2.0 (two front, four rear), one parallel, one serial, where few other two IEEE 1394, SPDIF out, high-end systems optical in do: Stability. It LAN Integrated Gigabit Ethernet, integrated 802.11 Wi-Fi crashed repeatedly during testing. DISPLAY That’s a Videocard eVGA e-GeForce 6800 Ultra shame because (450 MHz core, 600 MHz DDR) the Plus 64 has STORAGE everything we Hard drives 2 x 160GB Seagate Barracuda V look for in a (7200RPM, SATA) in RAID 0 quality system. Optical Lite-On DVD+/-RW burner It has a speedy (SOHW812S, 8x DVD+/-R, 4x DVD+/-RW, 12x DVD, 40x CD-R, Athlon 64 3800+ 24x CD-RW, 40x CD), Samsung processor, two DVD/CD-RW combo (SM352BEN/B, 16x DVD, 52x CD-R, 24x CD-RW, 52x CD) Mitsumi 1.44 floppy ����������� T The Plus 64’s case comes with soundproofing and fans, resulting in a PC so silent one Maximum PC staffer didn’t believe it was on! UNDER THE HOOD gigs of high-end Corsair RAM, and a solid, feature-laden motherboard—the Asus A8V Deluxe (reviewed on page 69). The system also features two roomy 160GB hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration, a wealth of removable storage options, and the benchmark-busting 6800 Ultra. And thanks to its whisper-quiet CPU, case fans, and Akasa PaxMate soundproofing material adorning the case doors, it generates very little noise. The Plus 64 blew us away with its performance in our gaming benchmarks. We had to search for dental records to identify what was left of Halo and Jedi Academy after the Plus 64 was finished with them. Our review unit netted 74.3 frames per second in Halo and 105 frames per second in Jedi Academy, nearly double that of our zeropoint system scores. Impressive, and if the review were to end here, we would slap on a score of ����� ����� ������ ��������������� Other AUDIO Soundcard FINE DETAILS ��� ������� ������� ������� �������� �������� � ������������ ���������� ���������� ���������� ���� ���� ��� ��� ��� ��� � � � � � � � � �� � � � � ���� Integrated RealTek ALC850 8-channel audio ������������ �������������� �������������� ������������ ���� 9 and the Kick Ass! logo and call it a day. Here’s where the review turns ugly. The Plus 64 coughed up a disappointing 161 score in SYSmark 2004, which is low for an Athlon 64-based system. The 3800+ processor’s 512k L2 cache is partly to blame. Even worse, obtaining a usable SYSmark 2004 score was an ordeal—we experienced a sporadic series of random lockups and crashes when installing the benchmark software. Only after repeated attempts to install and run SYSmark 2004 were we able to generate a score. To be fair to Marauder, this doesn’t mean every system the company builds will suffer such instability, and the company does offer a one-year warranty and a 30-day money-back guarantee for its products. But still, it was immensely disappointing to encounter such problems in a $3,200 system. What’s more, the Plus 64 lacks a dedicated soundcard. While the A8V mobo’s integrated audio delivers decent output and features eight channels of sound and a SPDIF out, we’re accustomed to hearing Audigy 2 ZS-caliber sound from a primo PC. —TAE KIM Case Evercase GC4292 case Power supply Zalman ZM400A 400W PSU Fans/extras Zalman CNPS7000A CPU fan, 120mm exhaust fan, 2x 60mm intake fan, Akasa PaxMate soundproofing BUNDLE Windows XP BOOT: 47 sec. DOWN: 23 sec. ������� MAXIMUMPC VERDICT ������� MOS DEF Fast game performance, amazingly quiet. DEF LEPPARD 5 Our zero-point system includes: a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51, an Asus SK8N motherboard, 1GB of Corsair Registered TwinX DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT, a 250GB Western Digital WD2500JB hard drive, Plextor PX-708A DVD burner and a PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe power supply. Unstable, low SYSmark 2004 score, no dedicated soundcard. $3,200, www.marauderpc.com 58 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 42: Reviews Sharp Actius PC-MM20 Fueled by Transmeta’s new Efficeon CPU, this ultra-light mini-laptop still gets outperformed by Centrino I f you’ve followed our on-and-off love affair with Transmeta CPUs you know the relationship hasn’t been so passionate since Intel’s lovely Pentium M caught our eye. In fact, we wondered whether Transmeta’s procs would ever capture our hearts again— at least until we saw Sharp’s sexy Actius PC-MM20 notebook featuring Transmeta’s new 1GHz Efficeon CPU. The Actius definitely has the looks—and the size. At its thickest section, it measures less than an inch. With its standard battery, the Actius tips the scale at two pounds and makes even the diminutive Sony PCG-TR2A we reviewed in May seem bulky. The price of such a dainty profile is storage—the Actius eschews an optical drive and floppy. Its lone hard drive is a 20GB Travelstar, which is simply too small for modern computing. Ergonomically speaking, the keyboard is a tad cramped and certainly not as comfortable as Sony’s PCG-TR2A, but there are no horribly misplaced keys like on Fujitsu’s P5020 series. We were dismayed by the presence of a switch above the keyboard UNDER THE HOOD THE BRAINS CPU RAM I/O ports Modem LAN DISPLAY Video chip LCD STORAGE Hard drive SOUND Audio chip RealTek AC97 Hitachi Travelstar 20GB DK14FA20 4200RPM ATI Mobility Radeon 10.4-inch 1024x768 1GHz Transmeta Efficeon TM8600 with 1MB of L2 cache 512MB DDR400 Two High-Speed USB 2.0, VGA out (with dongle), Fast Ethernet (with dongle), headphone V.92 PC Card Express 8.02.11G, RealTek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet that lets you toggle between two different performance speeds—mobile and normal—as a way of dictating power consumption. A switch seems silly when modern CPUs should be capable of intelligently adjusting power settings. We’d much rather see a switch for turning off and on Wi-Fi. We are pleased, however, with Sharp’s unique Connection Cradle. With the included SharpSync software you can sync files between your desktop and portable automatically. This makes the lack of an optical drive more tolerable. Still, power users are going to find themselves bumping up against the Actius’ 20GB hard drive ceiling in no time. Transmeta says its Efficeon CPU offers 50 percent more performance in most applications, and as much as 80 percent in multimedia apps when compared with its older Crusoe CPU. This jibes with our experience, as the 1GHz TM5800 Crusoe could barely run Windows XP. But the Efficeon’s competition isn’t the Crusoe, it’s the ultra-low voltage version of Intel’s Pentium M—known as Centrino. While it’s impossible for us to isolate the CPU and chipsets from their respective notebooks, we can say that the Efficeon/Actius PC-MM20 is inferior to the 1GHz Centrino/Sony TR2A combo we reviewed in May. The Actius ran about 14 percent slower in our applications test, SYSmark 2002. The Actius also trailed Sony’s TR2A by about 20 percent in the Premiere 6.0 and Photoshop 7.0 benchmarks. In gaming, the PC-MM20 barely pushes the five-year-old Quake III Arena, despite the its ATI graphics badge. ����� ����� ������ 8“ 10“ � ����������� ��� ������ ������������ ����������� ������������� ��������� ������������ � ������� ���������������� Because the PC-MM20 doesn’t ship with an external optical drive, we tested its battery life by playing back a ripped DVD from the hard drive. The Actius’ ultra-slim battery provided about 95 minutes of power. When we switched to the bulkier extended battery, however, we could watch 289 minutes of a movie, which is great— albeit a 50 percent weight increase. The Efficeon may not be the fastest mobile CPU, but this doesn’t mean it’s not highly advanced. Transmeta was the first to introduce an x86 CPU with an on-die memory controller, not AMD. The Efficeon builds on this development by also integrating a 4x AGP controller in the processor. Consequently, Transmeta eliminates the necessity of a traditional north bridge chip. This allows some performance gain, but the primary objective is to save power, space, and cost. As an ultra-portable, the Actius PC-MM20 does a good job of cramming a lot of computing into a wee package for a reasonable amount of cash. The performance won’t floor you, but with this formfactor, performance takes a back seat to ��������������������������� portability. —GORDON ������������ MAH UNG ���������������� Measuring less than an inch thick and weighing a mere two pounds, Sharp’s new Actius is the epitome of petite. � ������� ��� �������� ��� ������� ��� � ��� ��� ��� ��� � � � � � � � � �� � � � � ���� MAXIMUMPC VERDICT BULLSEYE SAUCE BULIMIA TIPPING THE SCALES Lap weight 2 pounds Carry weight 2.1 pounds BUNDLE Windows XP Home BOOT: 25 sec. DOWN: 15 sec. 8 It doesn’t get much thinner or lighter than this. No onboard modem. Requires the use of too many dongles. $1,700 (w/ extended battery) www.sharpusa.com Our zero-point notebook is a Dell Dimension 8200, and includes a 1.7GHz P-4M CPU, 256MB DDR266, a 64MB 128-bit DDR GeForce4 Go graphics chipset, and a 5400rpm IBM Travelstar 60H hard drive. *Our notebook Photoshop 7.0 test differs from our new desktop Photoshop test. AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 59
Slide 43: Reviews Walkin’ in a Wi-Fi Wonderland We poke and prod two new wireless routers from SMC and Netgear Netgear’s WGT624 can handle even the most demanding wireless networking duties. W e don’t see a whole lot of innovation on the router front. Generally, products in this category either work or they don’t. They deliver the speed they promise or they don’t. They’re easy to configure or they aren’t. Both the SMC 2304WBR-AG and the Netgear WGT624 provide an acceptable level of service and some above-average features. Let’s take a closer look to find out which one’s best for you. —WILL SMITH The SMC 2304WBRAG uses two antennas, one for 802.11a and one for 802.11b/g. This router sports one heckuva long model number, but that’s acceptable because it packs so many advanced features. Essentially two access points in one box, the SMC 2304 includes both an 802.11a AP and an 802.11g AP for the ultimate in cross-standard compatibility. Because the integrated 802.11g hardware also supports the original 802.11b spec, this AP will work with every Wi-Fi compatible device ever made. That’s pretty damn cool. Very few people actually bought into the 802.11a spec, but if you have 802.11a hardware, it’s handy to be able to connect SMC 2304WBR-AG to your wireless network without using annoying external adapters. The 2304 performed admirably in our standard file transfer test, where we measure the length of time it takes to upload a 530MB MPEG2 video file from a wireless laptop to a wired desktop, and then measure the time it takes to download it back from the wired machine to the wireless machine. We were especially impressed with the 262 second upload time, which is one of the fastest we’ve seen to date. Unfortunately, the web-based configuration utility used to manage the 2304’s more advanced features is clunky and unintuitive. Frequently, interrelated options will be buried far away from each other in completely different menus. Network administrators may understand the ordering, but your grandma might have trouble keeping up. nitude faster than an old-school 802.11b connection. We are extremely pleased with Netgear’s easy configuration routine, and the web-based config utility provides convenient access to every setting you could possibly need. It’s easy to set up port forwarding for your home-based web server or even a virtual DMZ for those few games that don’t work well through NAT-based routers. Whether you’re looking to set up your first wireless network or to make the jump from 802.11b to 802.11g, either of these routers will serve you with aplomb. SMC 2304WBR-AG MAXIMUMPC VERDICT MARCONI 9 A powerful feature set, and a four-port switch combined with support for all the major Wi-Fi specs. MORSE Netgear WGT624 BENCHMARK CHART ROUTER WIRED TO WIRELESS WIRELESS TO WIRED Netgear WGT624 SMC 2304WBR-AG 256 sec 296 sec 289 sec 262 sec Note: All tests are run in the 802.11g exclusive mode. To test, we measured the length of time it takes to copy a 530MB file from a wired machine to a wireless machine, and then how long it takes to copy the same file from the wireless machine back to the wired machine. Unlike the SMC router reviewed above, the Netgear WGT624 does not support 802.11a networks. Of course, given the paltry adoption numbers, few have been missing this elusive spec. Unless you have legacy 802.11a hardware, g is all you need. Performance is on par with other 802.11g hardware we’ve tested; it took a little less than five minutes to transfer our 530MB test file. That’s still nowhere near as fast as a good old-fashioned wired connection, but it’s an order of mag- You pay a premium for 802.11a support, which you’ll probably never use. $170, www.smc.com Netgear WGT624 MAXIMUMPC VERDICT WEB SURFING WIRELESSLY 8 Its small size conceals a four-port switch and a topclass 802.11b access point. BUNGEE JUMPING WIRELESSLY The 108Mb/s mode doesn’t really improve performance all that much. $130, www.netgear.com IS DOUBLE-SPEED 802.11G EVEN NECESSARY? T he 802.11g spec promises a whopping 54Mb/s data transfer rate, and newer premium models, such as the two reviewed here, even tout the ability to bond two normal 802.11g Wi-Fi channels together to create a single double-speed connection. Is there any reason to shell out extra cash for double-speed Wi-Fi products? Let’s take a look at the amount of bandwidth delivered. The average broadband connection delivers at most 1.5Mb/s of bandwidth to your home, much less than the maximum practical bandwidth of even 802.11b. So, if you’re just using your wireless network to share Internet access, there’s no reason to shell out for an expensive 108Mb/s router. What about sharing music and video? Well, streaming a 192kb/s MP3 file uses only 192kb/s of bandwidth. Video is significantly more intensive, though—a DVD quality video will eat 4 or 5Mb/second of bandwidth. The bottom line is that unless you want to stream lots of high-quality video or transfer large files across your wireless network, there’s really no reason to pay a premium for greater than 802.11g performance. 60 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 44: 2.9“ Reviews PalmOne Zire 31 and 72 oday’s Pocket PCs are bulking up faster than Kirstie Alley with multiple wireless options, higher-resolution screens, and just about every feature save a pregnancy test kit. Leave it to Palm to keep a cool head and offer not one, but two new models designed for a somewhat more relaxed crowd. Here’s a close look at how well the Zire31 and the Zire72 serve up the essentials in the budget PDA category. —LOGAN DECKER T PalmOne Zire 31 At first glance, PalmOne’s Zire 31 is exactly what it appears to be—a competent but by no means luxurious PDA that throws in just enough multimedia features to keep you from death-by-boredom at the airport. Inside you’ll find a 200MHz ARM proc with 16MB RAM (14MB available to the user) running Palm OS 5.2.8. The handheld weighs less than 2.95“ five ounces, and the most notable departure from previous designs are the two dedicated program buttons on the face (instead of the traditional four). The display resolution remains at a homely 160x160, but if you use your PDA for expense reports and quick notes, you’ll be fine. A bigger disappointment is the Zire 31’s abandonment of the so-called “Universal Connector” found on the Tungsten models. Instead, it uses an AC adaptor and USB miniport cable combo. We got slightly more than four hours from a full battery charge, switching between MP3 and video playback. PalmOne says the PDA should last about a week between charges under “normal use,” and our tests suggest this is accurate if you don’t frequently use it for media playback. The Zire 31 benefits from the signature ease of use of the Palm OS (and the bundled Outlook conduits don’t hurt either), but if you want to take advantage of the multimedia capabilities, you’ll need a built-in MP3 player. You’ll also need to buy a hefty SD card for the expansion slot—MP3s can only be loaded and played from these flash memory cards. The Zire 31 may lack the frills of higher-end PDAs, but it has something they never will—a $150 price tag. Sexy on the outside, but less so on the inside, the Zire 72 disappointed us. PalmOne Zire 72 4.4“ We’ve a few qualms with these upgraded Palms MAXIMUMPC VERDICT CIVIC BEAUTIFICATION 6 Fast proc, bright screen, and fantastic Bluetooth implementation. COW MUTILATION Distressingly short battery life and crappy camera. $300, www.palmone.com PalmOne Zire 72 Modest and utilitarian, the Zire 31 is still a slightly better value than its big brother. PalmOne Zire 31 MAXIMUMPC VERDICT SURROUND SOUND 7 Inexpensive yet cheerful looking PDA with all the essentials. . BROWN NOISE Display somewhat dim. No Universal Connector. RAM-deprived. $150, www.palmone.com The Zire 72 is a big step up from the Zire 31. At $300, it had better be. The most significant upgrade is Intel’s 312MHz XScale PXA270 processor which Intel claims should provide more speed than the previous PXA255 series while simultaneously using less power—a strategy obviously designed for PDAs that expect heavy multimedia use. There’s 32MB of internal memory (24.7 of which is available for use) and a bright 320x320 display. Unfortunately, like the Zire 31, the Universal Connector has been dropped in favor of a USB miniport and power jack combo. Tragically, no docking station or cradle is included; that’s an accessory we expect in a PDA at this price. One of the great successes of the Zire 72 is its implementation of Bluetooth. A convenient, wizard-like front end connected us in seconds to our PC, laptop, and a Sony Ericsson 616 phone without a hitch. Unfortunately, we eked out a mere three and a quarter hours of multimedia playback with Bluetooth enabled compared with more than four hours with Bluetooth disabled; you’ll have to remember to disable it when not in use. Wi-Fi users are out of luck— this PDA doesn’t support it. The Zire 72 throws in a 1.3 megapixel camera that’s also capable of recording short video clips. Photos and video are recorded only to your SD card, and are of course limited by its capacity. The camera’s shutter speed feels extremely slow, so much so that it was nearly impossible to eliminate blur from our pictures. And the video clip results wouldn’t likely be admissible in court. Given the advancing threat posed by Smartphones like the Treo 600, we’re extremely disappointed by the Zire 72. Although it’s got the processing muscle for handheld gaming, it does little else to justify its price besides a lame camera and weak battery life. AUGUST 2004 4.6“ MAXIMUMPC 61
Slide 45: Reviews Kanguru QuickSilver Combo 120GB Almost everything we could ‘hop’ for in an external drive W e’ve said it before and we’ll say it again—owning an external backup drive is the “in” thing these days, the PC equivalent of having long sideburns during the Beverly Hills 90210 era. And like cheek chops, backup drives come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. This month we look at Kanguru’s120GB QuickSilver Combo drive. The “Combo” moniker refers to the drive’s USB 2.0/1.1 and FireWire ports, which make it eminently compatible, whether you own a PC or Mac. As an added bonus, the QuickSilver’s dual FireWire ports can handle the 800MB/s spec as well as the more common 400MB/s. The QuickSilver’s plastic shell houses a Western Digital 1200BB Caviar hard drive that spins at 7,200rpm and boasts a mere 2MB buffer. FireWire connectivity is provided by the ubiquitous Oxford 911 bridge chip with USB duties handled by an Ali chipset. In Lab testing, we found the FireWire connection to be a smidge faster than the USB connection, but just a smidge. On average, file transfer speeds via either port averaged about 19MB/s. At the time of this writing, Kanguru includes a free copy of NovaBACKUP with the drive, and it’s splendidly simple to use. The app allows backup to either magnetic or optical discs and worked flawlessly for us. You can also use the app to schedule backups, restore files, and even scan your backups for viruses. Also included: USB and FireWire cables, drivers for Win98SE users, and a faux leather carrying case equipped with several pockets and hook-and-loop straps for keeping the drive secure during transport. Although we tested the 120GB version, the QuickSilver is available in sizes ranging from 40GB to 250GB, all of which include a one-year war- Most external drives aren’t supposed to be transported, but the QuickSilver encourages this behavior by including a marsupial-like pleather pouch (not shown). ranty. Granted, this drive doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but it certainly covers all the backup bases well, and is affordable to boot. That’s the kind of combo we like. —JOSH NOREM MAXIMUMPC VERDICT FURRY POUCH FURRY COUCH (DAMN CATS!) 9 Affordable, highly portable, compatible with any PC. No-frills package, semi-cheesy exterior. $180, www.kanguru.com SimpleTech SimpleDrive External 400GB A really big drive with a few small problems S ee that 120GB backup drive at the top of this page? It’s a nice drive, for sure, but you could fit three of those lil’ buggers inside this big mamma jamma. With its 400GB capacity, the SimpleDrive is, quite simply, the largest capacity backup drive on the market. The mammoth capacity comes compliments of Hitachi’s Kick Ass-winning 7K400 7,200rpm hard drive. SimpleTech has taken the drive, wrapped it in aluminum, attached a USB 2.0 bridge chip, and dubbed it the SimpleDrive. It ships with a USB cable, an AC adapter, and a rudimentary backup utility named StorageSync. When used as an external hard drive, the SimpleDrive performs admirably. Transfer speeds average approximately 21.5MB/s—which is as fast as we’ve seen for an external drive—and the temperature of its outer shell never rose above lukewarm, even during torture tests. The drive makes a bit more noise during operation than other external drives we’ve tested, but its aluminum casing still keeps it quieter than your average “naked” 3.5-inch hard drive. The other half of the SimpleDrive equation is its bundled StorageSync backup software. When we tested this software last month with SimpleTech’s 80GB combo drive, we were disappointed by its buggy behavior and frequent crashes. Sadly, the software didn’t fare very well this time around, either. While last month we suffered numerous lockups and other anomalies using the application, this month StorageSync failed to complete a number of backups and file sync operations. The error messages ranged from “floating point” issues to “no more memory” notices. We tried the software with several different drives in the Lab and achieved successful operation approximately 80 percent of the time; the other times, our backup efforts were met with seemingly random Take one Hitachi 7K400, wrap it in an aluminum shell, and voila—you have the largest capacity consumer backup drive available. errors. Suffice it to say, we don’t recommend using this software with something as precious as your personal data. Our only other complaint with the drive has to do with the attachable plastic feet that can be used to make the drive stand vertically. It’s impossible to slide the sharp-edged brackets onto the drive without scratching its soft aluminum exterior. In the end, the SimpleDrive MAXIMUMPC presents a compromise. It’s the SIMPLE biggest backup drive on the Huge capacity, speedy operation, reasonable price. planet, but you’ll need to buy a different backup utility, like PIMPLE Dantz’ Retrospect, if the drive is Included backup software is unreliable, operato reach its full potential. tion is a bit loud, and feet scratch the case. —JOSH NOREM $470, www.simpletech.com VERDICT 7 62 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 46: Reviews Sony DRU-700A Dual Layer DVD Burner Proof that two layers are better than one D Writes to: DVD+R DVD-R CD-R 8x 8x 40x Rewrites to: DVD+RW 4x DVD-RW 4x CD-RW 24x Reads: DVD-ROM CD-ROM 12x 40x ual-layer burning has arrived, and it’s every bit as tasty as we thought it would be. For less than 250 bucks, you can now pack 8.5GB on a single recordable DVD, and make 1:1 copies of your DVD-Video discs without compression. It may not be legal, of course, but that’s another story. Sony’s DRU-700A is the first consumer-level burner to offer DVD+R dual-layer recording, and the technology is a modest miracle of engineering. Most commercial DVDVideo discs are comprised of two layers; the bottom layer is stamped on an opaque surface, and the top layer is stamped on a semitransparent surface. This allows DVD players to read from the outside of the disc until reaching the center, at which point the laser refocuses itself to peer through the first layer and onto the second, continuing the read process from the center outwards. (The ability to read dual-layer DVDs has always been a requirement of the DVD specification, so theoretically, all players should be able to play them.) Finding the right dye formulations and substrates that would allow a laser to burn onto the semitransparent layer as well as through it was another matter, however. To their credit, the folks behind the popular DVD+R format developed the technology first. (While DVD-R dual-layer burning has been demonstrated, no PC products have been announced yet.) Using the DRU-700A, we copied a three hour, 7.9GB commercial dual-layer DVD-Video at a relatively pokey 2.4x in 44:53 (min:sec). But here’s the kicker—the disc was read flawlessly by each of the five set-top Sony even bundles a black bezel with its dual-layer DVD burner for formal evening recording. BENCHMARKS Average data transfer (MB/sec.) Random/full-stroke seek (ms) Audio extraction (min:sec) Data DVD/CD burn (min:sec) CPU utilization DVD 8.1 110/205 – 8:55 (DVD+R) 16% (2x) CD 4.6 110/221 2:48 3:13 8% (8x) * The data CD burn test uses the bundled applications to create a 700MB CD-R. The data DVD burn test uses the bundled applications to create a 4.25GB. The audioextraction test uses a commercially stamped 74 minute audio CD. All tests were performed using Verbatim media DVD players we tried it with the generous Nero in, and we’re talking Software Suite, which about model’s ranging continues to boast more Ahead Nero Burning ROM 6 from an ancient RCA features and better perAhead Nero Vision Express Divx player to Kiss formance every time we Ahead Nero BackItUp Ahead Nero Showtime Technology’s networked use it. DP-500. We could also So is this the right play the disc in every time to buy a dual-layer DVD-ROM drive we tried it in with burner? We’re inclined to say yes, the single exception of Plextor’s PXbut ultimately it’s up to you, and 708A, which wouldn’t recognize the how badly you want it. The DRUdisc. While we noticed that our 700A works beautifully and we love burned disc was slower to be recogit, but dual-layer media continues nized than commercial discs, this is to be scarce, and burning is a relalikely the result of burned discs’ tively slow process right now. We slightly lower reflectivity and not believe you’ll see 4x and possibly dual-layer technology. 8x dual-layer burners by the time The DRU-700A is no slouch in holiday shopping comes around. other formats either. The fastest Whatever you do, don’t hold out format remains 8x DVD+R single for dual-layer rewriteable burners. layer, which took 8:55 to burn Manufacturers tell us they’re still 4.25GB of data. 8x DVD-R perforworking on this technology, and mance trailed behind at 9:38 doing the majority expressed doubt it will the same task. 4x DVD+RW burned arrive anytime soon, if at all. our disc in 14:25, and although —LOGAN DECKER DVD-RW is officially at 4x now, 4x media is nowhere to be found, so burn times are limited to 2x, resulting in a pokey 30:08 to burn a MAXIMUMPC single-layer disc. The DRU-700A is DUAL also the fastest combo burner when The first dual-layer burner is a winner, succeeding it comes to CD-R tasks, burning where it matters most—compatibility. 700MB at 40x in just 3:13. Digital JEWEL audio extraction was also mighty Media is scarce, expensive, and faster dual-layer fast—is this burner the entertainburners are sure to come soon. ment industry’s worst nightmare $230, www.sony.com or what? Sony bundles the drive THE BUNDLE VERDICT 9 64 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 47: Reviews Compaq tc1100 Best. Tablet PC. Ever 10.75“ I f you’ve read Maximum PC for any period of time, you know we have a fetish for pen-based computing. Sure, tablet PCs have some minor flaws—like the fact that text and voice recognition are inconsistent—but if you spend lots of time taking handwritten notes, a tablet can revolutionize your world. Like all the other tablets we’ve tested, the Compaq tc1100 uses the initial revision of Windows XP Tablet Edition. The big difference is that the tc1100’s hardware is superior to those other tablets in almost every way. The tc1100 uses a standard slate design but also includes a sturdy removable keyboard. When the keyboard is attached, it can be stowed under the main body of the tablet by twisting it around and latching it into place. We have only two complaints with this design. First, in the stowed position, the keyboard doesn’t provide any protection for the screen, so you’ll need to keep the tc1100 in a protective sleeve. Second, using the keyboard on a flat surface works well, but because the screen includes all the workings of the PC, it’s so top-heavy that the keyboard and mouse nub are difficult to use if you’re sitting with the tablet on your lap. Aside from these minor quibbles, Compaq’s tc1100 represents the pinnacle of first-gen Tablet PC design. The 10.4-inch XGA screen has the best viewing angle we’ve seen on a tablet yet—content looks crisp and clear from just about any vantage point—and its pressure-sensitive design makes it easier to sketch and write clearly than with other tablet PCs. On the equipment front, the integrated 1GHz Pentium M CPU is adequate but won’t break any speed records. And the mere 512MB of included memory and tiny 40GB hard drive feel a bit anemic. We dig the integrated Bluetooth, but we would have preferred an 802.11g wireless adapter instead of the integrated 8“ The Compaq tc1100 looks ungainly, but it’s the most useful, versatile tablet PC we’ve tested to date. 8“ 802.11b card. All in all, however, this is the tightest tablet PC we’ve seen to date. We’re looking forward to a hardware and software revision later this year, but if you can’t wait, the tc1100 is the tablet to buy. —WILL SMITH MAXIMUMPC VERDICT CUNEIFORM 9 Amazing viewing angles on the screen, and the most comfortable stylus we’ve used. HIEROGLYPHS The screen is unprotected, even when the keyboard is attached. Unbalanced when used on your lap. $2,300, www.compaq.com
Slide 48: Reviews DiskGO! 80GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive Impressive—and attractively priced O ne thing that can be found in the Lab at any given time, aside from our usual fire-code-violating hardware orgy, is a portable 20GB hard drive. It holds all of our benchmarks, a library of drivers, a hard drive image of our zero point system, and all of our hopes and dreams. Suffice it to say, we love this little bugger. But these days, it’s looking rather puny compared with the new object of our affection—Edge Memory’s 80GB USB 2.0 drive, dubbed the DiskGO!. Barely larger than an extra-long cigarette case, this storage device holds 80GB of data and is perfectly quiet thanks to its sluggish 4,200rpm spindle speed. Obviously it’s not the fastest drive around, but its 2.5-inch formfactor makes it eminently portable. Contributing to the DiskGO’s high degree of usability is its unique bus-power implementation. Most bus-powered drives provide an AC adapter cord in addition to a USB cable, just in case a PC’s USB port can’t provide enough power for the drive. The DiskGO! includes a standard 36-inch USB cable that has two connectors, like a two-headed monster. If you plug one of them in and the drive isn’t getting enough power, you can just plug the other connector into another USB port, thereby doubling the power supply. In testing, we had no trouble using just the single connector for the drive, though we couldn’t get it to work when plugged into some USB-powered hubs, even with both connectors attached. The drive is sheathed in aluminum, which helps it stay and look cool. The only sign of life it emits is a green LED that flashes red during access We’re usually annoyed by products that have an exclamation mark in their names, but the DiskGO! gets a pass because of its usefulness. times. There’s no software included at all—it doesn’t need any—but the drive does come with a swanky leatherMAXIMUMPC like carrying case. With the exception of SLIM DRIVE its slow spindle speed, the Small and very portable, bus-powered, large capacity. 80GB DiskGO has all the feaSLIM JIM tures we expect in a portable 4,200rpm spindle speed. drive—including a reason$290 (before $30 rebate), able price. www.edgememory.com —JOSH NOREM VERDICT 9 PlexWriter PW-712A Contender for “Best Optical Drive on the Planet” Writes to: DVD+R DVD-R CD-R 12x 8x 48x A n optical drive from Plextor sexes up even the dullest of PCs and communicates sophistication, refinement, and ass-kicking performance. The 12x PW-712A DVD will further extend this company’s reputation for top-shelf optical drives with cutting edge speeds, exclusive features and the best access times in the biz. Let’s get this one out of the way: The PW-712A burned 4.25GB of data to a 12x DVD+R disc in an unprecedented 6:25 (min:sec), and that includes about 20 seconds for caching files before the actual burn process began! A full DVD in less than six and a half minutes—can you dig it? Even better, the drive did so using media rated for 8x burning. The PlexWriter broke another record burning the same data to 8x DVD-R media in just 8:18. Rewriting is snappy but not astonishing; 4x DVD+RW media finished the test in 13:57, and though the PlexWriter supports burning DVD-RW media at 4x, the media itself was still unobtainable at press time, so burning to this format was restricted to 2x, which took 29: 36 to finish the task. If you want, or only have space for, a single optical drive, the PlexWriter PW712A won’t disappoint you. 24x Average data transfer (MB/sec.) 9.1 4.6 CD-RW burning Random/full-stroke seek (ms) 95/181 91/174 is supported, but Audio extraction (min:sec) N/A 4:16 more important Data DVD/CD burn (min:sec) 6:25 (DVD+R) 2:43 is support for 48x CPU utilization (%) 12% (2x) 5% (8x) CD-R burning. We * The data CD burn test uses the bundled applications to create a 700MB CD-R. filled a 700MB The data DVD burn test uses the bundled applications to create a 4.25GB disc. The audio-extraction test uses a commercially stamped 74 minute audio CD. disc in just 2:43; Rewrites to: DVD+RW 8x DVD-RW 2x CD-RW 24x Reads: DVD-ROM CD-ROM 16x 32x Sexier than it looks, Plextor’s 12x DVD burner is the combo DVD burner you’ve been dreaming about. BENCHMARKS DVD CD that’s not enough time for even a potty break. In addition to the fastest DVD burner in the free world, you also get a geek’s toybox of software in PlexTools Pro which include GigaRec, a proprietary scheme for burning up to 1GB on an ordinary CD-R, and SecuRec, which password protects a disc’s contents. Roxio Easy CD Creator 6 We have just two complaints with the PWPlexTools Professional 712A: the drive’s 7.5-inch length is impractical for mini-systems, and there does not appear to be any way to MAXIMUMPC set the “book type” of rewriteGIGAREC able DVDs, a trick that may Fastest DVD burns money can buy. Lots of software. increase compatibility with some set-top DVD players. TRAIN REC But those are little nits. No option for setting book type on DVD-/+RW. The PW-712A ought to give Long formfactor. any system a huge ego boost. $190, www.plextor.com —LOGAN DECKER THE BUNDLE VERDICT 9 66 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 49: Reviews Sennheiser PC155 USB Headset To USB or not to USB: The choice is pretty clear L et’s play a little word association game: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when we mention the name Sennheiser? If you’re like us, the words “quality headphones” immediately pop into your head— which is precisely why we were more than a little excited when Sennheiser sent us its new PC155 USB headset. Given the company’s award-winning reputation, we expected the PC155 to blow our socks off. After spending some quality time with the unit, we’re happy to report that we have yet to locate our favorite pair of argyles. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most impressive aspect of the PC155 is its audio performance. We put the PC155 through a series of subjective listening tests and it performed admirably in each instance, producing clear, vibrant highs, butter-smooth mids, and gut-rumbling lows without the slightest hint of distortion or static. Similarly, the attached microphone is a winner, demonstrating excellent response and recognition while offering a good deal of adjustability. The unit also features large padded ear cushions and a fully adjustable headband that keeps the headset snug and comfortable on your head even through extended gaming sessions. As an added bonus, we were able to use the PC155 with our portable audio devices thanks to its native mini-din connectors. Yes, you read that last part right: Even though the PC155 is marketed as a USB headset, it comes equipped with two standard 3.5mm connectors. An included adapter adds USB functionality but had such an adverse effect on the PC155’s volume—which was much lower than without the adapter—it’s practically worthless. Herein lies the PC155’s lone fault: As a USB headset, it’s mediocre. We’re confused why Sennheiser would saddle the wonderful PC155 with a lousy adapter and then choose to make this feature a central selling point. The PC155 comes with an adapter that adds USB functionality, but creates an unacceptable drop in volume. Initially, we were going to rate the PC155 solely on its merits as a USB headset, in which case, the score you see below would have been flipped upside down. But in the end, we couldn’t justify penalizing such a worthwhile product for a poor marketing decision. MAXIMUMPC Especially when you consider how easy the adapter is to SUPERMAN remove, which is something Impressive audio, comfortable to wear, and compatible with portable audio devices. we encourage everyone to CLARK KENT do as soon as they rip the PC155 out of its package. Woeful USB adapter adversely affects volume level. —TAE KIM VERDICT 9 $140, www.sennheiserusa.com
Slide 50: Reviews Asus A8V Deluxe Motherboard One new Socket 939 to rule them all T here are two types of PC upgraders: those who get so excited by new technology that they jump in with both feet, and those who carefully measure their options before settling on an upgrade path. Asus’ A8V Deluxe mobo should appeal to both. The A8V marks the debut of Socket 939, which finally standardizes the interface for both the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX processors. This socket change is more than just the removal of a pin. A tweaked memory controller in the CPU allows the Athlon 64 FX to finally shed its requirement for slower and more expensive registered RAM. (For more info on Socket 939 and the future of Socket 754 and Socket 940 see In The Lab on page 56.) The VIA K8T800 Pro chipset that powers the A8V is similar to its nonPro kin but adds support for an asynchronous bus mode that locks down the AGP and PCI buses when the CPU is overclocked. Enthusiasts should appreciate this, as it prevents crashes that originate from, say, an unintentionally overclocked soundcard. Another noteworthy feature is full support for a 1GHz, or 8GB/s, link between the CPU and chipset. Older Athlon 64 boards support just 800MHz, or sometimes even 600MHz. VIA has also increased the communication speeds between the north and south bridge to 1GB/s from 533MB/s of the non-Pro chipset. This amounts to greater performance headroom that may come in handy down the road. Chipset improvements aren’t the A8V’s only bragging rights. There are two FireWire 400 ports, eight High-Speed USB 2.0 ports, and a Wi-Fi option that turns the machine into a soft access point. Audio is strictly 16-bit, but at least it’s eight-channel thanks to the new RealTek ALC850 chip. For storage, you get three PATA and four SATA ports, but sadly the VIA chipset still doesn’t support native SATA devices. You’ll still need a floppy drive and “F6” drivers to install Windows XP. The A8V/K8T800 Pro combo also falls short by not including a highspeed port for Gigabit Ethernet—its Marvell Gigabit chip is ensconced in the mobo’s PCI. This means that if you’re running a SCSI controller, soundcard, or other PCI device that sucks up bandwidth, your LAN performance will suffer. Fortunately, the A8V has the goods where it counts: performance. We configured the A8V with a Socket 939 FX-53 CPU, an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro videocard, a Western Digital 2500JB drive, and 1GB of Corsair DDR400 RAM, and compared it with our similarly outfitted benchmark motherboard—an Asus SK8N using the older FX-53. This isolated the variables so that with both chips clocked at 2.4GHz, the only differences were the chipset (the SK8N uses the older nForce3 Pro) and RAM (the older FX-53 requires registered RAM.) Clock for clock, the A8V beat its older sibling in every benchmark by a 2 to 6 percent margin. Much of the performance boost can be attributed to the elimination of registered RAM, but some of it also comes from the VIA chipset and drivers. Regardless, the A8V is clearly the fastest Athlon 64 FX board we’ve reviewed to date. The lack of a few key features such as a high-speed interface for LAN and a true native SATA mode make its chipset less sophisticated than the nForce3 250Gb, but the A8V is nonetheless the fastest board. The big question for upgraders is this: Do you take the plunge now or wait for the PCI Express version of this mobo, which should arrive at the end of summer? If you have/ MAXIMUMPC need/want to do RPG 7 it now, the A8V It’s fast, and Socket 939 stabilizes upgrade options. is certainly a M72 sound choice. Competing nForce3 chipset packs more features. — GORDON MAH UNG $152 ($130 w/o Wi-Fi), www.asus.com The A8V marks the debut of Socket 939 and uses VIA’s K8T800 Pro— a combination that’s faster than the competition. VERDICT 9 DARE TO COMPARE: ATHON 64 MOTHERBOARDS Mainboard Chipset CPU Clock speed Socket L2 cache RAM mode Quake III “Normal” Four Sandra RAM Composite 3DMark 2001 SE AquaMark 3 CPU Test 3DMark 2003 CPU Test UT2003 Fly By SYSmark 2004 Overall Best scores are bolded. AUGUST 2004 Asus SK8N nForce3 150 Athlon 64 FX-53 2.4GHz Socket 940 1MB Dual 484 5685 20188 10355 836 329.9 184 Asus A8V K8T800 Pro Athlon 64 FX-53 2.4GHz Socket 939 1MB Dual 505 5939 21226 10645 847 347 188 SPECS Chipset CPU support RAM PCI slots AGP support SATA PATA RAID LAN Audio FireWire Other VIA K8T800 All current Socket 939 Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX CPUs 4GB MAX, DDR200-DDR400 Five 32-bit 5-volt/3.3 volt PCI slots 1.5 volt signaling AGP 4x/8x cards Four SATA (two in south bridge, two from Promise) Three PATA (two in south bridge, one from Promise controller) 0, 1, JBOD Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit/Fast Ethernet 8-channel RealTek ALC850 VIA VT6307 IEEE1394 802.11g option, audio jack sensing, virtual cable testing, AMD Cool ‘n’ Quiet technology MAXIMUMPC 69
Slide 51: Reviews Harmony H688 Holy cow! This is the universal remote we’ve been waiting for A nyone with a home theater rig knows the pain of dealing with multiple remote controls. Sure, you can buy a universal remote and hide most of the others away, but a time will inevitably arise when you need to switch an audio input from analog to digital and you won’t be able to do the job without the remote you packed away. Unless, that is, you have the Harmony H688. Here’s how the Harmony works: You press the button labeled “Watch TV” and the Harmony turns on your TV, amplifier, and satellite or cable box, switches everything to the right inputs, and changes to your favorite channel. Want to listen to an MP3 from your streaming box? Press the “Listen to Music” button and the Harmony will turn off your TV, switch the input on your amplifier, and activate your MP3 streaming box. It’s got a multitude of buttons, so you can control any device that’s made its way into your entertainment center, from the DVD player to the gaming consoles. Configuring the Harmony is reasonably simple for a device that does so much. You connect the remote to your PC using the included USB cable, install the proprietary software, and point your browser to a configuration web site. At the web site, you’re asked a series of questions about the devices in your home entertainment rig, and then you’re assisted in deciding exactly what happens when you press a It’s shaped like the standard TiVo remote, but the Harmony H688 is the ultimate PC programmable universal remote control. particular task button—like “Watch TV” or “Listen to Music.” In the unlikely event Harmony doesn’t know the infrared codes for one of your devices, the remote can be made to learn the old remote’s codes. We thoroughly configured our Harmony in less than an hour, and haven’t needed to touch another remote since we started using it a few months ago. What if you need to use a command that isn’t mapped to one of the H688’s many buttons? You can use the remote’s integrated LCD screen—which is backlit just like MAXIMUMPC every other button UNIVERSAL REMOTE on the device—to Get rid of every other remote control you own. The access every sinH688 can replace them all. gle command your PILE O’ REMOTES original remote It’s not as comfortable for PVR-type use as the TiVo can perform, and remote, but we’d rather have the convenience of a some that it can’t. single handset. —WILL SMITH VERDICT 9 $250, www.harmonyremote.com Pantone ColorPlus Get accurate display colors on the cheap I f you’ve ever wondered why a digital image that sparkled on your monitor looks like crap in print or when viewed on the web, it’s time you learned about color calibration. Like zeroing the sights on a gun or setting the zero point of a bathroom scale, calibrating your monitor ensures that color reproduction is as accurate as possible. ColorPlus facilitates such fine-tuning. The package includes a hardware color sensor that attaches by suction to your CRT. For LCD users, ColorPlus ships with an adapter to avoid damaging the delicate surface of your flat panel. The ColorPlus software runs you through a five-minute setup that creates an International Color Consortium profile for the monitor that can be used with such applications as Adobe’s Photoshop. The package also ships with a “starter edition” of Adobe’s Album 2.0. While usable for basic photo editing, the starter edition is stripped of features; it also becomes annoying in record time by encouraging you to upgrade to the full version at every opportunity. Feh. Setup was a snap, but we did stumble at one phase where we misunderstood the step for setting the monitor’s brightness. We admit the error was partially our fault, but it reinforced our instincts that the instructions and directions could be clearer and more helpful across the board. Setting up, installing, and running the initial calibration is painless, but ColorPlus leaves you hanging after that. It lacks detailed documentation on how to use the profiles with Photoshop, and is missing other basic FAQ information that would help newbies get the most out of the calibration package. If you print photographs, calibrating your monitor is just one part of the equation—it won’t control or help you adjust your printer’s output. But to get high-quality prints, you must have confidence that the image you see on your The ColorPlus sensor attaches to your monitor and allows you to easily calibrate your display. display is an accurate representation of the image file’s data. The ColorPlus system can give you this confidence—and cheaply. It’s certainly less frustrating than trying to eyeball your way to perfection. —GORDON MAH UNG MAXIMUMPC VERDICT RADIOHEAD CRACKHEAD 8 Low-cost hardware, better than guessing. Needs better documentation. $100, www.pantone.com 70 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 52: Reviews Hitman: Contracts The bald-headed assassin is back for more of the same D on’t tell our therapist, but we’re big fans of the Hitman franchise. The thrill we felt after stealthily taking out assigned targets in the flawed yet memorable Hitman: Codename 47 and Hitman 2: Silent Assassin remains unparalleled. Sure, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed recent stealth-based games such as Splinter Cell, but nothing has been able to deliver the same visceral excitement that comes from slipping into the shoes of a ruthless, bald-headed killer for hire. So imagine our excitement when Hitman: Contracts, the latest chapter in the saga, crept into our offices. We hoped that the return of Agent 47 would satisfy our craving for stealthy shenanigans, but much to the dismay of our inner assassin, this Hitman fails to deliver the killer blow. The biggest problem is that Contracts doesn’t improve upon the formula established in earlier titles in any meaningful way. From the graphics engine to the game mechanics, every aspect of the experience looks and feels as though it’s been lifted straight from the last game. This makes the experience feel more like an overpriced expansion add-on than a full-blown sequel. Compounding this flaw is the fact that several missions from the first game have been recycled and served up again like yesterday’s meatloaf. While this makes sense given the game’s story line—which involves a series of flashbacks that revisit Agent 47’s sordid past—it seems unfair. And while the flashback motif is well implemented, the lack of a unifying story arc ultimately makes for a disjointed gaming experience. Despite these complaints, we were able to wring some enjoyable moments out of Hitman: Contracts. Fans of the franchise will ease into the game like a pair of old sneakers, albeit a pair they’ve already out- Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, the Health Department showed up and started handing out citations. grown. At the very least, this will whet the appetites of wannabe assassins as they await the fourth Hitman title, which has tentatively been scheduled for release sometime next year. —TAE KIM MAXIMUMPC VERDICT SILENT AND DEADLY SILENT BUT DEADLY 7 Doesn’t stray too far from the established formula. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. $50, www.hitmancontracts.com Thief: Deadly Shadows This game really sneaks up on you T he city is a harsh mistress, full of scoundrels who will roll you for a handful of gold coins. Refreshingly, in Thief: Deadly Shadows, you’re one of the scoundrels. You play as Garrett, a master thief living off the involuntary generosity of others. You sneak and steal you way through castles and catacombs, and in the process, uncover the truth behind a plot to unleash a dark age upon a world that’s already pretty darn dark. Gameplay has remained relatively unchanged from the first two Thief games. You sneak around in the shadows and avoid guards while getting from point A to treasure B. He still has most of his toys, including a trusty blackjack for clubbing unsuspecting guards, and a bow with an arsenal of trick arrows for snuffing torches or spreading sound-muffling moss. Unlike the two previous installments, however, Deadly Shadows allows for relatively open-ended exploration of the game’s city, aptly dubbed “the City.” Between missions, you can walk about freely pick-pocketing noblemen, robbing homes, and avoiding the law. Small side quests and hints pointing to great wealth can be found from the City’s myriad NPCs. Fences and stores tucked away in alleys give you a safe place to sell your ill-gotten goods and replenish your equipment. It’s hardly a sprawling metropolis, but this open-ended urban environment adds pleasant depth to a series that was previously completely linear. Deadly Shadows is hardly a horror game, but its tense and moody atmosphere literally made us jump during various levels. In most missions you’ll explore buildings and avoid human guards, but in some, you’ll face creepy supernatural enemies. One of these more unconventional missions has Garrett breaking into an abandoned orphanage turned insane asylum. The subtly twisted architecture, erratic lighting, and creepy audio track produce one of the most terrifying sensations we’ve had in all our gaming experiences. The game’s hero goes clubbing every night it seems, much like the Maximum PC staff in its younger days. Here we see him laying in wait for an unsuspecing guard. Though it isn’t for everyone—the slow pace will turn off gamers more into straight-ahead action—Deadly Shadows is absolutely essential for stealth-game fans. If you’re looking for a firstperson alternative to gunning down anything that moves, this is for you. —E. WILL GREENWALD MAXIMUMPC VERDICT LUPIN III 9 Tense and well-honed gameplay and a great plot. One mission is unbelievably scary. LUPUS Bizarre rag-doll physics, and the game style is an acquired taste. $40, www.thief3.com AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC 71
Slide 53: Reviews City of Heroes Create your own superhero in this uniquely entertaining MMORPG W e’ve always wanted to be a superhero, the type of do-gooder who can fly above the clouds, scale tall buildings, and terrify criminals in dark alleys while our cape flows menacingly behind us. With City of Heroes, we can finally perform all these feats and more—without any fear that videos of us pretending to be a superhero will wind up on the Internet. This comic book–oriented massively multiplayer game is a superhero sim of sorts. You choose the type of hero you want to be and then set out to fight crime and vanquish evil in a metropolis called Paragon City. We appreciate that City of Heroes isn’t complex and that it doesn’t try to be. You simply create your crime-fighting alter ego—you can be anyone from a cybernetically enhanced martial artist to a mutant telepathic healer—outfit him, her, or it with a variety of accessories, and then enter the city and start putting an end to the evildoers. Paragon City is full of life, both law-abiding and crime-loving. A variety of missions are available for you to choose from. In some, you’ll hunt down gang members in alleys; in others, you’ll battle super villains in their lairs. Unfortunately, most of the missions boil down to the same beat-up-the-badguys formula. Don’t get us wrong, we love beating up bad guys. But while such straightforward action makes City of Heroes more accessible and entertaining than most massively multiplayer games, a little more complexity would hold our interest longer. The controls are extremely intuitive and use the familiar WASD and space bar combo we love so much. In addition to the standard kick and punch fighting moves, each superhero has an array of special powers and access to temporary power-ups called Inspirations. These added abili- City of Heroes is to other MMORPGs what comic books are to novels. Not nearly as deep, but much easier to dive into. ties can turn the tide in battle by healing you, enhancing your strength, or recharging your energy. Unfortunately, as the game stands now, you can only fight alongside your human comMAXIMUMPC padres, not against them. This BATMAN is frustrating—we want to be Be your own superhero. Tons of character options. able to prove our hero is the Huge cityscapes. best. We’ve read reports that AQUAMAN City of Villains, the upcoming Lacks the depth of other MMORPGs. You can add-on to this game, will allow only fight the AI. No capes! such head-to-head play. $50, www.cityofheroes.com —E. WILL GREENWALD VERDICT 9 Lineage II: The Chaotic Chronicle An attractive MMORPG cookie that’s cut from the same dough as most others W ith Lineage II, developer NCSoft follows the standard point-and-click, hack-and-slash formula of other MMORPGs like Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot so religiously that although the game is hard to fault, it feels completely uninspiring. In fact, Lineage II’s only glaring flaw is a lack of innovation. Early on, players find themselves settling into the classic MMORPG treadmill: fight monsters, get experience, get gold, level up, buy equipment. Repeat. It’s a tried-and-true formula, but it feels a little long in the tooth. Persistent players are promised a deeper and richer role-playing experience, where they can upgrade their class, craft items, form clans, siege castles, and even raise their own dragon. But when you’re only at level 8 and you’ve just killed your five-thousandth orc, you’ll wonder if it’s even worth it. Lineage II includes all of the standard massively multiplayer staples. Player-vs-player combat is supported, but it’s policed by a “karma” system that turns excessive player-killers into vulnerable fugitives. Players can trade items with other players, which creates a simple Everquest-like economy. Equipment drops are extremely rare, though, and as of this review, the game’s economy reflected this, with extremely high prices for all but the most basic items. New players are forced to choose between Fighter and Mystic classes, but can eventually customize their classes with specialized skills and classevolving quests. The graphics appear colorful, lush, and well beyond our expectations of an online-only RPG. In keeping with others of the genre, the world is large, there are many different enemies to fight and items to use, and the sound effects and music are well-produced. Lineage II has great potential, and rewards hardcore players who stick Lineage II looks good, but expect the same fights over and over again. with it long enough to reap the benefits at higher levels, but non-fanatics of the genre will probably have a hard time slogging through it. Hopefully, future revisions will take this into consideration and make the early stages more interesting. —E. WILL GREENWALD MAXIMUMPC VERDICT FIREBALL 7 Great look, solid gameplay, and lots of potential for hardcore characters. MAGIC MISSILE Tedious treadmill-style play, and limited in lower levels. $50, www.lineage2.com 72 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004
Slide 54: Rig oftheMonth A name can be so telling. Just askTroy Fryfogle, creator of August’s Rig of the Month. “Moby refers to the whale… and represents my drive to build the perfect modded system just as Ahab obsessed over his white whale, he says. Seriously, the ” quest was no small matter. Just ask Moby 1, the customcrafted PC Fryfogle summarily gutted in pursuit of his dream. Luckily, Moby 2 turned out to be everything Fryfogle hoped for (if only Ahab had been so lucky!). The craftsmanship speaks of a practiced hand. After all, a first-timer would hardly know all the tricks it takes to cram this much componentry and extraneous ornamentation into a standard full-tower case without the inside looking like R2D2’s sick bag. Large custom windows on both the side and top of the case don’t lie. As for the rig’s performance: “It runs like a scalded dog, ” says Fryfogle. THIS MONTH: Troy Fryfogle’s Moby 2 Fryfogle actually scaled back his use of lights with Moby 2, and went strictly LED. As he puts it, “LEDs not only keep the case lighting consistent but they last forever, and if they die it’s nothing cataclysmic; they normally go without so much as a whimper and at worst a ‘pop’.” All the drives were “stealthed” to match the front of the case, as were the faceplates for the Zalman fan controller and the Matrix Orbital LCD. Handles were added to the top for easier transport. The mod that garners the most attention is the pop-out LCD, which can be used as either an extension of the primary desktop, or to display television programming via the PC’s TV tuner card. There’s plenty to see beneath the top window, including the active LCD screen when it’s tucked safely in its resting place. Fryfogle meticulously planned the machine’s layout, “everything from the case lighting and wiring down to the airflow pattern/fan position.” A Lian Li PC6077 houses the whole kit and caboodle and an Antec 480W blue LED PSU provides the juice. If you have a contender for Rig of the Month, e-mail input@maximumpc.com with pics and a brief write-up. 96 MAXIMUMPC AUGUST 2004