Maximum PC Load Letter #33: Wacky Game Controllers, Chrome OS, Win a Core i7 PC!

Issue 033 Ready for the Holiday season to begin? We sure are! There's a ton of new hardware that we've just reviewed in case you're thinking about building a new PC for 2010. ATI has announced their epic 5970 dual-GPU videocard, which we've benchmarked here. But not everyone can afford a $600 videocard, so we've also reviewed 8 hot new videocards from ATI's RV870 GPU line. Continuing our series of essential tips features, we've posted guides for making the most out of BitTorrent and Ubuntu . And we've also written up a really nostalgic retrospective of our 50 most memorable PC mice, keyboards, and game controllers. Definitely check that out! Finally, we've also just announced a big contest, partnering up with Ballistic Gaming PC to give away a sweet Core i7 gaming rig. Just click the image on the right to find out how to enter to win. As always, shoot me an email if you have any comments! Please Digg our stories, and be sure to become a fan of our Facebook group to quality for the Ballistic Gaming PC contest and other giveaways! We've also just launched a TechMart , where you can buy special issues of Maximum PC. Norman Chan Online Editor, Maximum PC Trackballs to Brainwaves: The 50 Most Notable PC Peripherals -- In many PC publications, it's the CPUs, video cards and other internal hardware that gets all the attention, with input devices relegated to a few pages here or there in the reviews section. But why should that be the case? Input devices are, after all, your point of connection to your machine. As keyboards, mice and game controllers have evolved over the years, so has the way we control and interact with our computers. That's why we've chosen to give them the respect they deserve-by compiling a list of 50 of the most important, memorable, or just downright wacky input devices from the past, present and future of computing. If you like this story, please help us by Digging it! 8 Things You Need to Know about Chrome OS -- Google pulled the wraps off of Chrome OS today, and while there isn't a general availability announcement today, they spoke briefly about the Chrome browser (Linux and Mac versions due this year, along with support for extensions) before diving into the nascent OS. You can expect to see Chrome ship in about a year, and showed the first glimpses of the new OS, details about the architecture, the hardware it will run on, and gave us the first hints about what the Google Cloud OS will really look like. Here's why Chrome OS won't be replacing Windows anytime soon.  ATI Radeon HD 5970: The Undisputed Performance Champ -- You can forgive AMD for stealing a line from Nvidia's playbook. From the name and marketing materials, it's not obvious that this card is a dual GPU card. One AMD chart even refers to the card as the "ATI Radeon HD 5970 GPU," much like Nvidia's 295 GTX is a dual GPU card that's sold as if it were a normal graphics card. We first take a quick look at the speeds and feeds of the new card, and then discuss additional features. We'll compare them to the Radeon HD 5870 single GPU card; there are differences in core and memory clock speeds. Then, we jump into the benchmarks, comparing the Radeon HD 5970 to four other videocards in high-resolution gaming. And if those numbers don't impress you, wait until you see how this beast performs in Crossfire for a total of four GPUs.  20 Essential Tricks and Skills Every BitTorrent User Should Know -- BitTorrent, as you're probably already aware, is a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing protocol ideal for transferring large files (and if you didn't know that, don't worry, we also include some lightweight tips to get you started). In a nutshell, the way it works is when you're downloading a massive file -- like a Linux distribution, for example --bits and pieces of the file will be uploaded at the same time. Typically BitTorrent allows for a more efficient and faster transfer method than traditional, Direct Connect P2P software. On the following pages, we'll not only show you how to get the most out of uTorrent, but out of BitTorrent in general. We'll cover both basic and advanced tips, and then toss in some of our favorite third-party add-ons for good measure. Whether you're new to BitTorrent or a seasoned vet, there's something in this guide for you. $1500 Gaming PC Buyer's Guide -- November 2009 -- It's that time again! This month, we've priced out an amazing $1500 gaming PC. If you recall from our Dream Machine feature, the $1500 "Budget Surplus" of mid-2009 was powered by a Core i7-920 and Radeon 4870 X2. Today -- a few months later -- we're able to make a few adjustments to upgrade to a Radeon 5870-based machine. The introduction of Intel's Lynnfield processor, increasing RAM prices, and the final retail release of Windows 7 also forced us to reevaluate our spending priorities, but we're very pleased with the outcome. As gamers, this is a system we'd be proud to build ourselves, and will play any game released in the foreseeable future.  Scythe Mugen 2 Cooler GammaTech Durabook D14RM Falcon Northwest Talon Asus G51Vx-RX05 Toshiba NB205 Left 4 Dead 2 HIS Radeon HD 5770 Videocard Gigabyte 260 GTX Super OC Videocard Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Videocard Diamond Radeon HD 5850 Videocard Asus EAH5850 Videocard Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Videocard Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6 Motherboard Freeware Files: Widescreen Mania! Make the Most of your Monitor's Real Estate! Widescreen monitors are, in a word, awesome, and not just because they offer some kind of enhanced quality over their four-by-three ratio brethren. Depending on what you're using them for, like movie-watching, you'll simply see more of a given scene than you otherwise would on a standard display. The increased screen real estate (on the horizontal plane) also allows you to make more effective use of your desktop... provided you have the right software tools to create this enhanced productivity. In fact, one of the biggest complaints surrounding the use of widescreen monitors is just that--the elongated desktop space is just too hard to navigate, and applications frequently don't make the best use of this additional room. I can't promise that everything out-of-the-box (or out-of-the-browser window) will look great on your widescreen display. However, what I can do is offer you a suite of tools designed to make your 16-by-9 or 16-by-10 experience as great as it can be. No BS Podcast #125: Did You Hear About the Apple Tablet, Made by Apple? Google's Chrome OS press conference gave us plenty to discuss on this week's No BS Podcast. We give you a recap of what juicy nuggets were revealed, and explain why Windows won't be replaced by Chrome any time soon. We also talk about benchmarking a dual-Radeon 5970 system, comparing it to a tri-SLI GTX 285 machine that we reviewed a few months ago. Finally, we answer some listener questions and Gordon breaks not one, but four NDAs to tell us about a super secret product. IBM's Next Cell Processor is Dead in the Water Talk of the technology behind the PlayStation 3 console always turns to the Cell processor, an innovative chip architecture which, in the PS3, contains essentially 9 processors on single chip (one PowerPC chip and eight Synergistic Processing Elements, or SPEs). And up until now, there was no reason to believe Sony wouldn't once again go with a Cell processor in its PlayStation 4 console, but there now lingers some doubt if the chip truly is "dead in the water, as David Turek, IBM's VP of Deep Computing, supposedly said. New Drobos Add Drive Bay, Higher Price Data Robotics is refreshing its excellent line of Drobo automated external hard drive enclosures. The Silicon Valley startup is launching the Drobo S and DroboElite. The Drobo S is similar to the standard Drobo but offers a fifth drive bay, allowing up to two drives to fail with no data loss. The new 'S' version also packs a faster ARM chip and an eSATA port to go along with the FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 ports. Users can enable dual drive redundancy via the software control panel. Google Says It Doesn't Want to Be Utility Google has made it clear recently that it does not intend to compete with utilities. The Mountain View tech company felt the need to do so after its recent push to get the PowerMeter service up and running. Some have worried that Google might intend to take over the relationship with customers from the electric companies. PowerMeter is a service that pulls data from special "smart" home electricity meters and feeds it into a web interface where users can track their use. Google's Program Manager for Advanced Products, Ed Lu, explained that Google only wants to help consumers understand their energy usage better. He went on saying, "This is where we think we can help utilities with this particular problem." Another Day, Another Promising New Battery Technology It seems like we're constantly hearing about promising battery technologies that could ultimately lead to longer battery life, more power, and smaller units, but as of yet, that big breakthrough hasn't occurred. Maybe nanotechnology, which is the current hot topic in the battery innovations field, will prove to be different. Right at this moment, a ton of research is being put into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for a bunch of uses, including electronics and batteries. Researchers are drawn to CNTs because, according to them, carbon nanotubes are near perfect. That has paved the way for a professor and a UC San Diego graduate student to discover a breakthrough that involves introducing purposeful defects into CNT structures. By doing so, the 'defective' CNTs actually work better for the development of super capacitors, DailyTech reports. "While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but typically have limited capacity. However, super capacitors electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages of both," Professor Prabhakar Bandaru said.

Maximum PC Load Letter #28 -- Windows 7 Reviewed!

Issue 028 Hello, readers! We've returned after a short hiatus, and have updated the website with a ton of feature stories enjoyment. In addition to new entries to our weekly Windows 7 Feature Focus, we've also posted our highly anticipated Dream Machine 2009 feature, as well as our annual Comic-Con cosplay gallery (with over 600 photos this year!). Other must-read stories: Gordon shows you how to buy the right SD card for your digital camera, we look into the guts of PC parts, and Linux guru Will Kraft goes over running Windows games in Ubuntu with Wine. And finally, we're also extremely proud to share with you Editor-in-Chief Will Smith's Windows 7 review. Will extensively benchmarked and tested the final build of Windows 7, comparing it to both XP and Vista in an expansive suite of applications and games. Is it everything we hoped it would be? You'll have to read the full review to find out! As always, shoot me an email if you have any comments! And please, help us by Digging our stories! Norman Chan Online Editor, Maximum PC Windows 7 Review -- For the Windows faithful, it's been a tough eight years. With the launch of Windows XP in 2001, we thought we were poised on a brink of a new world of NT-based goodness-but two years and uncountable exploits later, the future of Windows was grim. Facing a never-ending torrent of new 'sploits, worms, and trojans, Microsoft fired back with the single greatest operating system update of all time-Service Pack 2. In the single fell swoop of SP2, Windows XP went from Swiss cheese to secure, and once again we were poised to enter the promised land with... (wait for it)... Vista. Of course, we all know how Vista turned out. But, as 2009 draws to a close, we find ourselves testing another new Microsoft OS: Windows 7. Building on the now-mature technologies introduced with Vista, but with a renewed focus on performance and ease-of-use, Windows 7 seems poised to succeed where Vista couldn't. We've finally received a final build of Win7, and have run it through the wringer in both the Lab and in the real-world. Here's what we found. Please help us by digging this story! The 16 Most Essential Firefox 3.5 Add-ons -- We were elated when Firefox 3.5 came out, which brought increased stability and new features to one of our favorite web browsers of all time, including private browsing, tear away tabs and location awareness. We also got a faster browser with enhanced security and user-friendliness. However, what ultimately makes Firefox the choice browser is the appeal of its massive library of add-ons, which not only shed light on the fervent community, but also ensure that Firefox users get a great deal by installing widgets and extensions that only add to the Internet browsing experience. Users have the ability to experience what other web browsers do not - and cannot - offer. Dream Machine 2009: How To Build the Best PC For Any Budget! -- Sometimes, you just have to keep things real. Last year, our Dream Machine was a paean to excess, a chrome-plated $17,000 wünder-rig. While we're still quite fond of that machine, this year we decided to take a different tack and see if we could build a more reasonably priced, but still lust-worthy Dream Machine. Well, actually, we built three of them. While the combined cost of these three machines is about half the price of last year's rig, we packed a lot of awesome into our relatively tight budgets. The lesson is simple: Dream Machine isn't about spending a ludicrous amount of cash on a PC, it's about getting the best rig you can for the money you spend. I think you'll agree that these three machines pack a ton of power and are all great values. The Comic-Con 2009 Cosplay Gallery -- 600 Amazing Costumes -- This is it - the post you've been waiting for. After four days of wandering the show floor, sitting in on movie studio panels, and epic line waiting, we've come out of Comic-Con 2009 with the mother load: 600 (yes, SIX HUNDRED) photos of the most intricate, sexy, and spellbinding cosplay that showed up this year. Star Wars and Superheroes were well represented, but we also snapped up shots of PC gaming icons, including several Team Fortress 2 teams and an amazing Left 4 Dead group. Legions of slave Leias weren't afraid to bare their skin and the forces of Cobra proudly showed off their guns. We even saw a bunch of familiar faces from last year's pictorial. Grab and seat, put your day on hold, and enjoy the best cosplay gallery from the best year of Comic-Con ever! Your Hardware Exposed! 22 PC Parts Bare All -- You may know what the inside of a PC looks like, but what about the parts which make up your PC components? Over the past few years, we've dissected hard drives, keyboards, soundcards, and a plethora of other PC hardware, just to see what makes them tick. Here, we've picked out 22 of these autopsies to showcase. If you've ever wanted to see the guts of a netbook or the silicon that makes a network router work, read on! Custom Firmware Rocks! How to Hack Gadgets with New Software -- While we're big fans of the proven awesomeness of open-source software, we don't automatically download every free application that's labeled as an open-source project. What make more sense is the use of open-source as the tool that effects some kind of massive or otherwise unreachable change in a common device. Case in point is open-source firmware, which lets you add undocumented functionality to your gadgets. An entire ocean of open-source firmware fixes awaits your perusal -- we take a look at some outstanding examples of open-source firmware, and teach you how to install them on your own gadgets! Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme-775 RT Polywell X5800A-Extreme Gateway P-7808u FX Diamond ATI Radeon HD 4890 XOC CoolIT Domino A.L.C. Asus Xonar Essence STX PowerColor Radeon HD 4830 PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 EVGA GeForce 9800 GT EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 HIS IceQ 4+ Radeon HD 4870 EVGA GeForce GTX 275 Logitech G9x Freeware Files: Enhance Google Chrome with Great Plugins! We've covered some awesome Firefox plugins a little bit ago, and it only seems fitting for Google Chrome to receive the same treatment. But as you're undoubtedly aware, Google Chrome doesn't feature built-in extension support like other popular browsers on the market. Or does it? Actually, if you run the developer builds of Chrome, you can access the wonderful (beta) world of browser add-ons with but a few extra commands and tweaks. Seeing as very few people who use Chrome know or care about this little modification, it stands that the actual world of add-ons for the browser is pretty small right now. That said, there are still some neat extras that you can build into your browser--including some add-ons that mimic the best of what you'll find in Firefox's expansive database. Freeware Files: Games, Games, and More Games--Five Graphics-Crazy Titles! We begin another trip through the freeware files with a focus on graphics this time around--graphics and zombies.  While a majority of the free games in this roundup feature some kind of interesting graphical treatment, there's one straggler that looks a bit like the sprites from SimCopter. But this little gem, of all the games on said list, features a healthy dose of zombie-killing. So for that, I can forgive its less-than-ideal looks. But enough about that. You want to get to the games. I don't blame you. In fact, just to make sure I'm appeasing your interests, I'm taking a look at a number of different genres this time around. If zombies aren't your thing, or you can't stand the thought of an 8-bit, FPS-style puzzle title, then you'll surely find a winner in one of the other titles on this week's list.  From marble-smashing arcade games to awesome little racecar rallies, you're guaranteed to find at least one gem amongst these super-fun freeware titles. No BS Podcast #113: The Return of the Rage For the second week in a row, the gang returns with another news-packed podcast. This week, we talk about our first hands-on with the ZuneHD, the RTM of Windows 7, Logitech's new G500 laser mouse, oh yeah, and the rumors about Intel's new Core i5 CPU. Listener questions are answered, technical difficulties get resolved, and everyone involved has a great time. Most importantly, Gordon makes a triumphant return to the Rant of the Week! Google Unveils Caffeine: The Next-Gen Search Architecture Google this week announced that for the last several months,  it has been working on a secret project of a next-generation architecture for the company's web search. The new architecture includes crawling, indexing, and ranking changes and is the "first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions," Google wrote in a blog. Rather than incorporate these changes into their existing search infrastructure, Google is instead providing a developer preview and is asking webmasters and "power searchers" to give it a try. Bargain Shoppers, Meet Yahoo! Deals Yahoo on Monday launched what it claims is the first website to provide daily deals, online coupons, grocery coupons, local coupons, store circulars, and exclusive deals all in one place. Dubbed 'Yahoo! Deals," the new portal also integrates social and community features, as well as videos offering tips on how to save money. "Frugality is the new 'cool,'" said Greg Hintz, head of Yahoo! Shopping. "We now know that couponing and bargain hunting are losing their stigma and are now a regular habit for many people. Our goal at Yahoo! is to be the center of people's online lives and we're making Yahoo! the easiest place for consumers to find and manage the coupons and deals that are relevant to their lives." Some of the features on Yahoo! Deals include a gas finder module that helps users find the cheapest gas by zip code, improved search functions to help users find deals from across the site, offers for local chain and neighborhood restaurants, retailers, and service providers provided by Valpak, and exclusive deals from partners like TechBargains.com, LogicBUY, CouponAlbum, and others. Intel, Micron Announce Development of New High Capacity Flash Memory Intel and Micron have developed a new 34nm NAND flash memory technology that is capable of 3 bits per cell, which allows for greater density than the standard 2 bits per cell technology currently in use, the two companies announced this week.. According to Micron, this will pave the way for high-capacity USB flash drives. Micron also said the technology isn't yet as reliable as flash memory based on 2 bits per cell technology. Because of this, the 3 bits per cell chips will only be used in the manufacturer of flash drives that don't require the data storage reliability of an SSD. Sony Launches a New Kind of Lithium Sony on Tuesday announced it has launched a new type of lithium ion secondary battery using olivine-type lithium iron phosphate as the cathode material. What exactly does that mean? According to Sony, both high-power and long-life performance in a single package. The company claims olivine's robust crystal structure and stable performance make the material an ideal fit for use as a cathode material. In addition, Sony says its new battery technology is able to charge rapidly. Sony has already started shipping the first battery to use the olivine material, which the company sells under its Fortelion series branding. It holds a capacity of 1.1Ah with 80 percent capacity retention after 2,000 charge-discharge cycles, and is able to recharge to 99 percent of its full capacity in 30 minutes, Sony says.