22
It’sTime
to Cross
the Final
Frontier
!IHt?HtM
Ed Word
Please send feedback and
Turkish Delight
to [email protected].I
’ve been building computers for more than 10 years
now. I’ve built dozens-upon-dozens of desktop
machines for friends, family, the Maximum PC Lab,
and my own personal use. Odds are if you’re reading
this magazine, you have too. Despite being a card-
carrying member of the PC-building elite, I still use a
laptop that was built on an assembly line somewhere
in Texas. But I won’t have to anymore.
This month, Editor Gordon Mah Ung shows you
how to build your own laptop. At fi rst we weren’t sure
it was a good idea to run the story, even in Maximum
PC. After all, it’s one thing to build an easily serviced
desktop machine without a benevolent manufacturer
to handle broken parts and software snafus. When
you build your own laptop, though, you’re really on
your own. Before he started, even Gordo questioned
the wisdom of a DIY laptop—and the story was his
idea!
When he got a look at the variety of parts he
could use to build the laptop, his tune quickly
changed. He purchased exactly the components he
needed to get the most bang for his laptop dollar.
He built a kick-ass laptop with a super-fast 2.1GHz
Pentium M, a 100GB hard drive, and a GeForce Go
6600, for about $1,500. I spec’d out a comparable
laptop from an online retailer and the total cost was
over $2,300—with a pokey 5400rpm hard driveinstead of the 7200rpm one Gordon used!
The laptop manufacturers limit your confi guration
choices so they can extract the maximum cash
from you for premium hardware. If you start with a
vendor’s cheapest machine, you might be able to
make some small confi guration changes, but you
won’t be able to add a huge hard drive, fi rst-class
CPU, or 2GB of memory. Some of these are actual
limitations in the hardware—many notebook mobos
don’t support tons of RAM or the fastest GPUs—but
mostly the limitations are artifi cial. By building your
own, you can get the most powerful hardware at
a better price. I don’t know about you, but that’s
precisely the reason I started building my own rigs.
Keen-eyed readers will also notice that we’ve
devoted nine pages to backing up, copying, and
converting all of your digital media. I’ve pissed and
moaned about the anti-consumer DRM technologies
enough, so we decided to do something about it.
Starting on page 22, you’ll fi nd our most complete
guide to converting your media into consumer-
friendly, DRM-free formats that work anywhere.
Enjoy the story, but please use your unlocked media
responsibly. Don’t steal.
Now I’ve got to get back to the Lab; it’s time I
built my laptop!Features
MA XIMUMPC 4 / 06
Exercise your fair-use right! Our in-depth
guide tells you how to rip and reformat your
digital media for playback in any device.
The 4th Annual
Softy Awards
Exercise your fair-use right! Our in-depth
Copy Movies
and Music
(^34)
Check out the eight software apps that won our
hearts and Maximum PC’s highest honor.
(^40) DIY Laptop
You’re not a true power user
until you’ve spec’d and built
a laptop to your liking. We
show you how.
3
Check out the eight software apps that won our
hearts and
APRIL 2006 MA XIMUMPC