quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
12 MA XIMUMPC APRIL 2006
S
eagate has announced the first hard drive using
perpendicular recording technology—a 160GB
Momentus 5400.3, which is a 2.5-inch notebook drive.
Using perpendicular tech rather than conventional lon-
gitudinal recording allowed Seagate to crank up capac-
ity 40GB over the previous-generation drive. Seagate
says it plans to transition all of its drives to perpendicu-
lar tech by the end of 2006.ALIENWARE OPENS WEB SHOP
The Florida-based boutique PC builder recent-
ly announced an online game shop that
allows you to download all of today’s cool
games, including FEAR, King Kong, and more.
From what we can tell it’s a huge store with
quite a large selection, including strategy
guides and gift certificates. Check it out at
http://downloads.alienware.com.SONY EUTHANIZES AIBO ROBOTS
Sony’s Aibo, the lovable, tail-wagging robot
dog that pooped AA batteries on command
(we wish), has been put to sleep by its master.
Sony recently announced the cancellation of
the semi-popular
robot dog as part
of an ongoing
effort to cut costs.
Sony claims it sold
150,000 Aibos,
which cost $2,
a piece. It will offer
support for seven
years for the latest
version of the plas-
tic pooch.XP SERVICE PACK IN THE WORKS
Just because Microsoft is prepping Vista
doesn’t mean the Redmond firm has
completely forgotten about all its loyal XP
users. According to a detailed roadmap on
Microsoft’s website, the company plans to
release yet another Service Pack for XP Home
and Pro. Here’s the bad news: It’s not expect-
ed to ship until the second half of 2007.AFTER VISTA, VIENNA
Speaking of Microsoft and its OSes, the
software giant has already named the suc-
cessor to Vista, according to an article on
News.com. Previously, the OS was named
Blackcomb, but
that name was
recently ditched
in favor of Vienna
(the town, not
the sausage).
According to the
article, Microsoft
chose the name
Vienna because it’s a city with a great
“vista.” Vienna will reportedly ship with the
new WinFS file system and won’t require
rebooting after installing new software
(insert sarcasm emoticon here).FUNSIZENEWS
MicrosoftAntivi rus
Won’t Ship
with Vista
Microsoft is clearly breathing
a sigh of relief, having finally
tackled all the virus problems
with Windows XP.
We jest, of course, which
is why news that Microsoft
will not be bundling any
sort of virus protection
into Vista came as a mild
shocker when Microsoft’s
Jim Allchin announced it in
an interview with industry
website CRN.com.
The company will,
however, be bundling its
anti-spyware utility—named
Windows Defender—with
Vista. The decision to omit
virus protection is easier
to understand when you
consider Microsoft’s reason.
According to Microsoft, this
isn’t a technical decision, but
rather a business decision.
Instead of giving away virus
protection, Microsoft will sell
antivirus protection to its
users via its OneCare online
security service. (No, we’ve
never heard of it either.)
Microsoft will sell its OneCare
Live program online and at
retail, at a cost of $50 for one
year. The service will protect
up to three PCs.
One possible explana-
tion for this decision is that
Microsoft is hoping to avoid
the ire of bigwig antivirus
companies such as Symantec
and McAfee, by bundling
antivirus with Windows. The
firms would have (rightly)
raised antitrust concerns
if Microsoft encroached on
their turf.
Another interesting tidbit
from the interview is news
that Vista is now feature-
complete. The OS is sched-
uled to arrive in time for the
2006 holiday season.Seagate Ships Perpendicular
Watt’s Up?
We hear a lot about energy vampires—devices that leech
power even when they’re turned off—so we plugged our
trusty watt meter into a variety of common household
electronics devices to find what draws the most juice.As you can see
from our results,
the biggest con-
sumer of juice
in our test was
the gaming PC.
Our dual-core
SLI rig positively
guzzled power
during our gam-
ing test. The
other thing that
surprised us was
the relatively tiny
amount of power
that a dozen
power bricks drew. At only 4W for every brick in our
house, you’d be better off manually turning off your
monitor, than disconnecting its source of power, if
your goal is to conserve energy.HOME THEATER (STANDBY/PVR ON) 80W
HOME THEATER (ON) 380W
PC (OFF) 38W
PC (IDLE) 320W
PC (UNDER LOAD) 380W
PC (GAMING) 480W
SPEAKERS (IDLE) 30W
LCD MONITOR (STANDBY ) 4W
LCD MONITOR (ON) 46W
12 POWER BRICKS (ASST’D) 4WPOWER CONSUMPTION