According to Home Media Magazine ,
fi rst-quarter sales of high-defi nition movie
discs favored the Blu-ray format by a
wide margin. Of the 1.2 million discs sold
between January 1 and March 31, 832,
have been Blu-ray units. It’s too early,
however, to say the fi gures refl ect a defi ni-
tive preference; the numbers could stem
from the relative strength of the titles in
each camp’s release slates for that period.Blu-ray Puts the
Heat on HD DVD
Back in January, all the major computer
makers jumped aboard the Vista band-
wagon and began offering the OS exclu-
sively on their consumer PCs. And why
not? Microsoft’s long-awaited follow-up
to XP was touted as the best OS ever—it
was assumed everyone would want it.
Apparently, that hasn’t been the case.
PC sales following Vista’s launch have
fallen short of expectations. According to
an analyst at research fi rm Gartner, “While
Vista includes a number of interesting
features, these features just don’t have
enough ‘must have’ appeal... to spark a
signifi cant rush of new PC sales.” But the
news for Vista is actually worse than a
slow adoption rate. Some consumers areactually asking that their new machines
be outfi tted with XP.
Responding to a fl ood of requests on
its IdeaStorm website, Dell has resumed
bundling Windows XP with four of its
Inspiron laptops and two Dimension
desktop models. Of course, it’s only a
matter of time before consumers have no
choice. Microsoft has said it will cease
selling XP to large computer makers
come January 2008.Vista Not a
Shoo-In
The OS meets resistance in its bid
for dominance10 MAXIMUMPC july 2007
quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
Tom McDonald has been covering games for countless
magazines and newspapers for 11 years. He lives in the
New Jersey Pine Barrens.E
very once in a while, when my kids spend
a couple hours parked in front of the com-
puter, I get the guilts. This is often assuaged by
hearing about a parent who lets their kid spend
four hours a day plugged into Gears of War.
Hey, I may suck as a father, but at least I’m not
as bad as that guy.
But the little bit o’ guilt still tickles the back
of my conscience, and I want to squash that
sucker flat. Because you know what? It isn’t so
bad for children to be plugged in a few hours
a week. Parents are conditioned to think that
this time is some yawning vortex of sucking
evil that is slowly leeching our children of their
very souls! Rather, we should all gather round
and play state capitol bingo or work on our
compost heaps or compose haiku in honor of
Basho’s birthday.
Bull. My kids have only been enriched by
the time they spend on the computer. That’s
because we manage time (it’s limited and my
kids rarely use the computer on school nights)
and content (largely benign or at least non-
graphic) and because computers open a rich
and amazingly diverse interactive environment.
Sure, a lot of what my kids play is educa-
tional, and that comes with its own benefits.
SpongeBob is a far better (and surprisingly
more patient) typing instructor than I would be,
and Ms. Frizzle knows infinitely more about
bugs than I ever, ever want to know.
But even titles like Battle for Middle-earth
II or Stronghold: Legends or Medieval II deliver
endless riches. My son has become quite the
expert on tactics, fortifications, and balanced
force deployments, not to mention well mari-
nated in the beloved world of Tolkien and the
intricacies of Crusader politics. We can have
intelligent discussions about the proper use of
light and heavy infantry and the relative merits
of trebuchets, ballista, catapults, and other
arcane items of medieval warfare.
And dammit, that’s the kind of thing that
makes a boy a boy and a man a man. My
boy will almost certainly never need to know
the capitol of Oregon, but knowing how to
properly deploy a trebuchet just might come
in handy some day.Bad
Dad?
GAME THEORY
THOMAS
MCDONALDA TRIP-py Trillion
A new computer processor design looks to take systems by stormA trillion calculations per second. That’s what researchers at the University of Texas in
Austin are promising will happen by 2012, thanks to their new TRIPS computer pro-
cessor. Short for Tera-op, Reliable, Intelligently adaptive Processing System, TRIPS
stands out from traditional CPU design in its ability to simultaneously issue 16 opera-
tions per cycle and 1,024 instructions in fl ight. By contrast, a “modern” processor
caps out at around four operations per cycle.
The TRIPS processor operates under the EDGE (Explicit Data Graph Execution)
architecture. Researchers hope the new architecture will become a successful alter-
native to multicore parallelism, as the former focuses on increasing the effi ciency of
single processors rather than simply expanding the number of cores on a single chip.HD DVD
30%Blu-ray
70%Q1 sales of HD movies.