MaximumPC 2008 03

Adding PDA features, a digital media player,

and online trip-planning to a solid GPS with

a brilliant 4.3-inch touch-screen display is

a great idea, but they’re so poorly executed

in HP’s iPaq 310 Travel Companion that we

just can’t recommend this device. Sync the

iPaq to Outlook, for instance, and it will

grab your contact database, but it won’t

show your appointments on its calendar.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/2a3ber to fi nd our full

review. $450, http://www.hp.com

HP iPaq 310 Travel Companion

Canada’s consumers just narrowly

avoided having to pay a new tariff on

electronic storage devices such as

digital media players and even memory

cards. The tax, put forth by the Canadian

Private Copying Collective, which repre-

sents the music industry, and approved

by the country’s Copyright Board, was

meant to compensate artists whose

work could be copied using one of these

devices. There’s precedent for the plan,

as rewriteable CDs and cassettes sold in

that country are already subject to such

a tariff. Fortunately, the Canadian Federal

Court of Appeals had the common sense

to strike down the new tax (although it

remains in place for CD-Rs).

Still being decided are proposed

reforms to Canada’s Copyright Act.

Pushed by the Canadian Recording

Industry Association, the legislation, if

passed, would impose a fee for down-

loading and sharing songs on the Internet.

And like America’s fl awed DMCA, there

would be no distinction between copying

material for personal use or backup and

copying for counterfeit purposes.

Google plans to combine prestige with pennies in a grand effort to address the

core criticisms and immense traffi c of Wikipedia, one of the Internet’s most visited

reference resources. Google’s new Knol initiative, named for its underlying “knowl-

edge unit” mechanisms, will serve as an encyclopedic web of pages under the

control of the individual authors that create them.

Individual topics will have multiple Knols—Google expects orderly, detailed

articles to rise above their lesser peers in the search rankings. But Google’s not

just appealing to frustrated Wikipedia users’ sense of ownership; it’s promising

to fatten their wallets, too. Knol creators will get the chance to enable Google-

based advertising on the pages they create, as long as they agree to share part

of the accompanying revenue with Google itself.

Canada’s Copyright Clampdown

Consumers avoid new tax, but

other digital-music measures loom

quick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL

10 MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC | MAR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

Thomas L. McDonald has been covering games for 17 years.

He is Editor-at-Large of Games Magazine.

N

ow that we’ve closed the book on 2007, we

can finally say what some of us have been

thinking for a while now: Best. Year. Ever.

Across all gaming platforms, we have seen not

only a marked increase in sales but an undeniable

renaissance in content. There have been single

years with more groundbreaking, successful, or

“classic” individual titles, but we’ve never really

seen a year when so many of the artists who create

our entertainment were firing on all cylinders. These

were not radical new designs or bold new advanc-

es, but an absolute refinement of the art of game

design. Witness: BioShock, Portal, Call of Duty 4,

Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2, Gears of War

(PC), Quake Wars, Crysis, World in Conflict, Supreme

Commander, Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Halo 3,

and more.

That’s right, I’m including those last three non-

PC titles, and for a good reason. They were at the

pinnacle of gaming for the year, and they were

made by companies with deep PC roots: BioWare,

Ubi Montreal, and Bungie.

That’s what makes 2007 a bittersweet year

for computer gamers. PC stalwarts like BioWare,

Infinity Ward, Irrational, Epic, Big Huge Games, and

others turned their sights toward the console for the

mere promise of riches, fame, and glory—and were

amply rewarded for their treachery.

Paradoxically, this is a good thing for PC gam-

ers. We will benefit because while the non-MMO

PC market remains vastly smaller than the console

market, it’s still profitable, and growing. PC game

sales are keeping pace with the rest of the indus-

try, which grew more than 25 percent in 2007.

(Granted, it’s humbling to see the best and boldest,

hardware-crunching PC titles of the year, Crysis and

UT3, post sales of, 87,000 and 34,000, respectively,

in their opening weeks, while COD4 for the Xbox

360 blows through 1.5 million copies in November

alone. On the other hand, UbiSoft still sells more

games for the PC than for the Wii or PSP.)

PC gamers will feel a kind of trickle-down

effect from these shifts, as console games cre-

ated by developers who have traditionally worked

on the PC migrate back to that platform with

enhanced content, as Gears of War already has.

Let the console sales foot the bill for increasingly

expensive game development. PC gamers will still

reap the rewards in the end.

A Good Year

or the Best

Year?

GAME THEORY

THOMAS

MCDONALD

A Grassy Knol

The Google cash cow has found a new pasture to feed on: Wikipedia

&

DIS

Travel Companion

DIIIS