94 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC| JUN 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com
Book Smarts
I just finished reading
“Bookin’ to the Future” in the
May 2008 issue (Quick Start),
and I can’t believe you didn’t
mention Baen publishing. It has more than 40 authors
with free books online. Eric
Flint alone has more than
25 books available for free
download. All the books are
offered in multiple formats,
including RTF, and all are
DRM-free.
All its books, free and for
sale alike, are DRM-free.
It offers many of its books
as advanced reader cop-
ies. I love reading the lat-
est Weber, Ringo, or Flint
before the book is even
available in hard copy.
It offers a WebScriptions
plan in which subscribers
receive their books in seri-
alized form.Of all the book publish-
ing companies “embracing
the Internet as a necessary
component of doing business
in the digital age,” I think that
Baen is in the forefront.
—Ron CritchfieldDeputy Editor Katherine
Stevenson Responds:
Thanks for your letter, Ron. We
weren’t familiar with Baen,
but from what you’ve said, it
sounds like the company is
indeed a model of how tra-
ditional print publishers can
leverage the Internet to build
a larger customer base. Fans
of science fiction and fantasy
lit should check out Baen’swebsite (www.baen.com) for
more details.Rethinking the 56k
Connection
I saw this snippet about
the Internet outage in the
Middle East (Quick Start,
April 2008) and how it
affected people in that
region getting their YouTube.
Not to nitpick, but while
our military networks were
untouched, that cable being
damaged greatly impacted
our ability to email home,
as our network’s bandwidthdropped tremendously. We
were almost completely cut
off from online banking and
many of the other things
that most people take for
granted—but that we need
access to so we can function
over here. I never thought
I’d say it, but sometimes
being over here makes me
miss 56k.
—SPC Louie Clark
US ArmyEditor in Chief Will Smith
Responds: We shouldn’t
have made light of the
outage, Louie; losing Internetaccess is no laughing matter,
especially when you’re so far
away from home. I know that
I get a little stir-crazy when
my cable connection goes
down for even a few hours. I
can’t imagine how an outage
on the scale experienced in
the Middle East affected you
and others in the region.Downgrading to XP
Your response to the
“Gateway to XP” question
in the April issue was some-
what incorrect. The assump-
tion that Vista shouldn’tNo, we don’t want pictures of you
personally. Rather,
You should be like a
ninja, slyly and
stealthily capturing
images of tech life,
be it an outrageous
PC, an unbelievably silly
gadget, a scene of horrific
hardware destruction, or an animal
posed with any or all of the above.
Each month we’ll choose our favor-
ite and feature it right here.PHOTO OF THE MONTHYour Photo
Here?
We tackle tough reader questions on...
Vista Woes
The No BS Podcast
COMMENTS^
YOU WRITE, WE RESPOND Free Online Books
To enter, send your tech-related, high-res digital photo to [email protected].No, we don’t want pictures of youYou should be like astealthily capturingPC, an unbelievably silly
gadget, a scene of horrific
hardware destruction, or an animal
posed with any or all of the above.
Each month we’ll choose our favor-
ite and feature it right here.PHOTO OF THE MONTHYour Photo
To enter, send your tech-related, high-res digital photo to [email protected].