MaximumPC 2008 09

10 Things We Got Right

It’s nice to look back and see that we sometimes

know what we’re talking about

1999

2001

2000 2002

Celeron 300a/

P2 SL2W8 makes

overclocking

easy (April 1999)

Windows XP receives

10/Kick Ass verdict

(October 2001)

3D cards get

stand-alone

(July 1999)

Celeron 300a/

P2 SL2W8 makes

overclocking

easy

A Brief History of Time

MEMORABLE MILESTONES IN MAXIMUM PC’S COVERAGE

56 | MAXIMUMPC | SEP 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com

ATHLON 64 You can call it

jumping on the bandwagon,

but we call it knowing a winner

when we see one. We lauded

the Athlon 64 with award aft er

award and high praise for good

reason: This chip kicked ass and

took names for years.

CORE 2 The AMD fanboys

tried to blame it on bias, but we

knew—and history has proved

us out—that the Core 2 marked

the return of Intel.

DUAL-CORE PROCESSING

It’s hard to believe now, but

there was resistance to the dual-

core movement from folks who

thought it was silly, given that

applications and games weren’t

multithreaded. Ahem, sounds

a little like the people who

promote dual cores over quad

cores now, doesn’t it?

DIRECTX 9 DirectX has

changed the face of PC gaming,

and DirectX 9 is the most suc-

cessful version Microsoft has

ever released. With powerful

support for programmable

hardware, DirectX 9 delivered

killer graphics at a reasonable

frame rate, using hardware that

was readily available at launch.

WINDOWS XP When it was

released back in 2001, we

bestowed XP with our highest

honor—a perfect 10 verdict.

Our appreciation of the OS has

only grown now that we’re

faced with its fl awed follow-up.

WATER COOLING Back in

the day, people said cooling

hot hardware with liquids was

crazy—now it’s a craze.

RIPPING CDS AND DVDS

People scoff ed at the time it

initially took to rip music and

movies, but we didn’t let that

stop us. We saw back then how

important it was to take control

of our media, whether it’s to

stream our library around the

home (and across the Internet)

or just to load our favorite

movies and music onto a

pocket-size media player.

DRM It was obvious to us that

music shackled with copy

protection would alienate

consumers. Finally, that’s

become obvious to the record

companies. Keep fi ghting the

good fi ght!

HARDWARE PHYSICS Ageia

talked a big game about its

PhysX PPU (physics processing

unit), but we couldn’t get behind

a card that cost $300, ate up a

PCI slot, and had only novelty

games supporting it. Nor could

anyone else, apparently.

FIREFOX In our January 2004

Soft y Awards, we called Fire-

bird (later to become Firefox)

“nothing short of revelatory,”

and boy has that held true.

Indeed, at its release, Firefox

3 had the most downloads

of any soft ware in a 24-hour

period (8 million!).

BEHIND THE BENCHMARKS

Long before I had my job at Gizmodo, I

was a Maximum PC intern who couldn’t

write a review or run a benchmark. I

learned those things from Will Smith,

but I also learned how important the

right voice is when writing about tech.

Before there were snarky blogs, there

was Maximum PC. The point, though,

wasn’t to be an ass. I think. The point

was to turn the trade mags on their

heads and cut through the BS and

jargon, to inform without being boring.

You know, actually write to people as if

they were your friends. That irreverent

tone complements how technophiles

feel about tech: Because it’s fun think-

ing about how to squeeze a few more

frames out of your hardware, reading

and writing about such things should be

fun as well. I also learned how to order

lunch, lift heavy boxes, and pack and

ship a PC back to a manufacturer—and

make it look like it broke during transit.

Humble Beginnings

Brian Lam, former intern

and current

editor in chief

of Gizmodo

Processors

reach 1GHz!

(May 2000)

MP3s change the

way we experience

music and computing

(February 2000)

boot becomes

Maximum PC

(September 1998)

1998 2001