MaximumPC 2008 09

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

2006 2007 2008 2009

Apple embraces x86

(January 2006)

EIC Will Smith tries

living with Linux

(February 2005)

2005

Intel

releases

Core 2

processor

(September

2006)

Debut of the Maximum PC No

BS Podcast and the Rant of

the Week (January 2007)

Maximum PC

celebrates its 10th

anniversary

(September 2008)

Gordon Mah Ung

acknowledges

Apple supremacy

(August 2008)

Vista launches to

lackluster reviews

(January 2007)

Intel

releases

Core 2

processor

10 Things

Maximum

PC Is Older

Than

BEHIND THE BENCHMARKS

My days with Maximum PC go all the way back to the beginning with “Big Daddy” Dosland and the

legendary “Handy Andy” Sanchez, who set the bar for editorial excellence. In those days, hazing

new staffers was the norm, and my fi rst experience was upgrading the POS desktop business-

class PC that our company provided us.

Would I get access to those oh-so-sweet Voodoo2 cards in SLI? Hell no! As the low man on

the totem pole, I got a Voodoo Rush. Try to get a Rush to work with a machine that has integrated

graphics that you can’t disable in Windows 95!

In those days, just as today, the Maximum PC Lab was no clean room where some discon-

nected technician tested hardware and handed you a report. Everything was hands, eyes, and

ears on. Certainly one of the most embarrassing incidents was when we ran airfl ow tests using

a fog machine. The good news is that the test worked well, and we were able to visually record

the stagnant areas in a case. The bad news is that smoke alarms can’t tell the difference between

smoke particles and fog particles. You can imagine the chewing out we got from the facilities

manager after the entire building was evacuated and a fi re truck rolled up.

Speaker testing is always a challenge—especially when the Lab was located directly next

to an offi ce full of lawyers and accountants. If you think editors are cranky, imagine a pissed-off

lawyer/CPA hybrid after you’ve fi red up Megadeth on eight Klipsch subs in parallel!

In another memorable speaker incident, former editor Josh Norem literally blew up a 5.1

speaker set doing frequency sweeps. Certain it was a fl uke, we had a second set delivered and

this time videotaped the test. Sure enough, we were able to capture the tweeter exploding with a

puff of smoke.

Breaking hardware has always been a specialty of the Maxi-

mum PC staff. We could fi ll a freight car with all the carnage. Of

course, in the old days you actually had to work at doing damage.

Today, with liquid cooling, hardware gets waterboarded on a

regular basis.

Cue Blooper Reel and Laugh Track

Gordon Mah Ung, most

senior editor and staff

curmudgeon

1 White LEDs

2 Wi-Fi

3 The Segway

4 Bad Star Wars movies

5 Reality television

6 64-bit desktop

operating systems

7 Napster

8 Department of

Homeland Security

9 The Nahasapeemap-

etilon Octuplets

1 0 Splenda

Apple Cinema
Display offers
30 inches of
LCD glory
(February
2005)
Apple embraces x86

Apple Cinema
Display offers
30 inches of
LCD glory
(February
2005)

C a n P C N o t e b o o kAn y

B e a t t h eM a c B o o k?

O N LY I N NVIDIA'SNEXT-GEN GPU^ UNVEILED!M A X I M U M P C :^

b a t t l e r o y a l e. C a n A p p l e ' s M a c B o o k j u g g e r n a u t b e s t o p p e d ?R a t e d O nI t ' s P C v s. M a c i n o u r 8 - n o t e b o o k

We review Hitachi’s

7K100—the first

ever terabyte drive

(July 2007)

We make Maximum

PC 30 percent more

awesome!

(June 2008)