http://www.maximumpc.com | HOLIDAYHOLIDAYHOLIDAY 08 08 | MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC | 111
LETTERS POLICY Please send your questions and comments to comments@maxi-
mumpc.com. Include your full name, city of residence, and phone number with your
correspondence. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the amount of
mail we receive, we are unable to respond personally to all queries.SSDs that most people who
haven’t researched them are
unaware of. You say that an
“advantage to SSDs is their rel-
atively long life span,” without
addressing their write-cycle
limits. SSDs are far more phys-
ically robust (making them
ideal for notebooks) but can
endure considerably fewer
rewrites. For the vast major-
ity of users, approximately
10,000 rewrites (for MLC
drives) or 100,000 to 1 mil-
lion rewrites (for SLC drives)
is more than sufficient, but
for systems with a lot of eras-
ing/rewriting activity, SSDs
could prove less reliable than
hard drives. I’m sure this will
improve by orders of magni-
tude over time, but for now,
it’s still a likely concern for
some users.
—Erik Harris
Senior Editor Gordon Mah
Ung Responds: Certainly
there are heavy-access situa-
tions that could indeed betray
an SSD’s limitations over
many years of use, but consid-
ering that Intel’s MLC-based
SSD can withstand writing
100GB of data per day for
five years straight—and SLC
versions can write 100 times
that—the hardware is likely to
be antiquated before the SSDs
reach the end of their opera-
tional life. Still, your point is
valid: How many companies
continue to run Pentium Pro
servers because they’re too
afraid to move applications off
of them?
Spore Judgment
I was surprised to open the
December issue today and
find Spore receiving a 9 out
of 10 verdict, especially
given the game’s use of
SecuROM DRM. It would
be nice if future software
reviews mentioned the
presence of any DRM.
—Jeff PierfeliceEditor in Chief Will Smith
Responds: I think it’s safe to say
that PC games that omit some
form of DRM are the exception
rather than the rule. Whether it
was CD checks that didn’t work
with high-end drives, system
scanners that disabled the game
if you were using “pirate” apps
like Daemon Tools, or secretcode words you had to get from
the manual, DRM on PC games
isn’t a new development—we
just used to call it copy protec-
tion. While I appreciate the
sentiment behind the protests
against the new version of
SecuROM DRM, I actually find
SecuROM pretty mild in com-
parison to other encumbrances
we’ve endured in the past. Even
though the new SecuROM
limits the number of PCs you
can install the app on before
you have to call an 800 number,
you don’t need to actually have
the Spore disc in the drive to
play the game. That’s a trade I’ll
grudgingly make.
As for our game reviews,
our stated policy is that we
review games, not distribu-
tion methods. With most
games shipping on multiple
platforms (disc, Steam,
Direct2Drive, EA Downloader,
etc.), we simply can’t test or
devote space to the flaws of all
of them. However, if someone
does invent a new DRM
scheme that we find insidious,you can rest assured we’ll
raise hell about it.He’s Calling Us Out!
You gave the Digital Storm
Benchmark Crusher
(November 2008) a 9 verdict
only because it was priced
at $9,255? Oh! Come on!
Don’t you think that was
kind of weak—especially
since you built the 2008
Dream Machine for a whop-
ping $17,285? Let’s be fair
and do the right thing.
Mano a mano! Pit the two
rigs against each other
and see which one comes
up with the better bench-
marks. Don’t go whiny baby
on me, either. The Dream
Machine should whup
the butt of this newcomer
Digital Storm machine.
Right? Or not?
Or are you scaredy cats?
Let the readers see....
—Norbert MeyerSenior Editor Gordon Mah
Ung Responds: Actually, the
Digital Storm failed to receive
a 10 verdict because it was
“monstrously heavy, noisy,
and expensive” (italics added).
And the system provided only
a marginal performance gain
over the CyberPower Gamer
Ultimate PC, which was, oh,
$4,000 cheaper.
As far as Dream Machine
2008 versus the Digital Storm
(or other top-end machines),
it depends on the bench-
mark. With its eight 4GHz
cores, the Dream Machine
2008 will crush almost any-
thing in applications that are
threaded for eight cores. DM
does pay a penalty in latency
for its FB-DIMMs though. We
don’t want to get whiny, but
the last time we compared
our Dream Machine to other
rigs, people were yowling at
us for being unfair.LETTERS POLICY Please send your questions and comments to comments@maxi-
mumpc.com. Include your full name, city of residence, and phone number with your
correspondence. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the amount of
mail we receive, we are unable to respond personally to all queries.“MUCH TO MY SURPRISE, I
FOUND THAT I HAD $550
WAITING FOR ME IN COLORADO.”
In our biggest antivirus roundup
ever, we pit the leading AV suites
against each other—and against
their freebie counterparts. The
results will surprise you.Antivirus
ExtravaganzaAndroid Phone
Reviewed
We get our hands on
T-Mobile’s G1—the fi rst
phone running Google’s long-
awaited Android mobile OS.
You’ll want to read what we
have to say about it.NEXT MONTHUpgrades for
Any Budget
Whether you’re pinching pennies
or rolling in dough, your PC
deserves a performance upgrade.
We’ll show you the best parts at
both ends of the price spectrum.COMING IN
MAXIMUMPC’s
JANJANJANJANJAN
BRING BACK
THE MCRIB!
ISSUE