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44 | MAXIMUMPC | FEB 09 | http://www.maximumpc.com
(^) THE
MAXIMUM PC
10 0
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THE PIRATE BAY GROWS
TO 10 MILLION USERS
Much to the dismay of the RIAA
and MPAA, the Pirate Bay’s explo-
sive growth yields 10 million peers
managing one million torrents.
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THERMALTAKE
DUO ORB Our favorite
CPU air cooler eschews the high-
rise trend and still outperforms the
competition.
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APPLE BUNDLES
A LOAD OF CRAPWARE
WITH ITUNES Apple enters the
bundled crapware racket by
foisting first Safari and then
MobileMe on unsuspecting
Windows owners using Apple’s
software update utility, which is
included with iTunes.
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CENTRINO 2 CRUISES
ONTO LAPTOPS
Intel’s long-awaited Centrino 2
platform lands on laptops, bring-
ing with it several improvements
in both performance and power
management.
69
WINDOWS XP SP3
ARRIVES AFTER
ROCKY START XP owners are able
to download the OS’s third Service
Pack, but not before a compatibility
issue forces Microsoft to temporar-
ily pull SP3 from the web.
68
PC GAMING ALLIANCE:
WHOOP-DE-DO
The death of PC gaming continues
to be exaggerated, but should the
threat become imminent, the PC
Gaming Alliance will be there to do
nothing about it.
67
CREATIVE GETS
CRANKY WITH
X-FI/AUDIGY DRIVER
MODDER DANIEL_K Daniel
Kawakami’s modifi ed X-Fi and
Audigy drivers, which fi x several
issues in Vista, are heralded by
all except Creative, which pub-
licly chastises the programmer in
a letter on the company’s forum.
66
CANON LAUNCHES EOS
5D MARK II DSLR Even
without the ability to shoot HD
video, Canon’s new DSLR kicks
all kinds of ass, starting with a
full-frame 21.1-megapixel 14-bit
CMOS sensor.
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WESTERN DIGITAL
VELOCIRAPTOR
With no 10,000rpm challengers
in sight, Western Digital pum-
mels its own flagship Raptor line
by launching the Velociraptor,
a speed successor wrapped in a
black heatsink.
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COOLIT FREEZONE
ELITE The Freezone
Elite thermoelectric CPU cooler
strikes a mostly elegant balance
between cooling prowess and
size.
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INTEL QUAD-CORE
PROCESSORS DROP
BELOW $200
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CREATIVE CREATES
WORKING X-FI
DRIVERS FOR VISTA USERS
Late to the party, sure, but
aft er waiting nearly two years,
Creative throws Vista owners a
bone with X-Fi drivers re-estab-
lishing Dolby Digital and DTS
decoding.
61
SUPREME COURT
UPHOLDS FIRST
FELONY SPAM CONVICTION
Not surprisingly, free speech
doesn’t include using fake email
addresses to sell scam products.
What is surprising is the close
4-3 vote denying spammer
Jeremy Jaynes’s appeal.
60
SEVERED UNDERSEA
CABLES GIVE RISE TO
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
The culprit in a rash of ruptured
telecommunications cables in
the Arabian Sea? Abandoned
anchors dragged by inclement
weather.
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INTEL X25-M SSD
This notebook-size 80GB
drive essentially gives you RAID 0
performance in a single drive.
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MICROSOFT MASKS
VISTA AS A NEW OS
IN MOJAVE EXPERIMENT
Apparently, Vista’s problem is
one of perception, or so Micro-
soft tries to prove by disguising
it as a new OS called Mojave and
then demoing it to 140 people
with no prior Vista experience.
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PENRYN: HONEY, I
SHRANK THE CPU
Intel’s biggest Core i7 competi-
tor doesn’t come from AMD—it
comes from Intel’s own older,
wildly successful 45nm-based
Penryn family of CPUs.
56
UBUNTU 8.04 HARDY
HERON ARRIVES
While both Apple and Microsoft
struggle with their operating
systems, the open-source wunder-
kinds at Ubuntu release the best
version of Linux yet.
55
GROWING TREND IN
GREEN COMPUTING
Energy efficiency moves to the
forefront of the IT industry, ig-
niting a mass movement among
manufactures of everything
from green hard drives to green
wireless routers.
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ADOBE CS4 ARRIVES
WITH GPU SUPPORT
In the “Why the frak didn’t
someone do this earlier?”
department, Adobe’s Photoshop
CS4 lets you use the GPU to
enable smooth-as-butter zooms
and rotates in photo editing.
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LARGE HADRON
COLLIDER GOES LIVE
AND WORLD SURVIVES Having
already dodged a bullet in the
Y2K scare, the human race once
again cheats death when physi-
cists switch on the LHC without
destroying the universe.
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OPENING CEREMONIES
KICK OFF WITH GIANT
BSOD AT BEIJING OLYMPICS
As Li Ning, one of China’s sport-
ing greats, dangles in midair
preparing to light the cauldron,
behind him onlookers catch a
glimpse of an Olympic-size blue
screen of death.
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EU SLAPS MICROSOFT
WITH RECORD $1.3
BILLION FINE European Union
regulators call Microsoft out
on its penchant for straddling
the line between healthy com-
petition and unfair business
practices with the largest fine
ever imposed on an individual
company.
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