W
e’ve seen a lot of eager hardware come through the Maximum PC Lab this
past year. Most components come in fresh-faced and smiling, but leave
abused, demoralized, and gasping for air. Our benchmarks and testing
procedures are rigorous—maybe even cruel—but at the end of the day, if a component
can survive our scrutiny, we’re confident that it will survive yours, too.
But our Gear of the Year awards are another story entirely. To win GOTY honors,
a product that has already risen to the top must compete shoulder-to-shoulder with
equally high-performance counterparts. And before we grant GOTY recognition, we
take into account not only each component’s initial performance at the time when it
was first tested, but also its continued performance throughout the year as it’s been
periodically challenged by upstarts.
There are no second or third place “winners” in our list, so don’t expect an “I’m OK,
you’re OK” attitude toward hardware that at one time passed muster in the Lab. Only
one product in each of our 20 categories receives actual Gear of the Year honors.
We now present the very best hardware of 2003, the hardware no PC power user
could possibly live without. Buy it, steal it, try your hand at barter. This gear is simply
too special to live without.It’s the crème de la crème of geek gear.
The shiznit of our Lab’s biznit.
Maximum PC is proud to present the best,
most essential PC hardware of 2003!
MAXIMUMPC DECEMBER 2003
Like San Francisco’s Transamerica pyramid,
the majestic 9800 TX dominates the
landscape on which it stands.