MaximumPC 2004 03

Reviews

MARCH 2004 MAXIMUMPC 

Royal MD100 Media Destroyer

If you toss old CDs and floppy discs into the garbage can, you may as well just post
all the data they contain—account numbers, love letters, the shocking pictures that
went with the love letters—on the web. Not even attacking the CD surface with a
pair of scissors is an absolute guarantee, as we discovered this month when testing
Arrowkey’s data recovery software (page 75). The person with something to hide needs
Royal’s MD100 Media Destroyer ($100, http://www.royal.com ). So far, we’ve watched about
85 CDs vanish into its slender, finger-proof maw, and
the device shows no sign of blade fatigue. Even the
metal inserts in the scores of floppy discs we fed the
MD100 came out hopelessly mangled.
Feel free to get creative—the Media Destroyer
will also happily shred credit cards, folded paper,
grocery club cards, and potato chip bags. Yes,
it’s a little loud, but we’re pretty sure that the
approximately 1x.125-inch strips left behind after
mastication either meet or exceed Department of
Defense standards on data destruction, so we’re OK
with a bit of noise.

Best of the Best As of March, 2004

After several months of churn, our list of most favored hardware settles down at last.
The only changes this month are the games we’re playing.

New Editor in Chief George Jones lays down an edict when

he reads the February issue: “You know what’s funny about

you guys? Not one damn thing. Be more funny by the end of

the week or you’re fi red!”

Be More Funny!

E D I TO R ’ S E D I C T

During a recent Lab cleanup, we unearthed a pair of pristine and nearly

unused IBM 75GXP hard drives. While we’ve certainly had our share of failed

“Deathstar” drives (five and counting), not every single one

of these suckers can go bad. Or could they? To find out,

we’ve wired up these two drives in a Lab machine that

will operate 24/7 downloading torrents of data from

the Internet. We’ll run the drives until 2005 and

report back on whether they survive or

begin emitting the infamous “click, click,

scratch, scratch of death.”

Lab Experiments: IBM’s 75GXP Hard Drive

Our current gaming favorites : Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Dungeon Siege:

Legends of Aranna, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Planetside

High-end videocard:

ATI Radeon 9800 XT

Budget videocard:

BFG Asylum GeForce FX 5700

Ultra

Do-everything videocard:

All-in-Wonder Radeon

9800 Pro

Soundcard:

Sound Blaster Audigy 2

ZS Platinum

Serial ATA hard drive:

Western Digital 740GD/

IBM 7K250

Parallel ATA hard drive:

Western Digital WD2500JB

CD-RW drive:

Plextor PlexWriter

Premium

DVD burner:

Plextor PX-708A

LCD monitor:

Sharp LL-1820

High-end CRT monitor:

Sony F520

Budget CRT monitor:

Cornerstone P1750

P4 motherboard:

Chaintech 9CJS Zenith

Athlon XP motherboard:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe Rev 2

Portable MP3 player:

Apple iPod 40GB

Photo printer:

Canon i900

Pocket PC PDA:

HP iPaq 5450

Palm OS PDA:

Palm Tungsten C

5.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-680

4.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-560

2.1 speakers:

Logitech Z-2200

As of March, 2004

“Deathstar” drives (five and counting), not every single one

of these suckers can go bad. Or could they? To find out,

we’ve wired up these two drives in a Lab machine that

will operate 24/7 downloading torrents of data from

the Internet. We’ll run the drives until 2005 and

In a desperate bid to save their jobs, Logan and Gordon hit the

Lab. While testing the side effects of knock-knock jokes, they

stumble upon the Decker-Ung Unifying Theory of Humor, which

lets them mathematically determine the funniest things in the

universe...

Damn that Logan. I never

should’ve trusted his numbers.

Something about this just

doesn’t feel right.