POWER SUPPLY TOMFOOLERY?
In the May 2004 issue you ran
an article on three new Lean
Machines. I want to know where
the hell you found a 350W PSU
for only $10? Did you guys fudge
some numbers, thinking that we
wouldn’t notice this discrepancy?
I have searched NewEgg,
TheNerds, and CompUSA to no
avail! Am I completely insane?
—KRISTIAN HERMANSENLEAN MACHINE EDITOR JOSH
NOREM RESPONDS: Kristian, do
you really think we’d try to pull
the soft, furry wool of a lamb over
your head? Of course there are
$10 350W PSUs available! With
a quick search on Pricewatch(www.pricewatch.com) we found
several. Now, don’t take this as
an endorsement of $10 power sup-
plies, as the power supply is one of
the most important components in
your PC. We would have preferred
to not use a $10 power supply, but
our $500 budget forced us to make
compromises, and the power sup-
ply got short shrift in favor of more
powerful internal components.RADEON REBUTTAL
In the Lean Machine story in
your May issue of Maximum PC
you claimed to have purchased
a Radeon 9800 128MB for $140.
Where on this planet did you
get that card for that price?!
If you go to Pricewatch, the
vendors tend to be selling that
videocard for around $180. On
the other hand, the 9800SEmodel is sold for around $130.
Did you really purchase a
9800SE, or just price a 9800
that you had in the shop as
being valued at $140?
—JAMIE HELMANEDITOR JOSH NOREM RESPONDS:
Sure enough, Jamie, we seem to
have published a price that’s about$20 lower than what is on the mar-
ket as of this writing. As an aside,
whenever we write articles that
involve prices found “on the street,”
we try to be as accurate as possible.
Typically we look at a variety of
online vendors’ sites and figure out
the “average” price for an item. On
this occasion, however, we were a
bit too optimistic, apparently.REGARDING YOUR
LEAN MACHINES...
6 MAXIMUMPC JUNE 2004
XP RELOADED = WINDOWS ME?
So now Microsoft is going to
provide an interim release for
Windows? Apart from the various
security and bug fixes that
should be there, we’ll probably
see new iterations of core MS
technologies, right? So, DirectX
10, Media Player 10, maybe even
the huge taskbar along the right-
hand side of the screen that the
folks in Redmond are so hot for.
But still, this all seems familiar to
me. Haven’t we seen this before?
Sure we did, and Windows ME
was certainly one of the crappiest
pieces of software ever distributed
on an optical disc. Maybe this
time it will be different, but I
think Microsoft should learn
from its previous mistakes and
leave interim releases for the
Service Pack team. Besides, if
Longhorn really is as good as
they claim, there shouldn’t be
anything to fear from us Linux
people anyway, right?
—JONATHON “THE BUBBLE”
ANDERSONVB HATER: TEACH C++!
Hey, I respect what you guys
publish. But, teaching people
to program with Visual Basic
[“How to Learn Visual Basic
Programming,” May 2004]?
Sure, VB apps aren’t as bloated
as Java apps, but it’s close! How
about doing your readers a
favor and teaching them a real
language like C or C++?
—BRIAN CUMMINGSHOW-TO EDITOR WILL SMITH
RESPONDS: As we planned last
month’s VB programming article,
we consulted several program-
ming experts about the “right”
programming language to use for
our introductory How-To series.
We eventually settled on Visual
Basic .NET for several reasons:
It’s an object-oriented language,
like C++ and Java, and we felt it
was vital to introduce our readers
to the concepts of object-oriented
programming early. We also like
the fact that there is a large com-
munity of Visual Basic program-mers, which means there are
loads of resources on the web,
and most everyone knows some-
one who is at least a shade-tree
Visual Basic programmer. Finally,
the actual syntax of VB.NET is
much easier for beginners to
understand than C, C++, or Java,
and thus, easier for us to explain
without getting buried in the minu-
tiae of syntax.SHOULDN’T THERE BE
GROUND RULES FOR LAPTOP
ROUNDUPS?
As an avid reader of your
magazine, I patiently waited
for the laptop roundup in your
April issue. After reading the
article I called Alienware and
attempted to order the featured
configuration. Unfortunately,
Alienware told me it would
not provide the reviewed
configuration for several
weeks. While the reviewed
configurations of other laptops
in your article are available,do you think it is fair, wise, or
perhaps even honest to allow
manufacturers to have products
reviewed on a competitive
basis when those products are
not available to the public by
the published date of your
magazine? I understand you
wish to give each company
the chance to show off its best,
but some rules to competition
must apply.SENIOR EDITOR GORDON MAH
UNG RESPONDS: While it would
be wonderful for every product to
be available when the magazine
hits the stands, this is not always
the case. Many times, vendors are
at the mercy of their suppliers,
especially when you’re talking
about bleeding-edge components.
In this circumstance, Alienware
was late by about two weeks, but
has since begun selling the note-
book. We learned something else
when questioning a spokesperson
from Alienware: “The funny thing is
that some other companies launchIn/Out You write, we respond
model is sold for around $130. $20 lower than what is on the mar-