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Release Notes Contents REGULARS New Year, New Projects 8 In/Out T You write, we respond 14 4 Quick Start PC previews, news, and factoids 22 2 Head2Head A celebrityendorsed mobo. p.15 This month: PDAs 26 WatchDog Maximum PC takes a bite out of bad gear 68 Ask the Doctor Symptom, diagnosis, cure 71 How To... This month: Make a BartPE recovery disc Which PDA belongs in your pocket? p.
Contents MAXIMUMPC EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF George Jones MANAGING EDITOR Katherine Stevenson SENIOR EDITOR Gordon Mah Ung TECHNICAL EDITOR Will Smith FEATURES EDITOR Logan Decker ASSOCIATE EDITOR Josh Norem ART ART DIRECTOR Natalie Jeday ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Boni Uzilevsky CONTRIBUTING DESIGNER Casey Mallough PHOTO EDITOR Mark Madeo ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHER Samantha Berg COVER ART Oliver Wolfson BUSINESS PUBLISHER Chris Coelho 415-656-8770, ccoelho@futurenetworkusa.
In/Out You write, we respond YES, WE’RE SURE SLI = FOUR DISPLAYS? In your December 2004 issue you have a review of a Pioneer DVRA08 double-layer dual-format DVD burner. Are you sure you aren’t reviewing the DVR-A09? I thought the A08 came out in July or August.
In/Out COMING NEXT MONTH IN THE HAVE-YOUR-PETSPAYED-OR-NEUTERED FEBRUARY ISSUE OF MAXIMUMPC THE PERFECT OS FOR THE PERFECT PC You drew up the blueprints. You bought the best components. You painstakingly put each piece together. But that’s only half the job. Next month, we’ll explain the dos and don’ts of perpetually maintaining your PC in perfect working condition! TAKE THE LINUX PLUNGE Open source meets reality TV when Tech Editor Will Smith dumps Windows and adopts Linux for six months.
QuickStart The beginning of the magazine, where articles are small MISSING! Two Next-Gen Videocard Technologies Where are all the high-end PCI Express videocards? And how about Alienware’s homegrown dual-card technology? Maximum PC investigates Case #1: Where are the PCI Express versions of the ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition and GeForce 6800 Ultra? It’s a fact that high-end PCI Express videocards are hard to find, especially through retail channels.
The first celebrity-endorsed mobo and videocard leaves us hot—and cold A bit recently unveiled the first celebrity-endorsed line of gaming hardware when it pulled the wraps off its “Fatal1ty” AA8XE motherboard and X700XT videocard. Both are endorsed by Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, who is one of the most successful players—competitively and in terms of media exposure—on the fledgling pro gaming circuit.
Quick Start Sleepless in Seattle FUN-SIZE NEWS Speakeasy is the first ISP to bring WiMax to the masses SPAMMER GETS THE SLAMMER W ireless Internet is all the rage these days, but WiMax is coming to a ultimately, Wi-Fi remains dependent on cords town near you. If you and cables. These inhumane circumstances live in Seattle, that is. recently changed for the residents of downtown Seattle. Speakeasy, a national ISP located in—where else?— Seattle, is preparing the first national launch of WiMax.
Quick Start + GAME THEORY BY THOMAS L. McDONALD All This and Headcrabs Too F or a little while there, it seemed like Vivendi Universal would take Valve Software’s HalfLife 2 ball and spike it at the 10 yard line out of pure pique. The reasons are clear: Steam, Valve’s online service, has pulled off the first effective digital-only delivery of a game.
Quick Start TechnoFile Quick takes on technology trends Mitsubishi SCOPO M itsubishi’s take on the wearable display is the most intuitive we’ve seen to date. The Scopo’s modern-looking headset (seen here) includes a tiny, eye-level LCD, which displays a video feed from an attached cellphone, laptop, or PDA. Because of the lens’ close proximity to your eye, the resulting visual image fills your field of vision. Content is streamed to the SCOPO’s display from this belt-mounted unit.
Head2Head A showdown among natural competitors THIS MONTH: PDAs I t’s back into the ring for Palm and Pocket PC with the introduction of new flagship handhelds for both platforms. Palm OS PDAs used to be the no-nonsense handhelds for nononsense folks who wanted a smart and efficient organizer, but the Tungsten T5 has gone glam with a fast processor and an orgy of nonvolatile flash memory.
Dell Axim X50v Hardware: Intel’s 624MHz PXA270 XScale is the fastest proc on the block. The X50v makes 62MB of memory available to the user, and another nonvolatile 91MB is available for file storage. We’re delighted to see the return of a CompactFlash slot alongside the SD card slot. But the big story is the X50v’s bold and super-bright hi-res 480x640 screen. This is backed up by Intel’s 2700G graphics accelerator, which has its own 16MB of VRAM.
WatchDog Say hello to Gypsy, WatchDog of the Month Maximum PC takes a bite out of bad gear THISMONTH: The WatchDog goes after... >Essential Computers >SilentMaxx >nVidia >Toshiba Non-Essential Computers DEAR DOG: Essential Computers, a fine webbased retailer, doesn’t seem to be in business anymore. While its web site, www.essencompu. com, can be accessed, you can’t do anything on it. It’s like the lights are on but nobody’s home.
“ AM I, ALONG WITH MANY OTHERS, STUCK WITH JUST A GREAT GAMING CARD? card? If anyone can get to the bottom of this, it must be you. Thank you in advance. ” —JONATHAN HAYTON THE DOG RESPONDS: The Dog contacted an nVidia spokesman who cleared up the confusion over this issue. He said the 6800 does indeed include the advanced video support that’s touted on the web site, but consumers must download a newer set of drivers that was made available at the end of November.
Reading INTO THE FUTURE U ltimately, we did it for science. The cackling, crusty, Lab technician beckoned us into his workspace—an unused area of the Maximum PC Lab that had been covered by boxes and discarded LCDs for “Now let’s see if you can make years. Where did this guy come from? heads or tails of this, my friends.” The And how long had he been here? Lab technician flipped over the first Not even Senior Editor and Maxi- card.
Our experts divine the year’s 19 most promising technologies Tarot Illustrations by Phil Bliss JANUARY 2005 MAXIMUMPC 31
tECH pREVIEW Dual-Core Processors AMD and Intel race to give you two CPUs for the price of one This year, AMD and Intel will commence one of the biggest and most interesting architectural changes in PC history: Manufacturing the first processors that integrate two CPU cores into a single unit. This development will essentially give users twice the processing power, but without the extra price of buying two physical processors, two heatsinks, and an expensive two-processor motherboard.
OLED Thin is in, and bright is right It’s not quite the photo-printer you have at home, but Philips’ PolyOLED uses similar inkjet technology to squirt red, green, and blue sub-pixels onto a rigid surface. Everyone’s dumping their fat-ass CRTs in favor of thin and light LCDs, and manufacturers are cheerfully cranking out models with bigger viewing areas, faster response times, and lower prices.
tECH pREVIEW Serial ATA Spec Faster! Stronger! Smarter! (And more connected) The Serial ATA specification is constantly being worked over and improved upon, and in 2005, it will receive a drug-free injection of cool new features. Let’s take a look. DOUBLE THE SPEED Image courtesy of Molex Though the Serial ATA interface is still relatively new, it’s already in line to receive a massive bandwidth upgrade for 2005.
tECH pREVIEW ATI’s R480 and R430 Re-spin the silicon for higher clock speeds and higher yields You can expect a new series of videocards be the first real competition for nVidia’s Ge- able that by the end of the year the spec will from ATI starting in December 2004. These Force 6800 GT line. Because of its 0.11-micron still not have reached critical mass.
tECH pREVIEW 802.11N Will an early debut taint next-gen Wi-Fi? Today, 802.11g Wi-Fi networks are commonplace, but they’re plagued by the same shortcomings that plagued earlier 802.11b networks—namely poor performance and high overhead. Even though 802.11g networks are rated at 54Mb/s, we rarely achieve data transfer rates faster than 25Mb/s in real-world test conditions. The upcoming 802.11n spec aims to remedy these problems and promises performance equivalent to wired 100baseT Ethernet.
tECH pREVIEW Handtop PCs 2005 will finally bring full-powered personal computing to the palm of your hand The idea has been around for years: a pocket-size PC running the full version of Windows XP that replaces your desktop, laptop, and PDA. Antelope’s Modular Computing Core—a paperback book-size slab that was an expensive paperweight until connected to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse—was an early stab at the concept.
tECH pREVIEW Audigy 4—and More Creative may be the last bastion of audio acceleration If it weren’t for Creative, PC audio technology might have wound up in the dead tech sidebar on page 34. nVidia has thrown in the towel. Philips cried uncle earlier this year. And ESS no longer responds to our phone calls. Indeed, audio acceleration has gone from a thriving segment to Palookaville in just five years.
Unreal 3 Epic makes it easier to make good games Take the per-pixel lighting and shadowing of the Doom 3 engine, add a sprinkle of the fancyschmancy materials processing from Valve’s Source engine, and combine them with art that’s so rich with polygons it will bring a GeForce 6800 SLI rig to its knees, and you have almost reached the level of detail that Epic’s third-generation Unreal engine can deliver.
: 2 E F I L F L HA TruMaeximTuOmRPYC THE lf-Life 2 is Every area in Ha that make ls tai de th wi filled d in.” ve “li l fee the world lls and other Decals on the wa pation life signs of pre-occu are abundant. tic the farNote how realis k. Instead loo s ing ild away bu draw to ps ma bit of using actual 3D them, Valve used y did for models, just as the nearby buildings. 44 MAXIMUMPC JANUARY 2005 S ntal d other environme Valve Muzzle flashes an as.
Why Half-Life 2 is a masterpiece of game design! The secrets that propel the game What the game will look like on YO UR hardware! to new heights! Tweaks to optimize the game— for speed or beauty! The first 11 verdict in Maximum PC history! BY WILL SMITH e draws projected The Source engin t other games, bu ny ma e lik shadows, g antialiaslin mp rsa pe su a then uses as draw the edges ing technique to h.
2 E F I L F L A H Making Physics Phun Once upon a time, there was an ambitious game that promised to make physics interactions an integral part of gameplay. That game, Trespasser, is now regularly derided as the worst game to ever grace the PC. In Trespasser, “physics-based gameplay” amounted to using a freakish, disembodied arm to stack improbably light boxes so you could jump over artificial barriers into new areas of the game.
And the Winner for Audio Excellence is... Like Doom 3, Half-Life 2 eschews hardware sound interfaces like EAX and DirectSound3D in favor of a homegrown, CPU-based audio engine. Valve’s engineers found they simply couldn’t deliver the high-quality aural experience they wanted using current technology. Its proprietary sound engine employs some clever tricks, detailed below, to create sound that behaves much like it does in the real world. The overall effect is extremely convincing.
2 E F I L F L A H 3D Cards and Half-Life 2: There’s Something about DirectX 9 Are you saddled with an ancient Radeon 7500 board? Are you nervous that your GeForce FX 5950 won’t be up to snuff? Do you want first-hand proof of why you need a top- tier 3D accelerator before you play Half-Life 2? It’s time for 3D card answers. Hint: You need a good DirectX 9 card to play this game! THE WATER IS BREATHTAKING At the highest quality setting, Half-Life 2’s water appears stunning and realistic.
2 E F I L F L A H HOW TO TWEAK HALF-LIFE 2 FOR SPEED AND BEAUTY Half-Life 2 is pretty good at detecting your hardware and setting the options accordingly, but there are options you can tweak to earn an extra few frames per second or enhanced visual quality. Unless otherwise noted, these options are located in the Advanced Video Options control panel in the game. PERFORMANCE TWEAKS On maps with lots of water, adjusting the Water Detail setting can have a huge impact.
INSIDER SECRETS ABOUT HALF-LIFE 2’S DEVELOPMENT you figure out how to kill the monster, then you perform the same action again and again. Realizing the ground-breaking nature of this shift, the game’s designers have created a constant progression of varying situations that will challenge your reactive skills and occasionally make you laugh out loud at how much fun the gravity gun is to use. We can’t wait to see home movies of this baby in action. Still, the game has some ever-so-minor problems.
STACK ‘EM UP BLOW ‘EM OUT Not all power supplies are created equal. The Maximum PC Lab torturetests seven power supplies to find out which ones offer the most protection, versatility, and expandability Picture this: You’ve just blown your last three paychecks building a kick-ass computer replete with a 3.6GHz processor, 256MB videocard, and 400GB hard drive. You splurged on a tricked-out case and spent long hours modding it to perfection.
STACK ‘EM UP BLOW ‘EM OUT BEFORE WE BEGIN… How We Test Power Supplies: Torture Is the Name of the Game Our challenge was to craft feasible tests that would provide useful and accurate information about how different power supplies hold up under various usage conditions. Ultimately, we settled on a series of rigorous tests that subjected the contestants to a degree of stress beyond what they would realistically be expected to endure.
Cooler Master RS-450-ACLY The ideal power supply for those concerned about electricity bills Electricity bills got you down? We know how you feel. Owning a kick-ass rig doesn’t just mean paying more for parts up front; it also means footing higher utility bills ad infinitum. Unless you’re running Cooler Master’s RS-450-ACLY 450-watt power supply, that is. While this PSU didn’t lead in our torture tests, it was strikingly efficient, energy-wise.
STACK ‘EM UP BLOW ‘EM OUT Antec NeoPower 480 This power supply is like Neo in The Matrix—it’s truly The One Once nothing more than an also-ran in the highly contentious power supply market, Antec has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years. The latest feather in the company’s cap is the NeoPower, a 480-watt beauty that’s beyond reproach. The NeoPower certainly looks impressive.
STACK ‘EM UP BLOW ‘EM OUT DeVanni DP-568FL A passable PSU for the money, but a little more dough gets you a whole lot more DeVanni’s DP-568FL is the black sheep in a showdown dominated by feature-packed power supplies with often-painful prices. This stylish 500-watt unit lacks virtually all the advanced capabilities of its brethren, but compensates with a low sticker price. The outcome is an adequate product that may appeal to penny pinchers. Let’s start with what the DP-568FL does well.
CONCLUSION FANLESS POWER SUPPLY The results of our tests indicate that even the biggest, baddest system money can buy doesn’t necessarily need a gigantic power supply. The ridiculously power-hungry computer we used for our load test never drew more than 406 watts from the outlet. Assuming an above-average efficiency of 75 percent, none of the PSUs we tested ever had to provide more than 305 watts of power.
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FUN a class in kick-ass VELOCD 12/10/32 TDK’s VeloCD CD burner incorporated Sanyo’s Burn Proof technology and made buffer underrun errors—and the coasters resulting from them—a thing of the past. (Received a 10/Kick Ass in January 2001) 3DFX VOODOO GRAPHICS Awesome PC components that rocked our world PENTIUM II Historians may well remember the Pentium II as Intel’s greatest chip, and perhaps the last time the company had a clear advantage over its competitors. RADEON 9700 Bye-bye, bland graphics.
FUN we take that back The biggest regrets from the Lab GO-L COMPUTERS (JANUARY 2004) “Too good to be true?” That’s what we asked about the advertised specs of Go-L Computers’ PCs and laptops. We got our answer in November 2004 when the company folded before we managed to find a single credible testimonial from anyone who actually succeeded in buying a Go-L machine. HALF-LIFE 2—Game of the Year! (AUGUST, 2003) MATROX PARHELIA (JULY 2002) Triple-monitor “surround” gaming... It all seemed so sweet.
FUN b a L e h t n i s t n e m o great m THE LAB’S BEST FRIEND games geeks play Multiplayer mayhem in the Lab BATTLEFIELD 1942 SPLINTER CELL: PANDORA TOMORROW STAR TREK: BRIDGE COMMANDER QUAKE, QUAKE II (WITH LITHIUM PATCH), QUAKE III COUNTER-STRIKE DESERT COMBAT TRIBES SHOGO: MOBILE ARMOR DIVISION UNREAL TOURNAMENT TEAM FORTRESS CLASSIC Many a concerned reader wrote in to make sure that we didn’t, in fact, feed a USB key to Lucy in our flash memory challenge. We didn’t.
FUN got a bone to pick ? The Watchdog’s on the case CAUGHT AT HOME Sometimes, executives can be very hard to reach. Especially if their companies are under investigation. But once the Watchdog catches a scent, it’s hard to get him off the trail. Here, Info Peripheral’s president Paul Lee is grilled in an ambush phone call (the number was provided by a disgruntled former employee).
s n o i t p i r c s e r p n e t the doctor’s top An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of swear words bold, big-mouthed, and sassy as hell The editors pick 10 of our favorite feature stories DO IT YOURSELF (APRIL 2004) HARD DRIVE HANDBOOK (OCTOBER 2003) NEXT-GEN GAME ENGINES (OCTOBER 2002) THE LAST DAYS OF 3DFX (JUNE 2002) BEYOND THE X-RATING (SEPTEMBER 2001) CLEAN START (JUNE 2000) UPDATE YOUR CHIPSET DRIVERS BURN AUDIO DISCS SLOWER Chipset manufacturers update these all the time to solve incompatibi
Ask the Doctor Symptom Diagnosis Cure ENSIGN—STATUS! I have a problem similar to the disappearing status bar in Internet Explorer; in my case, it’s Windows Explorer that keeps losing its status bar. Is there a Registry hack to correct this? Also, is there a way to change the default folder tree in Explorer? Every time I open it, it defaults to the “Documents and Settings” folder.
board-based audio: noise. With tons of traces for the expansion slots, RAM, SATA, PATA, etc., a motherboard can generate an incredible amount of electrical noise. Motherboard designers try to minimize the noise factor by situating audio circuits away from especially noisy circuits like power, but such design measures are ultimately bound by a motherboard’s production costs. Your board may simply have a circuit that’s too close to the audio, which would create noise under certain circumstances.
How To... A step-by-step guide to tweaking your PC experience BUILD A BARTPE DISC MAXIMUMPC TIME TO COMPLETION 00:30 HOURS MINUTES It’s all you’ll need to rescue and repair a recalcitrant computer! BY GORDON MAH UNG E veryone has been hit by the one-two punch of viruses and spyware. If you run Windows and are connected to the Internet, it’s difficult to avoid these problems. Even worse, the latest viruses and spyware programs are designed to be almost impossible to remove.
Make a basic disc If you don’t have the attention span to add drivers or plugins, click “Next” and simply compile your BartPE disc now. Once burned, this CD lets you immediately boot into a BartPE environment and browse the machine using A43—a Windows Explorer equivalent. You can also run a rudimentary Check Disk and gain basic network access. Skip ahead to the step labeled “Burn your Bart PE disc” to finalize your disc. But if you want to add drivers for your RAID or network cards, read on.
How To d=”Programs\adaware\Skins”,2 to the [Winntdirectories] section. In the [SourceDisksFiles] add the lines: alert.wav=a,,1 defs.ref=a,,1 default.awl=b,,1 Ad-Aware SE default.ask=c,,1 And remove the lines aawhelper.dll, reflist.ref, English.bmp, English.det, and English.ini. from the section. The finished file should look like: [WinntDirectories] a=”Programs\adaware”,2 b=”Programs\adaware\lang”,2 c=”Programs\adaware\Plugins”,2 d=”Programs\adaware\Skins”,2 [SourceDisksFiles] adaware.cmd=a,,1 ad-aware.
In the Lab A behind-the-scenes look at Maximum PC testing CPU Showdown Revisited We put Intel’s new 3.8GHz Petium 4 570J to the test, and refresh last month’s scores for the 3.46GHz P4 Extreme THE SHOWDOWN: In last month’s Head2Head (December 2004), we watched as AMD’s 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55 blew the doors off of Intel’s fastest Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. While there’s no doubt the Athlon 64 FX-55 is the fastest mutha in town, we wondered if the lack of CAS Latency 3 RAM hurt the P4’s performance.
HighSpeed PC Tech Station & We’ve been waiting for someone to build a tech bench that could improve upon the “tech station” concept we’ve embraced in our Lab. That time has finally come with HighSpeed PC’s new Tech Station. The Tech Station is similar to the now-defunct Senfu tech bench. It’s essentially a shelf that you drop your motherboard, drives, and power supply on top of, thereby allowing easy access to PC components, which is essential for testing.
Reviews Alienware Area-51 ALX SLI SLI delivers on high-resolution gaming, but… W hen we put out the request to system manufacturers for an SLI machine that consumers can actually purchase, Alienware was the sole PC maker to respond. The company submitted its watercooled, dual-GeForce 6800 Ultra-equipped ALX box to our Lab for review.
Reviews Voodoo Envy m:790 PCI Express, DDR2, and a GeForce 6800— in a notebook! It’s the Dream Machine in a laptop T he Envy m:790 is a tour de force of next-gen hardware including PCI Express, DDR2/533, and nVidia’s hot new 12-pipe GeForce 6800 Go for graphics. The widescreen Envy also manages to squeeze in two SATA drives running in RAID 0 as well as 8-channel, 24-bit audio.
Reviews Stupid Wi-Fi Tricks An 802.11g router battles a bombastic 802.11b router A s 802.11g enters middle age, lots of decent hardware is becoming available at morethan-decent prices. We’re also starting to see some crazy new hardware with boldly ambitious attempts at improved functionality. Of course, with wild and crazy innovations come horrible failures and embarrassing missteps. Read on for the gory details. —WILL SMITH Buffalo Technology WHR3-G54 Buffalo’s WHR3-G54 looks like a standard 802.
The three antennas on the Belkin Pre-N Wireless Router aren’t just for show; they’re part of the MIMO scheme that allows the router to reach the highest transfer speeds the Lab has ever seen. Belkin Wireless Pre-N Router Advanced functionality and high speeds, but will it work in 12 months? I magine if you will, a vendor shipping a product that uses technology from a wireless standard that doesn’t exist, and won’t for another year or two.
Reviews Silverstone LC10 HTPC An excellent enclosure for a DIY home theater PC S everal features set Silverstone’s home theater–oriented LC10 HTPC case apart from standard ATX enclosures. The first is its horizontal desktop orientation, as opposed to a more traditional vertical tower. Second, its polished-aluminum front panel allows it to blend perfectly with other home theater components. Third, it includes integrated remote control functionality via a software bundle and a built-in remote sensor.
Reviews Corex CardScan Executive This gadget eats through business cards as if they were Pringles D emonstrating a stubbornness akin to the floppy drive’s, business cards persist as a widely traded currency despite the presence of more modern alternatives (think the vCard, PDAs, and Bluetooth-enabled Smart Phones). Thankfully, Corex’s new CardScan Executive can help you eliminate the stacks of cards that have been festering on your desk for months.
Reviews “ 6.5 Buffalo DriveStation 160GB job sufficiently, allowing you to create backup scripts that can be executed on demand or on a schedule you determine. Our only beef is that the software doesn’t do incremental backups, which are practical because they save only what’s been changed or added to a folder since the last backup. Instead, if you set the software to save your “My Documents” folder every day, after a week you’ll have seven backups of your documents.
Reviews MP3 Player Mashup Presenting three wee MP3 playees—one is elegant, one is generic, and one just stinks flummoxed by MSI’s poor judgment— the Mega 516 supports only USB 1.1 transfer speeds. We might have been able to forgive one major flaw for a player this pretty (and the SD slot is a nice touch), but not two. Next! MAXIMUMPC VERDICT ELEPHANT RIDES 4 Player looks good, OLED screen looks even better.
Reviews Spin the black part around and a 6-inch USB cable unfurls, then tucks neatly back into the drive for transport. Seagate 5GB Pocket Drive Slow transfer rates make this miniature hard drive a hard sell T he definition of a Maximum PC verdict of 7 reads, “These products often come with a frustrating mix of good and bad features.” This is precisely the case with Seagate’s new 5GB Pocket Drive.
USB Key Cage Match 2GB pocket-size storage solutions face off I n addition to reaching capacities up to 2GB and beyond, today’s USB keys have splintered into two factions: flash-based and hard drivebased units. To see which technology rules, we sent three new “keys” to the mini-Gitmo we call the Maximum PC Lab. Our testing regimen consisted of a 1GB read/write test using files ranging in size from a lowly 2Kb to 300MB. With stopwatch in hand, we put them to the test.
Reviews It’s a Bag, Bag, Bag, Bag, World! It takes more than good looks to build a perfect laptop bag W e’ll admit: Maximum PC editors are suckers for a good-looking bag, especially if it’s comfortable to carry, includes configurable storage areas, and sports dozens of small pouches that can fit all the important laptop accessories we need. We toted around each of these new bags for several weeks—here’s what we found.
Madden 2005 Now this is big-time football! T he evolution from Madden 2003 to Madden 2004 represented a quantum leap, a redshift of sorts that resulted in the finest football game ever. While not putting forth as dramatic an improvement, Madden 2005 Denied! This year’s version of Madden adds some unique new features that reinforce features an emphasis on defense. its reputation as the ultimate football game. This year’s upgrades focus on defense playcalling and play-making.
Reviews Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault I never though I’d say this, but I really miss Europe Dear Mom and Dad, Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, but as I’m sure you’re aware, war will keep a man occupied. I can’t say exactly where I am right now, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor, my platoon got shipped all over the Pacific, including Guadalcanal and Tarawa. I know war should never be entertaining, but the boys and I sure had a lot more fun in Europe fighting the Germans.
Pacific Fighters The battle for the Pacific— Russian style O leg Maddox is fast becoming a legend in PC flight sim circles. Three critically acclaimed chapters of his high-flying IL-2 Sturmovik series have dominated the virtual skies since 2001. Now—in a departure from the franchise’s WWII Eastern Front Pacific Fighters includes dozens of aircraft. Here a Ki-61 ‘Tony’ makes short work of a roots—the Russian developer now serves B-24 Liberator.
Rig oftheMonth A true power user isn’t constrained by convention. Just ask Andy Crawford, who dared to build a computer that’s equal parts Mac and PC. That’s right: two complete systems considered by many to be at odds with each other living side-by-side in a single, albeit very roomy, case. What’s more, each system runs its native OS, an emulator of its neighbor’s OS, and Gentoo Linux for a thoroughly comprehensive computing experience. But clearly, Mirage is about more than a bunch of OSes.
