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1. Even More Keyboard Shortcuts Save more time by using these reader submitted Windows keyboard shortcuts Win L lock your PC Ctrl Shift Esc open Task Manager Win R bring up the Run dialog Win M minimize all windows Win E launch Windows Explorer Got any more Keep sending your keyboard shortcuts to comments dmaximumpc com WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 63 Ei R amp D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE One of the best ways to set your computer apart from the pack is to customize your desktop There are numerous ways to do this that range in difficulty from as easy as changing your wallpaper to as involved as a full blown shell replacement Somewhere in between there s Samurize Samurize is a program that lets you create and run custom desktop widgets most commonly used for system monitoring Because Samurize is extremely customizable it s a favorite tool of desktop modders who use it in conjunction with tailor made wallpapers to create truly awesome personal desktops Learning Samurize can be a fun project because although there s a lot of depth to the program and it takes practice and an artistic eye to make top notch widgets you can get started right away building simple meters and displays Here we explain the basics of Samurize including what you need to know to build your first simple custom widget ALEX CASTLE 64 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09
2. R amp D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE DirectX 11 You thought DX10 brought big changes Get a load of DX11 _ irectX 10 marked a radical departure from DirectX 9 In order to be com patible a graphics processor must feature a unified architecture in which each shader unit is capable of executing pixel vertex and geometry shader instructions The changes in DirectX 11 aren t quite as fundamental but they could have just as big an impact and not only with games DirectX 11 is a superset of DirectX 10 so everything in DirectX 10 is included in the new collection of APIs In addition DX11 of fers several new features and three addition al stages to the Direct3D rendering pipeline the Hull Shader the Tessellator and the Domain Shader And in an effort to deliver cross hardware support for general purpose computing on graphics processors Microsoft has come up with a new Compute Shader DirectX 11 will be compatible with both Vista and Windows 7 but many of its graphics features will be available on GPUs designed for previous iterations of Direct3D Tapping into the Tessellator s power however will require a GPU with transistors dedicated to the task in this sense DX11 marks a slight departure from DX10 s vision of a unified architecture Let s explore the concept of tes sellation now MEET TESS The three new pipeline stages we men tioned earlier are all relat
3. m d ee 9 on Pu 8 o see Oe e oemp n rte te re steni r eddu we o9 9 te d Files and folders will automatically begin to sync on the devices you specified and using the tray icon or the Live Desktop browser interface you can get an overview of the changes being made by reviewing the News section You can now interact with the files on any device within your Mesh and any modification you make will sync instantly across your devices Ma chines that are offline will pick up updated versions from the Live Desktop as they come online SYNC BOOKMARKS WITH XMARKS Xmarks formerly known as Foxmarks is our favorite way of keeping our browser bookmarks in sync Your first step will be to download the Xmarks plugin for your browser of choice at www xmarks com Currently only Firefox Internet Explorer and Safari for the Mac are supported E mtm If you re torn over which version to grab it s worth noting that only the Firefox version supports encrypted password sync iPhone users should also keep in mind that only the Safari for Mac plugin will allow two way syncing We ll be using the Firefox version for this guide Once you have installed the Firefox plugin restart your browser and the Xmarks setup wizard will automatically launch allowing you to make an account or login If you re creating a new account or if y
4. pack performance ZERO POINT 20 Photoshop CS3 290 sec 309 6 1 Proshow Producer 3 114 sec 3 263 4 6 Quake III Arena 86 7 fps 86 4 0 3 Battery Life 257 sec 232 9 7 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Our zero point ultraportable is a Toshiba Port g R600 with a 1 4GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo GB of DDR2 5 s Vista Business 32 bit LI 1 3 67 integrated graphics 160GB 5 400 hard drive and One of the few features the A605 doesn t share with the elite Port g R600 is a transflective screen This one is still serviceable outdoors however IN THE LAB BPeviws or THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Vantec ezShare Adapter This is the Air Jordan sneaker of sneakernets on t be fooled by the Vantec ezShare s unassuming looks This simple six foot white cable with its Type A USB plugs on either end is actually one of the easiest ways to quickly moves files between two computers Just plug one end into an available USB port on a box running Win dows XP and up and plug the other end into the second box A Windows Explorer like app will auto launch on each machine letting you drag and drop folders and files between the two PCs If this sounds an awful lot like Data Drive Thru s Tornado reviewed November 2007 that s because the two products are pretty similar The file explor
5. 52 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com hd Ie this when you plan to run one or more drives in RAID using your motherboard s built in RAID controller SATA Port 0 3 Native Mode The most common solution configuring SATA drives in native IDE mode is also the easiest as it sports the most compatibility and a driver less install at least in terms of not needing to go through the F6 dance Disabling this option puts the SATA ports in Legacy IDE mode which is used for pre XP OSes such as Win 9x ME USB 1 0 Controller We don t know why anyone would choose to disable their moth erboard s onboard USB controllers but this would be the place to do it USB 2 0 Controller Also known as EHCI or Enhanced Host Controller Interface you ll need to en able this setting to take full advantage of your mother board s USB 2 0 ports and high speed USB devices USB Keyboard Function If you don t have this option enabled it will be difficult read impossible to get into your motherboard s BIOS without a legacy PS 2 keyboard Mofas ld am F L e as Vptimizsed Pet USB Mouse Function Enables USB mouse support for use with OSes that don t support it natively Legacy USB Storage Detect Some very old OSes like DOS don play nice with USB storage devices Enabling this setting can help through emulation Azalia Codec Several onboard audio solu tions exist and depending o
6. WWW maximumpc com Boot Baby Boot Please Cen anc amem Right click cmd exe and select Run as administrator to open an administrator command prompt this fall when Windows 7 becomes available I have a Windows 98SE system using Office 2000 and I cannot find my Outlook 2000 pst files can save them to CD and then move them to the new system when it arrives I have searched the entire disk for pst and the only thing it shows is the default pst file which is way too small 300KB to be the file I want Also is therea way to save my Outlook set tings so they can be moved to the new Outlook Allan Kjeldsen Allan Microsofts Knowledge Base article 196492 http bit ly 4aQiSU gives instruc tions on exporting your pst files and settings Briefly to find your pst files right click Outlook Today and hit Properties then Advanced The Path box should show your pst file location the default is C Windows Application Data Microsoft Outlook Outlook pst The Knowledge Base article also includes instructions for backing up your Outlook 2000 settings rules contacts cal endars and tasks so you can export them to newer versions of Outlook Defragging in Vista In your Better Faster Stronger article July 2009 one of the tricks you recommend is to defrag my computer I have Vista andI am trying to do a full defrag through the command line It will not allo
7. www maximumpc com Add Custom Widgets to Your Desktop od m eter pte apap ns DT GETTING STARTED with the basics of Samurize allowing you To get started on your first custom desktop you re going to need to download the latest Serious Samurize release which you can find at http bit ly YT71 Grab the most recent client installer Once you ve installed the program you have the option of running Samurize or the Config tool Samurize is what you ll eventu ally use to display your custom desktops but for now start the Config tool Configs define the widgets that Samurize places on your desktop and can include meters which represent any of a number of system parameters and graphics By combining informative meters sharp graphics and a matching wallpaper you can create a desk top that s both useful and impressive That s the goal at least But you ve got to learn to walk before you can run so this article will explain how to use Samurize to create a basic config with CPU and RAM usage monitors as well as a gauge for either your laptop battery or hard disk space It might not be the sexiest feature set in the world but by learning how to make this simple config you ll familiarize yourself to design more complicated and impressive desktops in the future CPU AND RAM MONITORS We ll add meters to our config to graph our CPU and RAM usage over time Of the two
8. 61 AUTOPSY The original Apple iPhone 63 HOW TO Make custom desktop widgets sync your files email and bookmarks In the Lab 73 REVIEWS 92 LAB NOTES 96 BEST OF THE BEST LETTERS 16 DOCTOR 94 COMMENTS MAXIM MPG 05 MAKIMUM PG EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Will Smith DEPUTY EDITOR Katherine Stevenson SENIOR EDITOR Gordon Mah Ung ONLINE EDITOR Norman Chan ASSOCIATE EDITOR Nathan Edwards ASSOCIATE ONLINE EDITOR Alex Castle EDITOR AT LARGE Michael Brown EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Florence lon CONTRIBUTING WRITERS John Brandon Tom Halfhill Evan Lahti Paul Lilly Thomas McDonald Quinn Norton Andy Salisbury PODCAST PRODUCER Andy Bauman EDITOR EMERITUS Andrew Sanchez ART ART DIRECTOR Natalie Jeday CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR Katrin Auch PHOTO EDITOR Mark Madeo ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHER Samantha Berg BUSINESS VP PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Stacey Levy 650 238 2319 slevyfafutureus com GROUP SALES DIRECTOR Gabe Rogol 650 238 2409 grogolfafutureus com SENIOR REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Dave Lynn 949 360 4443 dlynnfafutureus com REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR David White 650 238 2502 dwhitefafutureus com SALES MANAGER Aida Rodriguez 708 562 0686 arodriguezfafutureus com INTEGRATED SALES DIRECTOR Joe Pomparelli 323 342 1888 jpomparellifafutureus com SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER Andrea Recio Ang 650 238 2548 arecio ang dfutureus com MARKETING COORDINATOR Allyson Kardel 650 23
9. MaclLife Nintendo Power PC Gamer PlayStation The Official Magazine Pregnancy Revolver Windows Vista The Official Magazine The Official Xbox Magazine and others Entire contents copyright 2009 Future US Printed in the USA rights reserved Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited Reproduction on the Internet of the articles and pictures in this magazine is illegal without the prior written consent of Maximum PC Products named in the pages of Maximum PC are trademarks of their respective companies Future US Inc is not affiliated with the companies or products advertised or covered in Maximum PC CUSTOMER SERVICE Maximum PC Customer Care PO Box 5159 Harlan IA 51593 0659 Phone 1 800 274 3421 Web www maximumpc com customerservice Email maxcustserv acdsfulfillment com Back issues can be purchased by calling 1 800 865 7240 REPRINTS Reprint Management Service Phone 717 399 1900 ext 100
10. and much more BIOS updates can also be minor and address only a specific function such as adding native support for higher frequency RAM or a new CPU stepping If the added functionality isn t something that affects your setup you needn t worry about updating your BIOS We recommend checking your vendor s website every few months to see if any new BIOS versions have been released and what changes they bring While BIOS flashes have become far easier and less risky In recent years the one time you attempt to update your BIOS unprepared will inevitably be the time something goes wrong Standard housekeeping applies Back up any important data A BIOS flash won t nuke your hard drive but if done incorrectly it could kill your motherboard Next tune your system for stability If you re over clocking revert to default clock speeds and voltage levels This prevents any underlying instability issue even one you re not aware of from causing your system to sud denly reboot during the middle of a BIOS flash which could corrupt your BIOS chip and render your mobo a rather bulky keychain Finally make a note of any pertinent BIOS settings you ve changed from their default values Sometimes when updating the BIOS all settings are reverted back to default Did disable onboard sound You need to do so again Most motherboard manufacturers offer some kind of handy Windows utility with a snazzy GUI for updating your B
11. but that is also what makes it attractive to netbook owners who crave speed and don t mind sacrificing extra features As such the customization options are few you can change wallpapers and themes but Moblin lacks the depth of inter face tweaks found in Windows or Ubuntu We re optimistic about Moblin s prospects but the na scent OS needs work before we ll be willing to permanently Apes nter mu umm abes cnl m s mm Vi ee gt in 4 boo _ 5 t em Devar gt wiss A If you can maneuver your way around the KDE environment you ll like Slax for its tiny footprint and speedy applications commit to it Ubuntu Netbook Remix has the leg up but we do prefer the Moblin look and feel to the other contenders SLAX Slax www slax org is a light Linux distro that s suitable for netbooks but has a few weak spots that need to be ironed out before it s ready for prime time Visually Slax looks like a traditional KDE based Linux distribution For personalization Slax includes a theme manager and the ability to change colors but most of the work involved with customizing the UI falls to the end user who must wade through a lot of options to get the right look and feel We prefer the easier theme controls in Windows 7 In many ways the controls for personalization in Slax a
12. helpful when troubleshooting overheating or power issues such as random reboots but treat this as a starting point before digging deeper Overheating due to a poorly installed heatsink for example might not manifest itself until you boot into Windows and encode a DVD or otherwise stress your CPU e CPU Warning CPU PAN Pell Mereing SYSTEM Fane SYSTEM FANI rert PAN Mode Recent Case Open Status Only of use with compatible cases this security feature can detect if your case has been opened and then reset the status at the next boot 113 Mowe NUN vinur 3 Va CMOS Setup Utilitu Copyright CPU Warning Temperature Sounds an alarm when a certain CPU temperature threshold is reached Fan Fail Warnings Enabling a fan fail warning whether it s for the CPU Fan th Power Fan the System Fan1 etc will soun an alarm when the fan plugged into that ignated fan power header stops running CPU Smart Fan Control Disabling this setting allows the CPU heatsink s fan to run at full bore all the time Enabling this setting will vary the fan speed depending on CPU temperature darnies Tempe CPU FRM Fall SVS TEM FAN Pail POWER FAH Fell te SVSTIM PANI Fall CPU Smart Fan Mode If you enable CPU Smart Fan Control you can then set the mode to Auto controlled by the BIOS Voltage for use with three pin fans or PWM for use with four pin fan
13. s a novel idea because new users don t have to figure out the relatively complex process of installing applications a big barrier for new Linux users Jolicloud also lets you create links to common web services such as Facebook and Twitter It would have been much more impressive if Jolicloud actually included custom apps for the sites similar to those you find on modern smartphones Once you close the Jolicloud dashboard the OS operates exactly the same as Ubuntu there are no discernible differences in terms of the interface speed results or apps you can load Jolicloud shows promise and you can try it out by signing up to get a beta invite As its name implies Jolicloud relies heavily on cloud based applications so at Jolicloud com its best utilized when you re connected to the Internet FORFUN Netbook Gaming Yes You Can Sure puny screens single core processors integrated graphics and the lack of an optical drive make netbooks incapable of running today s or even last year s blockbuster games But not all great games are graphics hogs and there are plenty of masterpieces today s or yesteryear s that will run just fine on a netbook Digital distribution is your friend Steam http store steampowered com and Good Old Games www gog com are just two ways download delicious netbook capable games directly to your drive on the cheap One note Some games might not support netbook resoluti
14. Elonex sells for 189 approxi mately 300 supports ePub and proprietary Acrobat formats and is compatible with the 45 000 or so ebooks that Borders sells through its website Signs are that Barnes amp Noble is also work ing on an electronic reading device In the spring the book chain purchased Fictionwise owner of the eReader platform and online bookstore Already Barnes amp Noble has leveraged that pur chase to launch a free ebook reader applica tion for BlackBerrys but it seems likely that a full fledged competi tor to the Kindle is on the way Traditional booksellers have seen the future and it Looks like this Side by Side Search Firefox to Get More Stable Secure Mozilla just launched a new project named Electrolysis that will bring multipro cess browsing to Firefox And according to Mozilla the result will be improved performance security and stability Project developers have already put together a prototype that s able to render a page in a separate process from the interface shell it s displayed in Firefox developers got serious about multiprocess browsing once Google and Microsoft used it in Chrome and IE8 browsers Chrome s multiprocess architecture allows it to fill in security holes and prevents page specific glitches from crashing the entire browser It s unknown whether multiprocess browsing will be ready for the next release of Firefox but the work will be done
15. GORDON MAH UNG VERDICT DIGITAL STORM 9505 See cece scarce sence sens eerste esses esses Peses ess essssestessrssssessesserseseessesessessessesers Nearly flawless paint Somewhat disappoint job and quiet for this ingin gaming bench much hardware marks 6 310 www digitalstorm com SPECIFICATIONS Photoshop CS3 169 sec 78 92 ProShow 1 206 sec 433 227 MainConcept 2 049 sec 845 122 CRYSIS 26 fps 65 150 Unreal Tournament 3 83 fps 0 10 20 111 34 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad core 2 66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2GB of Corsair DDR2 800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard We are running two EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX cards in SLI mode a Western Digital 150GB Raptor and a 500GB Caviar hard drive an LG GGC H20L Sound Blaster X Fi and PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750 Quad OS is Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit 74 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Processor Intel 3 336Hz Core i7 975 d 4 1GHz Mobo EVGA Classified RAM 6GB Mushkin DDR3 1600 Videocard EVGA GeForce GTX 295 in tri SLI Soundcard Asus Xonar D2X Storage Two 64GB Corsair M64 SSD in RAID 0 Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green Optical OptiArc BC 5100S Case PSU Silverstone TJ 09 PC Enermax Galaxy EVO 1200 watt Seagate Barracuda LP 2 Barracudas eat Caviar f
16. PL BYTE RIGHTS DN lt Breakin the Law often get questions in email or at QUINN NORTON conferences or parties about points of IP law try to explain that Am Not A Lawyer or that dang this is a party but most people s questions about what s illegal are easy to answer ripping DVDs yes ripping audio CDs no drunkenly singing Happy Birthday through a bullhorn at a wedding yes making a mashup song depends what state you re But I ve realized that s not really what people are asking me because there s big difference between telling you what s illegal and telling you what not to do Unlike much of law copyright law requires that the rights holder go to the trouble of suing If they don t want to you can claim their masterwork as your own and do a rendition in armpit farts on national TV make a mint selling the recording and never have a spot of trouble with the authorities This is understandably confusing for most people We like to think of our laws as moral vital to a functional society Current copyright law like all unreasonable law undermines this The normal ways people use computers these days involves enough copyright violations that all the lawyers ever born couldn t pursue them all Almost nothing you do in your own home is ever going to be findable by the RIAA or the MPAA which don t have the time and energy to care anyway The un speakable truth is f
17. The LiquidTV software also adds features that users of dedicated TiVo boxes might not be familiar with auto convert for portable devices and record to DVD In the options for every show you watch you can choose to automatically con vert recorded programs to versions for your PSB iPod or other portable media player after the show is finished recording For obsessive archivists or frequent travelers this feature can be a real boon As with other PVR software the big prob lem for home users is high def content View ing over the air ATSC HD content is easy and free but the HD equiva lent for cable OAM is Longtime TiVo users will find the Liquid TV interface eerily familiar 90 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com poorly supported and works only for basic cable stations There s no way for end users to get HD signals from their cable or satellite providers into their PVR box Beyond that the software includes all the limitations of dedicated TiVo boxes Content from certain channels is protected from transcoding or burning to DVD Currently the only affected channel is HBO As the TiVo service for set top boxes costs around 12 a month 100 for Liquid TV is a great deal especially if you havea dedicated PVR or home server machine run ning that you can install it on We d love to pair this software with an always on Home Server machine but the Home Server OS isn t officially supported We love
18. a caption for our high end Dream Machine the Stimulus Package we identified the GPUs as being GTX 295 cards but they were actually GTX 285 cards as stated in the price list 94 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 WWW maximumpc com The Case that Launched 1 000 Emails Your August cover has a tower case that is just beautiful minus the lightning bolts of course Who makes that case and where can I get one I looked all through the maga zine and couldn t find any details on that bad boy Kevin Associate Editor Nathan Edwards Responds We ve received a surprisingly large number of inquiries about that particular case It s a Cooler Master Centurion 534 Although the design is more than three years old at this point the Centurion 534 has proven so popular that it s still sold today and you can get it forlessthan 60 bucks bl NLINE Playing It Safe I ve noticed the magazine pushing Norton Internet Security 2009 quite a bit lately and I m wondering if I should try it I currently use the free Avira Antivir Spybot Search amp Destroy Spyware Blaster ThreatFire and Windows Defender apps Would it be safe to uninstall all of those and just run Norton Internet Security 2009 Kevin Turcotte Contributing Writer Paul Lilly Responds By investing in an all in one security suite like Norton Internet Security 2009 you re paying for the convenience of streamlining your security into a single manageable
19. always connected pocket sized computer On paper the 3GS doesn t seem like a major upgrade from the previous generation iPhone especially when you consider that many of the bullet points on the 3GS s feature list came to older iPhones in the form of the 3 0 firmware release And at first glance even the new 3GS exclusive features a faster CPU more memory a more capable GPU faster network connectivity a higher resolution camera that can finally shoot video voice control for key features and a compass seem like a mixture of unsexy incremental shoulda been there already features and just plain meh Worse some of the features require carrier support so things like MMS messages higher speed HSPDA support and tethering won t be available in the United States until AT amp T deigns to support them 82 MANIMUMIPG OCT 09 WWW maximumpc com IN THE LA B Reviews OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE The iPhone 3GS brings a faster CPU more memory and faster download speeds to Apple s do everything wonder phone But when you actually sit down and use the phone the seemingly minor hardware tweaks bring a substantial performance boost to the phone The OS is snappier apps load noticeably faster and the out of memory crashes that plagued Safari with earlier versions of the iPhone seem to be a thing of the past The 3GS nearly halved the load times for some particularly slow loading apps in my side by side tes
20. app But you have to be careful many The History of 3D Graphics It s not uncommon for PC builders to spend upwards of 400 on Nvidia or ATI s latest videocards but without the killer games to utilize them they d have no reason to get excited about cutting edge GPUs The 3D game engine has been a big driving force in the advancement of PC hardware and we celebrate the landmark engines like Doom and Unreal that have pushed graphics technology security suites spread them selves too thin by trying to do too much We didn t find that to be the case with either NIS 2009 or ESET Smart Security 4 both of which earned high marks in our most recent anti virus roundup http bit ly 1M48Fi If you install either of these suites you can safely uninstall or disable the freebie antimalware apps you mentioned and you absolutely should avoid running more than one antivirus program at the same time Because antivirus apps root themselves deep into your OS running more than one can actually cause conflicts The same generally isn t true for multiple anti spyware programs TC 5600 Why Aren t You at Your Post I need some help locating a product that s mentioned in the Build Your Own Dream Machine article in the September 2009 issue You say that Dow Corning TC 5600 thermal paste was used but I cannot find men tion of TC 5600 on the Dow Corning website or when searching the web Is TC 5
21. be dual booting in no time Boot Baby Boot Please Lately I ve been having an issue on startup with my PC During POST my system will hang and fail to load past the Asus splash screen My keyboard stops responding altogether so I cannot hit Tab to see the POST messages changed keyboards and the issue persists When it does load past POST it hangs just before the GRUB boot loader When this happens I usually have to hit the reset button and go through the process three times before I can load an OS Other than the keyboard swap I ve made no major changes to my system that I think would prevent my PC from POSTing and run everything at stock clocks When I do load into an OS everything is rock solid and stable with no issues I have an Athlon 64 X2 4600 on an Asus M2 N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard 3GB DDR2 RAM and an XFX 8800 GT My keyboard isa Logitech G15 My PSU isa Cooler Master 600W eXtreme Power Duo My bet is on the PSU but I really don t have an easy way or the cash at the moment to test this Please let me know if I m on the right track J P Allen 18 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Double clicking a drive brings up a search box There s a registry fix for that While it seems like the power supply is always the culprit the Doc actually suspects it may be somewhere else down the line If the power supply were indeed going bad you should experi ence
22. be hidden in a closet Next up there s a 2 5 inch internal SATA hard drive bay which can turn the router into a NAS box complemented by a built in FTP server and BitTorrent software There are two USB ports featuring D Link s SharePort technology which allows you to plug in both an external hard drive and a printer and share these devices with any computer on the network The router s four port gigabit switch automatically powers down any ports not in use to save a modest amount of energy The rest of the features are just as valu able if not as unusual You can set up a password protected guest zone for instance with the option of limiting access to a set schedule And there s both a UPnP server and an iTunes server Lastly there s a Quality BENCHMARKS TCP IP THROUGHPUT of Service engine to help eliminate lag for VoIP and media streaming applications But our enthusiasm over all those whiz bang fea tures is tempered by the DIR 685 s slug slow wireless throughput and NAS performance We ve been using the aforementioned Linksys WRT600N for comparison for more than a year but we always retest its per formance within a few hours of benchmarking a new contender just to make sure both products are tested under the same environmental conditions The DIR 685 lagged far behind the Linksys in our Kitchen test where the client is 20 feet away from the router and separated by an insulated wall and a set
23. before we tell you how to make it we need to stress that this how to is showing you how to take a perfectly good toy and turn it into something that is absolutely unequivocally NOT A TOY The blue laser used in this guide can burn electrical tape and pop balloons which means that it s also strong enough to do some extreme eye damage to anyone unlucky enough to catch a stray reflection Because of this always wear proper eye protection while using the laser and NEVER point the laser at another person There are two ways you can get the blue laser you ll need for your phaser you can buy one on the Internet for about 30 or you can salvage one from an old Blu ray or HD DVD player If you opt for the scavenged laser be forewarned You ll have to build your own driver circuit a task that s pretty easy by circuit building standards but not for someone who doesn t know his way around a soldering iron You ll need a plastic gun to put the laser in We bought a retro Star Trek phaser on eBay for 30 but there s no reason you couldn t do basically the same thing to a different toy To pre pare the toy phaser you ll need to make a couple of easy modi fications using pliers and a rotary tool such as a Dremel First widen the battery compartment so it can fit a 9 volt battery instead of two AAs Do this by pulling out the battery contacts with your pliers then using the rotary tool to grind away all of the plastic protrusions inside the ba
24. boon for the types of graphics processing and real time animation needed for computer gaming But this hardware can be tapped to perform other types of compu tations too the concept is known as GPGPU computing the acronym stands for general purpose graphics processing unit Most software applications however as well as the tools used to develop them are designed for serial execution not parallel GPGPU computing therefore requires brand new tools and AMD and Nvidia have invested significant amounts of time and effort to both create them and spur the development of GPGPU applications AMD s initiative is known as Stream SDK Software Development Kit and Nvidia s is called CUDA Compute Unified Device Architec ture The growth of GPGPU computing however has been hindered by the fact that each company s tools work with only that company s GPU Microsoft hopes to change that with the addition of the Compute Shader to DirectX 11 The Compute Shader will enable developers to write GPGPU code that will run on any graphics processor be it Nvidia s GeForce platform AMD s Radeon or Intel s upcoming Larabee Although the Compute Shader is integrated with DirectX 11 it s not actu ally a stage in the Direct3D pipeline It can however take data structures from the Pixel Shader stage manipulate them using the resources and then apply them to the final image in a post processing stage Microsoft has identified a range
25. button to see a brief and generally helpful description of what the counter does Once you ve specified what you want Perfmon to monitor it behaves pretty much the same as the memory monitor Change its draw type to graph give ita unique name make it look the same as your memory meter and you ll be ready to move on NOTEBOOK BATTERY LIFE METER Next we ll show you how to create an analog needle style meter like the type you d find in a car dashboard Since we happen to be on a laptop we made ours a battery life meter by selecting Add Laptop Battery from the Add Meter drop down but if you re on a desktop you can make it a hard disk space meter by selecting Add Drive Space from the drop down menu then selecting the drive you want to monitor To make the monitor into an analog meter simply select Analog from the Draw Type drop down list In the Display tab you can make sure the meter looks the way you want it to by adjusting the type of pointer how wide the sweep is and more To make itlook more like a car speedometer set the WWW maximumpc com o9 MAXIMUMPE 65 a R amp D EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE mm De pee pee em eee 9 Offset to around 20 which moves the pivot point a little toward the center In the Display tab you can also choose a start and end color the pointer will shift between these values as it moves This allows you to for instance set it so the pin wi
26. charm When compared to our previous champion the Zalman CNPS9900 the Ultra 120 produced full burn temperatures that were an average of 8 C lower It tested 25 C lower than an Intel stock cooler Since we put it through its paces the Thermalright Ultra 120 has bested every air cooler we ve thrown at it Not bad for 60 www thermalright com E gt gt gt i gt uw ii i mm E i NU THERESTOFTHEBEST Budget Processor Phenom II X4 940 www amd com 250 Videocard Nvidia GeForce GTX 275 www nvidia com Performance Hard Drive Western Digital VelociRaptor www wdc com B Mid Tower Case Silverstone Fortress www silverstonetek com Games We re Playing ARMA2 WWW arma2 com B LGA 1366 Motherboard MSI Eclipse SLI www msicomputer com 150 Videocard ATI Radeon 4870 www ati com Gaming Mouse Logitech G9x Laser Mouse www logitech com m DVD Burner Samsung SH S223 www samsung com Street Fighter IV www streetfighter com Socket 775 Motherboard Asus Striker ll Extreme WWW asus com Solid State Drive Patriot Torqx 128GB www patriotmemory com Gaming Keyboard Logitech G19 Keyboard www logitech com Demigod Blu ray Drive demigodthegame com Pioneer BDR 2203 www pioneerelectronics com B Last Night on Earth board game www flyingfrog net lastnightonearth Socket AM2 Motherboard MSI K9A2 Platinum www msicomputer
27. com Capacity Storage Seagate Barracuda 7200 11 1 5TB www seagate com m Wi Fi Router Linksys WRT600N www linksys com B Full Tower Case Cooler Master ATCS 840 www coolermaster com 500 Videocard Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 www nvidia com For even more Best of the Best entries such as speakers and budget components go to http www maximumpc com best of the best MAXIMUM PC ISSN 1522 4279 is published 13 times a year monthly plus Holiday issue following December issue Future US Inc 4000 Shoreline Court Suite 400 South San Francisco CA 94080 Phone 650 872 1642 Fax 650 872 2207 Website www futureus com Periodicals postage paid in South San Francisco CA and at additional mailing offices Newsstand distribution is handled by Time Warner Retail Basic subscription rates one year 12 issues US 20 Canada 26 Foreign 42 Basic subscription rates including monthly CD one year 13 issues 13 CD ROMs US 30 Canada 40 Foreign 56 US funds only Canadian price includes postage and GST 4t R128220688 POSTMASTER Send 96 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com changes of address to Maximum PC 5159 Harlan 51593 0659 Standard Mail enclosure in the following edition None Ride Along enclosure in the following editions B1 C1 C2 C3 C4 Canada Post PMA 40612608 Returns Bleuchip International PO Box 25542 London ON N6C 6B2 Canada Future US Inc also publishes Guitar World
28. configured generating so called tessella tion factors and then sends the patches on to the Tessellator The Tessellator in turn subdivides the patches and feeds a stream of points to the Domain Shader The Domain Shader manipulates these points to form the appropriate geometry and sends the result ing vertices to the Geometry Shader Hardware tessellation isn t a new concept Animators at Pixar began using tessellation to create their highly detailed characters beginning with A Bugs Life and they re still using it today The GPU that AMD designed for Microsoft s Xbox 360 gaming console features a tessellation unit and AMD integrated something similar in its Radeon GPUs for the PC beginning with the Radeon HD 2000 series This led many to predict that Microsoft would expose tessellation in DirectX 10 But that didn t happen and DirectX 11 won t be able to HOWITWORKS Shader Model 5 0 Pipeline p Hull Shader Tessellator Domain Shader Primitives Performs Analyzes Subdivides Manipulates Works Breaks down Assigns color Produces the patches enter transform patches control patches and control points 71 onentire the 3D object and depth final image the pipeline and lighting points produces a and sends 3 primitive X into pixels values to indi functions stream of resulting HM also vidual pixels control points vertices to create Can also pass Geometry entirely data structures Shader i new to the Co
29. describes this as a new system timer that is needed in chip sets to replace legacy timers and to meet the needs of time sensitive applications By enabling this feature the c ny S system performance is impro Mode You can set this to either 32 bit or 64 bit depending on your operating system If you re rolling with a 64 bit OS choose the latter to take full advantage of HPET s 64 bit registers Power on by Mouse Enables turning on the system with a double click i2 2 151 Fim Po LIMIT D E 10 M IJI 1E 1 Ge 1 _ E MID dB IB D ot 8 i gt gt fee by Coes ju h ny A bpd fessi joo fell Sete Geteatte m a m 54 MAKIMIMBE ocr oo WWW maximumpc com eM Get AI M ILI CMDS Setup Utility Copyright Cc 1904 2069 feard Power ACPI Suspend Tupe Soft fff by PHE Eveet Wake Up Power Ue by King OTT 5 HPET Support HPTT Mode Power Oe By Nouse Power Ue Keybo shied L AC Beck o Pie D Ua lew ri fell Sefe De fier Move Enter Select 5 Previous Us lees Setup Utility Copyright 21 I2 UTD ACPI Suspend Soft PHE Wahe Up Power le Resume by flare Le Support NPT Mode Power Oe Po
30. go Acronis even clones the boot sector for you so you ll boot into Windows automatically the RunCore drive scored higher in PCMark05 s hard drive subscore 9 912 PCMarks to the Super Talent s 7 514 Both far outstripped the stock SSD s measly 1 879 PCMarks Surpris ingly battery life actually increased by about 40 minutes when using either upgrade drive Either drive is must have addition to your Eee 901 they re comparably priced If we had to choose we d go with the RunCore It s slightly faster and the USB port makes it easier to use Stock 12GB SSD RunCore 64GB Super Talent 64GB 1 163 648 630 1 849 9 912 7 614 30 7 97 6 96 6 33 7 116 8 Zzr 396 8 7 0 5 0 2 03 4 50 5 30 5 30 Best scores are bolded All tests performed on an Asus Eee PC 901 with 2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM running Windows XP SP3 configurations only differed in hard drive choice Photoshop scores obtained using our standard Photoshop CS3 benchmark PCMark subscore obtained using PCMark05 s HDD benchmark tests HDTach scores obtained using HDTach 3 0 1 0 Battery life obtained using our standard full screen DVD quality video battery rundown test with screen brightness and volume at 50 percent and all radios off Www imaximuimnpc com OCT 09 51 Open Your Mind to a New OS After you ve upgraded your netbook s hardware give It SOme Souped up Software B
31. has easy to remove panels facturers know that just because their customers bought a computer but the hard drive panel is secured with TORX 6 screws not Phillips with just of RAM doesn t mean that they re going to keep itat 1GB head MSI s Wind U123 is upgradeable but you ll have to take off the and so most netbook models come with easy to remove RAM and hard entire bottom of the netbook held in by 10 screws The Eee 1005HA drive panels Often all yov ll need is a Phillips screwdriver and a few has a panel for the RAM but no hard drive access or removable battery minutes of your time But not always And some models are downright evil The first Acer Aspire One Easy upgrade candidates include the Asus Eee 901 1000 the Eee 1008HA and current model Seashell Eee PCs require a full 1000HA HE models Lenovo s 510 series and newer Acer Aspire One tear down including keyboard and motherboard removal to get to the series netbooks as well as most Samsung HP and Dell netbooks RAM and hard drive Avoid these if you ever want to upgrade HE i 4 i 1 UCTUS WWWUODSX HUTDC COm TE prr 2 Lu NETBOOK UPGRADES Transform Your SATA Hard Disk Drive Why settle for stock when you can have greater speed and or capacity Although early netbooks shipped with slow low capacity Mini PCI E solid state drives the vast majority now come with standard 2 5 inch SATA drives usually 5 400rpm magnetic har
32. in order to fine tune system settings but it can be an intimidating place to explore if you haven t ever burrowed beneath the surface And just as in real life poking around in unknown places can be dangerous if you don t know what you re doing or where you re going On the other hand once you understand the inner workings of your PC s control center whole world of overclocking troubleshooting suddenly opens But what exactly is the BIOS Every modern motherboard comes with an embedded flash EEPROM module otherwise known as the BIOS chip Short for Basic Input Output System the BIOS is the first bit of code executed when you boot your PC It stores all kinds of essential information about your system such as your CPU s clock speed the size and type of RAM you re running the boot order of your media what on board devices are present and much much more An improperly configured BIOS can prevent Windows Linux from loading while a finely tuned BIOS has the potential to significantly improve performance over a similarly spec d machine Whatever your goal this is your go to guide for everything you ve ever wanted to know about the BIOS We cover every setting even the obscure ones so you ll never feel lost or out of your element no matter what motherboard you re rocking under the hood BY PAUL LILLY 46 MANIMUMPG The BIOS Demustified While every BIOS has its unique properties once you
33. instability elsewhere when the system is under a heavier load and when the PSU is warmed up Since you changed keyboards and the Logitech G15 is a USB keyboard the motherboard may be balking at some USB device in the chain the built in hub in the G15 or the actual keyboard itself First disconnect all nonessential USB devices including the front panel USB ports and card readers plugged directly into the motherboard Now with just the keyboard plugged in try to reproduce the error by rebooting numerous times If you cannot reproduce the problem at least the key board is fine You should now try plugging in one device at a time to see if the problem crop ups If the problem leads you away from USB you should consider pulling indi vidual components from the machine to try to reproduce the problem Since it s hap pening so early in the boot process it sounds like a bad piece of hardware is involved If all of that fails then it may be time to consider swapping out the PSU for another unit but the Doc would not spend money until the free fixes are cleared first Stop Searchin A week ago I opened up My Computer to go exploring my second hard drive However when I double clicked the drive to open it the Windows Search func tion started up and openeda new window When I right click either drive the Search option is the default This is really annoying Many times I forget about this is
34. main claim to fame is that it s designed to facilitate access to Web 2 0 sites such as Last fm and Twitter with built in controls right on the taskbar The OS uses a zone concept which organizes apps in special ar eas based on typical uses making it easy to switch between them quickly During our test it became clear that Moblin is still in the development stage We had lots of problems getting the distro to work correctly it occasionally crashed when we started to the browser Fortunately crashes do not freeze the entire system you just see a pop up dialog box that asks you to send in feedback The interface is slick but requires some adjustment for Windows users The toolbar drops down from the top of the screen and there are icons for browser status update zones applications and IM What is refreshing and un usual is that Moblin doesn t really look like an OS instead it mimics the look and feel of a website The extra features for Twitter updates and IM are great and there are plenty of extra apps including calculators schedulers and a media player What Moblin lacks are full word processing apps and there s no clear way to add one In our tests the Moblin library for adding apps did not let us install OpenOffice As an early beta Moblin has a raft of problems including a lack of USB key support we tried about six of them and problems playing even basic MP3 files Moblin does not pretend to be a full featured OS
35. near 80 Thanks but No Thanks Regarding your 9 Ways to Disaster Proof Your PC arti cle August I felt compelled to comment on you router configuration tips The ones included were great but two important ones were missing B Disable your SSID broad cast You re less likely to be hacked if a hacker doesn t know your network exists B Enable MAC filtering Only allow MAC address es of PCs in your network to join the network Matt Menard Editor in Chief Will Smith Responds We didn t men tion those tips in the article because they don t improve your wireless network s security While hiding your SSID will prevent your net work from showing up in the Connect to a wireless network dialog in Windows and OS X any decent Wi Fi sniffer will still find your hidden network in a matter of moments MAC address filtering is snake oil too With the right tools it s simple to sniff out the MAC addresses in use on a Wi Fi network and clone one for your own use LETTERS POLICY Please send your questions and comments comments d maximumpc com Include your full name city of residence and phone number with your correspondence Letters may be edited for space and clarity Due to the amount of mail we receive we are unable to respond personally to all queries NEXT MONTH COMING IN MAXIMUM PSs Follow Us on Twitter Na Home Server How lo Data backup media streaming and f
36. of target applications specifically related to graph ics processing that should improve games including effects physics particles smoke water cloth etc ray tracing gameplay physics and even AI Analysts expect the first DirectX 11 compatible GPUs to reach the market in the fourth quarter games that take ad vantage of DirectX 11 aren t expected until sometime in 2010 C FLASH MEMORY This Toshiba chip contains the bulk of this 166B iPhone s storage in the form of NAND flash memory While the Numonyx chip stores the phone s OS this is where your music movies and photos live RF TRANSCEIVER This Infineon chip contains the radio for the phone which connects to 26 GSM EDGE networks RAM OS STORAGE This Numonyx chip contains 128MB of RAM plus flash memory that s used to store the iPhone s core software CPU NOT PICTURED The original iPhone was powered by a speedy Samsung ARM based CPU rated to run at 600MHz s although it runs at 412MHz for battery conservation purposes SCREEN The iPhone s 3 5 inch 320x480 res screen sits just on the other side of this protective cover It uses a capacitive sensor that s multitouch capable SPEAKERS AND ANTENNA The lower portion of the iPhone s case contains the microphone speakers and antennas required for the phones Wi Fi cellular and Bluetooth connections WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 61 THIS MONTH 64 MAKE CUSTOM DESKT
37. our Dell laptop using the Add Bluetooth Device option in the Windows Control Panel For the laptop to recognize the controller we also had to press the red sync 26 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com a Wii Remote button in the Wii Remote s battery compartment Your PC should detect it as Nintendo RVL CNT 01 No Bluetooth passkey should be required c T 1 Cone tue Lm oie vfu DU 6 wows ri RUN WIINREMOTE hi SOFTWARE Now download and launch the latest ver sion of WiinRemote http bit ly 181NVV If you successfully paired your Wii Remote the program will let you calibrate the motion sensor and assign buttons By default the program uses the controller s gyroscope to control your mouse cursor The Wii Nunchuck peripheral s analog stick will also control mouse move ment You can achieve more accurate control by activating the IR sensor but you ll need to mount two infrared light sources above your monitor for this to work The Wii s IR light bar is suitable and we powered it by splicing its proprietary plug into a USB cable Add DSLR Features to Your Canon Point and Shoot Digicam We love point and shoot pocket cameras for their small size and ease of use but we lament their relatively paltry feature sets when compared to more expensive DSLR models The good news for owners of the popular Canon PowerShot cameras is that your consumer grade gadget ca
38. separately so as not to interfere with the develop ment process AS A website lets you directly compare Google and Bing results The best way to know whether Google or Bing offers the most relevant links to a query is to enter your query on www bing vs google com where side by side results are displayed either vertically or horizontally on the same page Brilliant KS PC THOMAS MCDONALD THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL ar adapters for the iPhone area dime a dozen but the TuneBase Direct 70 www belkin com is noteworthy for its tight integration with the iPhone Besides piping tunes through your car s stereo using its line input the TuneBase also converts your stereo into a speakerphone The quality s not great but its saves you from having to fumble for your headset You can even tap its button to fire up the iPhone 36S s Voice Control feature ws Graphics Sales Slump GPU market experiences worst year ever s the economy struggles to regain its footing so too does the PC industry The latest sign of this is in the graphics market which recorded anemic sales of graphics chips in 2009 the worst year ever according to Jon Peddie Research Even scarier Peddie says that graphics chip shipments are a leading market indicator since a big portion of chip sales Netflix Courts Rumors July was a busy month for talk of a Netflix acquisition First word w
39. the RAM monitor is slightly more straightforward so we ll add that first In the right hand side of the Samurize Config Editor make sure the Edit Meters tab is selected Since you should be staring at a blank config the only thing visible in the Edit Meters column should be a box that says Standard Tasks with a button labeled Add Meter As you might expect this button presents you with a list of customizable meters that you can add to your config A little less than halfway down the Add Meter list is the Add Memory button Press this to add a memory monitor to your config At first the meter will appear as a simple tex tual display of free memory You should note that meters in the Config Editor use example values and do not actually represent your aU 4h _ e 9 system s status you have to actually load the config with Samurize in order for the meters to synch with your system Now plain text isn t quite what we want for our memory meter so click it and look at the right side of the Config Editor where you can customize your meters First give the meter a more memorable name than Meter 0 This will make it easier to identify which meter you want to edit when you ve got several meters in the config Once you ve changed the name click the drop down list under Draw Type and select Graph Doing this will transform the memory meter into a line graph Next we ll m
40. the TiVo service which makes this our new favorite PVR software solution for the PC WILL SMITH NERO LIQUIDTV Super slick TiVo No HD for premium software for your PC cable channels Works well with protected channels multiple tuners and QAM support is spotty multiple TiVos nationwide 100 www nero com 2 Pilot any plane shoot any rifle get blown up by real tanks o the shooter enthusiast who laments auto aim refuses regenerating health tires of over protective cover systems balks at recoilless rocket launchers and rolls his eyes at infinite respawns ARMA 2 is a love letter perfumed in cordite You re a member of Razor Team a Marine squad deployed by the United States to assist the Chernorussian government against a well armed insurgency Your fire team hits the ground with weapons and equipment modeled after real life counterparts tackling objectives with patient tactics as the conflict evolves into a full civil war But narrative even if it s more of an asset to ARMA 2 than its predecessor isn t the draw For gamers who grew up with titles like Comanche the original Rainbow Six games and Opera tion Flashpoint which was also created by developer Bohemia Interactive ARMA 2 isa platform of comprehensive war realism that appeases those who value complexity don t mind obscure keyboard shortcuts hit Enter on your Num Pad to change between first third person appreciate accurate
41. the same slide out toolless trays But where the Sniper had toolless PCI locking mechanisms the HAF opts for more tradi tional thumbscrews And the interior of the HAE unlike the Sniper s is unpainted metal although the Sniper s motherboard tray isn t painted either Inside the case is roomy with plenty of space for all your parts and plenty of tie downs for cables though the side panels don t bow out as much as the Sniper s so there s less room o B Although the guts of the HAF 922 are solid we wish Cooler Master had painted the interior 76 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com p behind them Building in the HAF was a dream in addi tion to the standard seven card expansion slots Cooler Master has added an extra backplate connector on the case for installing suppleman tal USB eSATA or audio jacks Also like the Sniper the HAF comes standard with three fans A 20cm LED front intake fan a 20cm top fan and a 12cm back fan There are mounting holes for another 20cm fan on the left side panel and you can add a 12cm or 14cm fan to the bottom of the case or swap the 20cm top fan for two 12cm ones Just like in the Sniper The only difference is that the HAF s top fan doesn t have LEDs and the front fan s are red like the full tower HAF s not blue like the Sniper s The side panels and frame of the 19 7x22x10 inch HAF are black painted steel with a chunky plastic front pan
42. usually fastened We upgraded the RAM in an older Asus Eee 901 and with Philips head screws Open the panel and find the a brand new Toshiba NB205 netbook and immediately SODIMM Release the clasps that hold it in and the saw the difference The improvement was particularly module should pop up slightly Remove it and line up noteworthy on the 901 which thanks to its anemic the 2GB SODIMM and slide it into place then close the low cost solid state drives has been the slowest netbook panel replace the battery and boot your netbook Press we ve tested to date Before the RAM upgrade it took F2 during setup to go into the BIOS and make sure the the 901 1 441 seconds to run through our Photoshop benchmark compared with the 673 seconds it took the Toshiba NB205 But with 2GB of RAM the 901 plowed Eee 901 Eee 901 Toshiba NB205 Toshiba NB205 through in a comparatively zippy 1 163 seconds 16 RAM w 26B RAM __ w 1GBRAM w 26B RAM that s nearly a 24 percent improvement The NB205 on the other hand dropped just 13 seconds with its RAM upgrade due to its faster standard hard drive Scores obtained using our standard Photoshop CS3 benchmark XI UPGRADABILITY Accessing Your Inner Hardware So what makes netbook good candidate for upgrade Easy Some netbooks however make swapping out parts more dif access to the parts you ll be replacing of course Most netbook manu ficult if not impossible Toshiba s NB205
43. you don t want anything to do with it There s apparently some way of installing the Cisco media server software without LELA or divulging your email address to Cisco but the documentation doesn t mention it Our second biggest complaint is that it takes the Director a mind blowing 74 seconds to start up from the time you push its power button to the time it s ready to play a note That s a full minute and 14 seconds We ve listened to songs that were shorter than a minute and 14 seconds When we asked the product manager if our experience was typical he sheepishly replied Yeah we re working on that The Linksys Director comes with a good remote control but you can also navigate its menus using the buttons arrayed around its display 86 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com The Director has a luscious 3 5 inch display so it s too bad it won t consistently display album art Cisco s media server insists on pulling album art from the AMG online database instead of simply looking in the album folder or parsing the track s existing metadata If your track s metadata isn t mapped exactly the way it is in AMG s database you ll get placeholder art You can connect the Director to your network with or without an Ethernet cable the device is outfitted with a dual band 2 4 5 0GHz 802 11n radio but can fall back to 802 11b g mode There s an integrated amp that puts 50 watts per channel into a four ohm load or 40 watts pe
44. 1Gb s speed when using an older OS by loading the LAN controller s boot ROM during boot oesnt vi Onboard SATA IDE Device Enables your motherboard s SATA ports Go figure Onboard SATA IDE Ctrl Mode This is where PA 2 I Pee th ET e le SE T 1 uM aw Ber i a7 fs a i 11M IT you ll tell your motherboard to operate its SATA ports in IDE AHCI or RAID mode as outlined above see SATA RAID AHCI Mode Onboard Serial Port This an address and IRQ for your erb serial port Unless you re experiencing IRO conflicts you should leave this setting on Auto if it s an option or however it comes configured by default typically 3F8 IROA If you don t plan on using the serial port you can safely disable this setting freeing up an IRO in the process Onboard Parallel Port Same as above use this setting to configure your parallel port otherwise known as LPT1 Or better yet re tire that crusty dot matrix printer and finally make the jump to a USB based inkjet printer and never bother with a parallel port again Parallel Port Mode Settings here include SPP Standard Parallel Port EPP Enhanced Parallel Port and ECP Extended Capabilities Port EPP adds bidirectional communica tions support between the PC and connected devices resulting in faster transfers and lower CPU usage ECP support
45. 285s The winner Tri SLI by a decision While the ePhex hammered out a stunning 70fps in Crysis the 950Si s 65fps is nothing to sneeze at either Why wouldn t four GPUs albeit clocked lower beat three Crysis doesn t really stress more than three GPUs so the fourth is there for a ride There s also some overhead to having four GPUs slightly more than there is even with three The real oddity was in Unreal Tournament 3 Instead of the 200fps that we expected the 950Si spit out a puzzling 115fps That s way off the mark for this much hardware What s the problem We re not sure but as a sanity check we also ran 3DMark Vantage s GPU test on the extreme setting and found the 95051 on par with the ePhex so we re not too worried about the UT3 performance However one final test using Far Cry 2 on Ultra High settings showed the 95051 running about 27 percent slower than the ePhex Mind you that still amounts to an excellent 87fps at 1920x1200 but the Maingear rig was clearly the faster of the two 519 143 The 9505115 surprisingly quiet for the amount of hardware packed inside One area where the 95051 clearly wins though is in price At nearly 2 000 less than the ePhex the 9505115 more than 30 percent cheaper But is that really what a buyer who steps into this class of hardware is looking for In today s economy perhaps Still the 95051 is a respectable machine it s just not the fastest thing out there
46. 3 6 Media Room 35 feet Mb s 4 54 14 8 Enclosed Patio 38 feet Mb s 29 5 70 0 Outdoors A 90 feet Mb s No Connection 2 52 Outdoors B 85 feet Mb s 0 25 0 60 PC to NAS small min sec 2 54 0 36 PC to NAS large min sec 8 53 2 27 NAS to PC small min sec 1 06 0 39 NAS to PC large min sec 5 52 2 44 LCD internal hard drive bay built in FTP and BitTorrent software Expensive slow wire less and NAS through put hard drive bay limited to 2 5 inch drives Best scores are bolded Additional test criteria available at http bit ly PQmtv 88 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Best scores are bolded We used the contents of Maximum PC s November 2007 CD for the small file testing and a single 2 79GB file for the large file testing All scores are an average of three transfer trials 300 www dlink com Nero LiquidTV It s not like TiVo for your PC it is TiVo for your PC o long term TiVo users most other personal video recording solutions whether they re PC based or provided by your cable or satellite provider just fall short TiVo takes a complex task recording your favorite TV shows for later playback on demand and makes it simple easy and even fun As officially licensed TiVo software for your PC LiquidTV delivers all the TiVo features you know and love in a PC friendly software package The LiquidTV package comes wi
47. 600 the correct part number Can you please tell me where 1 might purchase this product Thanks again for an excellent magazine Robert Thomas Senior Editor Gordon Mah Ung Responds Thatis the correct name TC 5600 is a brand new formulation from Dow Corning that from what Iamtold just made it pastthe lawyers and is now getting out to vendors You should expect to see TC 5600 offered from various vendors in the next few months You can also expect to see an upcoming comparison we ll conduct to determine the most effective thermal grease formulation out there Why Win 7 RC1 I was just reading the Dream Machine story in your September issue and have a problem with your decision to recommend Win 7 RC1 as the OS I m not sure including a beta OS is a wise decision in the first place I currently have Win 7 RC1 installed and definitely find it to be a good OS but I have run into several issues The most significant is the fact that Punkbuster does not support beta OSes The Call of Duty franchise for instance uses Punkbuster 1 and to my knowledge Punkbuster does not plan on supporting Windows 7 until its release date That could be disappointing to any would be gamers who build with these specs Ramsay Bohm Editor in Chief Will Smith Responds In fairness we recommended a release candi date OS not a beta OS though I appreciate your concern While Iwouldn t recommend run ning a RC operating sys
48. 8 2312 akardelfafutureus com ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Jose Urrutia 650 238 2498 jurrutiafafutureus com PRODUCTION PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Richie Lesovoy PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Dan Mallory PRINT ORDER COORDINATOR Jennifer Lim CONSUMER MARKETING DIRECTOR CONSUMER MARKETING Rich McCarthy CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Crystal Hudson NEWSSTAND DIRECTOR Bill Shewey CONSUMER MARKETING OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Lisa Radler RENEWAL AND BILLING MANAGER Mike Hill BUSINESS MANAGER Elliot Kiger SR ONLINE CONSUMER MARKETING DIRECTOR Jennifer Trinker CUSTOMER SERVICE MANAGER Mike Frassica FUTURE US INC 4000 Shoreline Court Suite 400 South San Francisco CA 94080 www futureus inc com PRESIDENT Jonathan Simpson Bint VP CFO John Sutton VP INTERNET DEVELOPMENT Tyson Daugherty GENERAL COUNSEL Charlotte Falla EDITORIAL DIRECTOR GAMES GROUP Stephen Pierce EDITORIAL DIRECTOR MUSIC Brad Tolinski EDITORIAL DIRECTOR TECHNOLOGY amp LIFESTYLE Jon Phillips DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES Nancy DuBois Future US Inc is part of Future plc Future produces carefully targeted special interest magazines websites and events for people who share a passion We aim to satisfy that pas sion by creating titles offering value for money reliable information smart buying advice and which are a plea sure to read or visit Today we publish more than 150 magazines 65 web sites and a growing number of events in the US UK France and Italy Over 100 international editio
49. D drive s 76MB s In fact those times are more com parable to Seagate s speedy 1 5TB Barra cuda 7200 11 the 2TB drive s read speeds are slightly lower and its write speeds Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB h2benchw Average Sustained Transfer Rate Read MB s WD Caviar Green 2TB h2benchw Average Sustained Transfer Rate Write MB s h2benchw Random Access Read ms h2benchw Random Access Write ms HDTach Burst Read MB s 674 945 PCMark Vantage Overall Score 14 088 Best scores are bolded Our test bed uses a 2 66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 2GB of Corsair DDR2 800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI mother board one EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX card a Western Digital 500GB Caviar hard drive and a PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool PSU Scores for h2benchw and HDTach were generated in Windows XP Professional with SP2 PCMark Vantage scores were run in Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit slightly higher than the smaller drive s Random access times for the Cuda were a few milliseconds slower than those of the Caviar at 13 2ms random read and 10 06ms random write latency Its HDTach burst speed was 10 percent lower than the Caviar s at 196MB s versus the Western Digital drive s 218MB s With even green drives catching up to the WD VelociRaptor in performance random access times aside while offering eight times the storage for the price it s now both possible and easy to colossal amounts o
50. D monitor required to display it Thankfully there s a way for you to play your games in 3D without buying any expensive new hardware Nvidia s 3D Vision drivers actually in clude an anaglyph mode so you can experience 3D gaming with red cyan 3D glasses The one caveat This method only works if you have an Nvidia GPU and are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 Here s how to get anaglyph 3D up and running in less than 10 minutes DOWNLOAD THE DRIVERS First you need to download Nvidia s 3D Vision drivers Head over to the download page http bit ly YZsm and select 3D Vision as the product type along with your operating system If you aren t running Nvidia s latest GeForce videocard drivers version 186 18 at press time you ll have to download and install those as well TURN ON 3D VISION After you ve installed the 3D Vision drivers launch the Nvidia Control Panel from the Windows Control Panel menu You should see a section labeled Stereoscopic 3D Expand that menu and click Enable Stereoscopic 3D ENABLE ANAGLYPH MODE In the following pop up window click Enable 3D Vision Dis cover This is the option that switches Nvidia s 3D Vision settings from 120Hz shutter based 3D to anaglyph red cyan that can run on any normal 60Hz monitor ROCK THE RETRO 3D GLASSES The next time you launch a 3D Vision compatible game you ll be able to play it in 3D with any pair of generic red cyan glasses the set Intel gav
51. DON MAH UNG SENIOR EDITOR NORMAN CHAN ONLINE EDITOR This month I was able to check out some new PC games at Comic Con One of the games that impressed me the most was Avatar a tie in with James Cam eron s upcoming movie Ubisoft is developing the game with 3D play in mind just as Cam eron shot his film with proprietary 3D camera technology The results are quite stunning CO M M E N S Ou Waite We RESPOND We tackle tough reader questions on Finding the Bin File Dream Machine Matters Bin There Done That In your Which DVD Drive is the Fastest Disc Ripper article April you discuss hacking the firmware of a Samsung SH S223 I thought I would try this but have been unable to locate a bin copy of the Samsung firmware Instead all I have been able to locate is an exe version which is a self installing firmware update put out by Samsung The Codeguys RPC1 program that you mention in your article requires a bin file to operate I was hoping someone on your staff might know where to locate one Robert Morley Deputy Editor Katherine Stevenson responds After obtaining the appropriate exe firmware file from Samsung s website you need to open that file we used the free 7 Zip app www 7 zip org to get at the bin file Then use the Patch_Utility_Samsung exe from codeguys rpc1 org to modify the bin file which is straightforward CUTCOPYPASTE In
52. Duo proc the same 3GB of DDR2 667 RAM the same Intel GS45 chipset and nearly the same DVD burner the R600 s has a slimmer profile Besides all that the A605 s 320GB hard drive is double the capacity of the R600 s Not surprisingly the two machines perform similarly although the R600 did ever so slightly edge out the A605 in our benchmarks Pho toshop and ProShow are mostly CPU bound so it s hard to explain the small gap in those scores Perhaps the A605 s larger hard drive plays a part or maybe extra baggage in Vista Home Premium vs Vista Business is at fault Other variables could explain why the A605 s battery pooped out just shy of four hours in our video rundown test while the R600 s lasted almost a half hour longer Neither the R600 nor the A605 are the best performing ultraportables we ve tested That honor goes to HP s 2530p and Lenovo s X200s both also reviewed in August which featured 1 86GHz Core 2 Duo procs The R600 overcame this deficit with its near weightlessness The less expensive A605 doesn t have this special quality It does however have respectable performance a strong feature set and a damn good price KATHERINE STEVENSON VERDICT TOSHIBA PORTEGE A605 06 6 6 9 6 06 6 6 9 6 9 G6 0 6 0 9 0 6 6 6 6 6 6 9 6 6 9 6 9 6 6 Great price loads Unimpressive fit and of features well finish middle of the rounded capabilities
53. IOS If at all possible avoid using these particularly if you re updating your BIOS because of instability Should your Windows installation suddenly freeze or restart you could be in a world of hurt ipn 1 NX dT ZSL Keep DHI Bata Enable Lead CHOS Defeait Enebia pia ts nit Z2 Seve BIDS to Brive Gigabyte s Q Flash utility walks you through the process of updating your BIOS There are several methods for updating a BIOS the simplest being from a USB key Some motherboard manufacturers implement a built in utility for updating the BIOS during POST Gigabyte boards for example come with a Q Flash utility To use it you would first go to your motherboard s product page and download latest BIOS file when updating a BIOS you don t need to go in order you can skip straight to the latest BIOS version and copy it to your USB key Next reboot your PC and hit the End key during POST or F8 from within the BIOS This brings up the Q Flash utility Follow the GUI prompts to locate and load the BIOS on your USB key and sit back while the new firmware is written Be sure not to power down or reset your system If you own an older or proprietary system you may need to kick it old school and update your BIOS with a floppy disk using one of several utilities Reference your motherboard maker s website to see which utilities your motherboard supports luto i Auto A NI
54. M Virtualization Technology Enabling this feature allows virtualization programs like VMWare and Virtual PC to tap into your processor s hardware virtualization support Bi Directional PROCHOT Enabling this setting sends a bidirectional signal that indicates if the processor has exceeded its maximum tem perature and whether or not it should activate the Thermal Control Circuit WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 55 a eA PnP PCI Configurations This is the section of the BIOS that deals with the PCI bus and Plug and Play set tings most notably IRQ mapping Unless you re attempting to run legacy hardware or are running into troubleshooting issues with your PCI peripherals you won t be spending much time if any in this section PCI1 and PCI2 IRQ Assignment This lets you configure whether your PC will dole out IRO resources automatically or you will configure them manually Unless you re dealing with older hardware or niggling IRO conflicts that are not resolved by moving PCI cards to different PCI slots you should leave this one on Auto PC Health Status On most Asus boards this section will c labeled as a Hardware Monitor submenu in the Power section MSI boards usually call this H W Monitor accessible through the BIOS s main menu In each case this is where you ll find system vitals such as current system and CPU temperatures fan speeds and various voltage levels This is
55. OP WIDGETS 67 SYNC YOUR FILES EMAIL AND BOOKMARKS FASTEST BOOT IN THE WEST or this month s Hardware Hacks feature page 22 I spent some time looking for a lightweight operating system to load onto our netbook picture frame project Windows XP the OS we ended up using was function ally sufficient but we wanted to find an OS that could load faster One idea we had was to hack a copy of the Splashtop operating system onto our hard drive Splashtop the instant on Linux based OS that s built into Asus motherboards was an attractive option for its quick boot time but we found it very difficult to extract the system files required to mount onto a bootable drive The alternative that worked was xPUD another Linux variant that takes just 50 of disk space Using the UNetbootin utility http bit ly 2UcbwV we easily downloaded xPUD directly onto a blank USB key which was then bootable on our PC at startup While a little un derpowered xPUD clocked in at an amazing 10 seconds to boot which makes it definitely worth NORMAN CHAN ONLINE EDITOR trying if you want to keep a portable operating system on you at all times Pr SUBMIT YOUR IDEA Have a great idea for a How To project Tell us about it by writing to comments maximumpc com tep by Step Guides to Improving Your PC WINDOWS TIP OF THE MONTH
56. REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE H LA B m Tested Reviewed Verdictized a he 74 DIGITAL STORM 9505 _ 75 SEAGATE BARRACUDA LP 2TB 76 COOLER MASTER HAF 922 78 TOSHIBA PORTEGE A605 80 VANTEC EZSHARE ADAPTER 82 APPLE IPHONE 3GS LED tres 84 ZALMAN CNPS 10X EXTREME 86 LINKSYS DIRECTOR WIRELESS N 87 CANON EOS REBEL 11 5000 3 88 DLINK DIR 685 XTREME N STORAGE ROUTER 90 NERO LIQUIDTV 91 ARMAII M gt 3 ZI ONLINE EVEN MORE REVIEWS BEST OF THE BEST EDITORS BLOGS THE NO BS PODCAST DI IN THE LAB REVEWSOFTHE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Digital Storm 85051 This sleek black rig brings quad SLI and Core i goodness f you doubt the existence of mirror uni verses that are almost the same except for minor changes Digital Storm s 95051 rig could make a believer out of you The 950Si is that similar to Maingear s Kick Ass Award winning ePhex that we reviewed in August albeit with some slight differences For instance the ePhex s all white enclosure was a Silverstone TJ10 while the 95051 uses a nearly all black TJO9 In graphics the 950Si features dual EVGA GeForce GTX 295 cards while Maingear opted for three GeForce GTX 285 cards Both rigs sport Intel s top proc the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition at 4GHz but get there differ ently Digital Storm does a straight multiplier overclock of 31x133MHz base cloc
57. able To resolve this motherboard makers in troduced a way for users to manually force a delay before this happens Full Screen Logo Rath er than display a drab and sometimes cryptic POST screen en abling this setting will instead display the motherboard manufacturer s boot logo or splash screen if one is included More than just window dressing these splash screens often display helpful tips such as which button to press to get into the BIOS most often the DEL key and how to initialize the motherboard s BIOS update utility Init Display First In ancient times somewhere around the year 9 B T before Twitter gamers evolved from using PCI based videocards to those built for the then emerging AGP standard This setting allowed users to tell their systems which type of card they were using con figured improperly it could lead to a blank screen This was mainly relevant when running two types of videocards in the same machine Today s gamers get their groove on with PCI Express based videocards Most modern motherboards give you the option of selecting PEG which is your PCI Express graphics port or PCI The latter comes in handy when troubleshooting a potentially bad videocard by sticking a PCI card in your system if it s not automatically detected change this setting to PCI Integrated Peripherals Every motherboard comes with at least a handful of embedded features Wh n installing a third pa
58. ake sure the graph is displaying exactly the information we want it to display so click the Source tab Since we want the graph to show how much memory we re using rather than how much we have available click the drop down list under Select Return Value and choose Used Mem Also change the unit to 6 which will save us the trouble of assigning a minimum or maximum value for the chart You can fine tune the appearance of the meter in the Display tab which contains fields for customizing the look of the graph including the scale color alpha mirroring and more If you select a different type of meter in the Draw Type field of the first tab the fields in the Display tab will be differ ent You can make yours look however you like we chose a nice Matrix green look for ours Resize it into a square by entering a value of 100 into the Width and Height fields under the General tab Now we ll add the CPU graph Click Add Meter again but this time select Add Perfmon from the drop down menu The Perfmon object is a much more flex ible meter which allows you to monitor nearly every aspect of every piece of hardware in your PC By default Perf mon is set up to act as a CPU monitor but you can adjust it to monitor other hardware by changing the Performance Object and Counters fields Don t feel bad if you can t figure out the purpose for each individual counter DPCs Queued sec for instance you can always click the Explain
59. and still keep the copy of Vista that comes preinstalled If so how would I do it I don t want to pay for a laptop with Vista on it just to lose it for XP Especially with Windows 7 right around the corner Andrew Muscha Andrew if your school requires you d better get a different computer HP s sup port site doesn t have any XP drivers for the TouchSmart tx2z But the company may have a similar tablet with XP support you should call HP and see Once you get a computer WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 17 u D R IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TIME that supports XP you can shrink your hard drive parti tion and install Windows XP in the free space Vista s dex We Name lope Data Partition Manager can do Duero ue 0 57 cr that as can third party apps H ee Deweem auf ngs PEG uoo like EASEUS Partition Master DIM o 52 prop Srem Cagact www partition tool com 1 re a 2 wa Pecet vt iym oem drda agna batten Pac iara ipis 5 oe ere prep Seem Percertf Somer C eroqu ts boot from your XP install disc shoving and install it to the empty par De tition Use your Vista repair OVO disc afterward to restore your tus Sy lOt boot manager you ll
60. are compatibility than with Windows UBUNTU NETBOOK REMIX Ubuntu Netbook Remix http bit ly 179eOh is a variant on the popular Linux distro but sports a new UI design and runs without some of the overhead of big brother Ubuntu 9 04 such heavy duty built in apps meant more for desktop than mobile use Ubuntu Netbook Remix is remarkably easy to use The main interface places all common functions and tools on one screen a stark departure from the relatively blank desk top of Ubuntu 9 and Windows or OS X for that matter We were impressed with Ubuntu Netbook Remix and its ability to run all open apps smoothly even on machines with just 1GB of RAM However Ubuntu doesn t come with any applications that aren t Open Source As such several very common formats aren t supported out of the box in cluding MPEG2 and Flash video If you want to enable these formats in Ubuntu s included media players you can do so in one fell swoop by installing the package ubuntu restricted extras using your package manager We love this OS because it works well with many apps open has some of the best UI features such as a main screen designed for folks who are unfamiliar with Linux loads and boots quickly and looks simple and elegant Metan 10 du day MOBLIN Moblin http moblin org is the new netbook operating system originally developed by Intel and now part of the Linux Foundation Moblin s
61. as that Amazon might purchase the DVD rental service sending Netflix s stock price up five percent But specula tion later turned to Microsoft when various business commentators raised doubts that Amazon would want the sales tax obligation of Netflix s multi state operation and further noted the success of Microsoft s partnership with Netflix on the Xbox 360 A third possibility is that Netflix will simply stay put KS NETFLIX ee or 1 Sle MPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com goes to original design manufacturers ODMs and original equipment manu facturers OEMs But it s not all gloom and doom Peddie expects to see signs of a recovery in the third quarter Moreover Q3 will mark the beginning of major architectural changes and products from Intel Nvidia and AMD ATI as each continues to develop GPGPU products PL Intel Ups Netbook Pixels Is Intel increasing the allowable screen resolution in netbooks using Atom N series chipsets from 1024x600 to 1366x768 Sony s recently announced VAIO W netbook which features the higher screen res suggests so As it stands in order to use the higher resolution panels companies have to choose from Intel s Z series Atom chips or forgo the preferential N series pricing Intel s reasoning for this has been to clearly distinguish between a netbook and notebook but perhaps the company is now content to let physical screen size separate the two segments
62. ate a previous version each time could prove to be more hassle than it s worth should probably let go of anyway Features missing from the Home Premium edition can be easily duplicated with free third party applications which tend to be more flexible anyway It s easy to get caught up in the Maximum PC spirit that only Ultimate will do but if you really are a home user better tools exist to do pretty much everything found in the higher editions Once you have decided on a version the next chal lenge is to determine if you will need an upgrade OEM or full retail copy of Win dows 7 Upgrade editions will require a copy of 2000 Vista or the Windows 7 RC to be installed with Vista being the only approved OS for in place upgrades OEM editions might also seem tempting because of their dis counted price but the licenses will be keyed to your hardware making activations pain ful for those who upgrade often Full retail editions carry the highest price tag but also contain the fewest hassles Activations rarely require a follow up call to Microsoft and you can migrate your copy endlessly when you upgrade For those of you who own a previous version of Windows upgrade editions are the natural choice They reward existing customers and come with a hardy discount This time however we caught wind of an interesting requirement that might make you think twice Microsoft has been slowly creeping up the previous version
63. audio modeling if a tank explodes a mile away you ll hear it five seconds after it actually blows up and know that an M 16 can t kill someone from three miles away hello Call of Duty The ultimate military simulator tagline isn t far off but it does come with some well attached strings Namely buggy code that can t always keep up with ARMA 2 s ambitious attempt at realism For every moment of ac curate weapon physics and war atmosphere there s a corresponding miscue of brainless AI or broken mission scripting You can fly team mates over a war zone in a C 130 transport plane to execute a tactical air drop but sit Pull up For newcomers to simulation games piloting this UH 1Y and other aircraft takes practice puzzled when parachuting 10 feet from the ground lets you land unharmed Realistic ballistics modeling will have you compensating for bullet drop and recoil during firefights but if you re shot your AI team mates usually leave you writhing on the ground because they forget to heal you Fighting against unscripted Alin an unrestricted 225 square kilometer slice of fictional Russia means you apply the tactics you want to but strategy won t count when an enemy rifleman ignores the bulky shrubs you re lying prone in and snipes you from a half mile away Call out targets with a fully voiced in Russian no less command sys tem but cringe when your war buddies shout like a Speak amp Spell running
64. authen tication that started with a disc check in XB but which now appears to require an installed and activated version of Windows to be present every time If you re the type who likes to reinstall often to get that fresh PC feel you might not appreciate the extra work a double install entails Microsoft has yet to comment on this little caveat and certainly anything can happen between now and October 22 UE Q U R T THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL HHE Pandora Raises Radio Ruckus _ Internet radio webcaster demands that AM FM pay fair share fter at last reaching an agreement z HHE with artists and record labels over HHF royalties Bay Area based radio d webcaster Pandora is causing a stir by A Hi suggesting that AM FM radio begin pay HE ing comparable royalties to rights holders HHE 1 i AA HH arguing that Internet radio shouldn t have 23 iui Inr to pay higher fees HHF Pandora has asked that Internet radio HHE fans call House Majority Leader Nancy HH Pelosi s office to request her support on Pandora Internet Radio asks you to pick a HHE the Performance Rights Act which would song artist or genre then delivers you a Em full blown personalized radio station HHE force conventional radio to pay royalties to HHE record companies and artists in addition to HHE the songwriters who are currently compen group increases with every click and link
65. button is later configurable When in Alt mode you ll see an lt ALT gt indicator at the bottom of the OSD Pressing the Menu button will bring up the CHDK menu where you can enable a live histogram zebra stripes to indicate overexposure and turn on RAW recording mode The available feature set depends on your PowerShot model so check the official CHDK wiki http bit ly Ge2ck for more information BOOT CHDK AT STARTUP If you don t want to manually load CHDK every time you use your camera you can set it to auto load as long as your SD card is smaller than 2GB and not formatted for FAT32 most aren t by default From the same Zip file you downloaded earlier copy the PS fir and DISKBOOT bin files to the root directory of your SD card Enter the CHDK menu using Alt mode and navi gate to Miscellaneous Stuff Select Make Card Bootable and hit the set button Take out the SD card and slide its physical locking mechanism into the lock position The next time you turn on the camera CHDK should automatically start up as well Make a Working Laser Phaser As a kid did you ever run around your back yard waving a plastic toy gun around and making pew pew noises Did you ever wish that toy gun could shoot an actual laser beam Well you re a grown up now and it s time to make your dreams come true We re going to show you how to im plant a real high powered blue laser into a plastic Star Trek Phaser But
66. d gt Li Drive Refers to the type if any of floppy drive you have installed or plan to install The most common today is 1 44M 3 5 inches You can also set this to Disabled if you re not planning to use a floppy Floppy 3 Mode Support Designates a gained any major footing in the U S special type of floppy drive that supports three different types of floppies These Halt On Configure this setting to tell your were mainly used in Japan and never BIOS which errors to ignore during POST 48 MAXIMUMPG oct o9 WWW maximumpc com MELLL LI FEAR NOT THE Advanced BIOS Features In the Advanced menu you ll begin to delve beneath the surface and configure how various parts of your system operate This might also be where you set the boot priority though some motherboards tike those offered by Asus dedicate a separate submenu to this task Hard Disk Priority When you have mul tiple hard drives installed this setting tells your BIOS which order it should attempt to boot them This can be handy for dual boot ing OSes with each OS say Windows and Linux installed on separate drives First and Subsequent Boot Device This is where you ll determine what order your system should attempt to boot from If in stalling Windows for example you ll want to designate your CD DVD drive as the first boot device before your hard drive Password Check If you set a password you can instruct your BIOS to ask fo
67. d drives with 120GB to 160GB of storage And that means that you have plenty of options You can trade for a faster higher capacity hard drive or a much faster solid state drive Because solid state drives have no moving parts they are sturdier and less prone to shock failure than standard hard drives and typically use less power Unless Seagate s Mo you want to spend an arm and a leg on a high capacity mentus 7200 4 is SSD though you ll probably have to sacrifice storage speedy roomy and only drains space for speed the battery a We took our brand new Toshiba NB205 with a 2GB tad faster than a RAM upgrade in place and tested it first with the stock 5 400rpm drive Toshiba 160GB 5 400rpm drive and then with a 64GB RunCore Pro IV SATA SSD 250 www runcore com as well as a 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200 4 HDD 130 www seagate com However any standard 2 5 inch drive will also work Toshiba RunCore Seagate 160GB HDD 64GB SSD 500GB HDD Best scores are bolded All tests performed on a Toshiba NB205 netbook with 2GB Corsair DDR2 RAM running Windows XP SP3 configurations only differed in hard drive choice Photoshop scores obtained using our standard Photoshop CS3 benchmark PCMark subscore obtained using PCMark05 s HDD benchmark tests HDTach scores obtained using HDTach 3 0 1 0 Battery life obtained using our standard full screen DVD quality video battery rundown test with screen brightne
68. de panels Then hold the can upright to prevent spraying cold liquid and clean the case with short bursts of air It s important to prevent fans from spinning out of control so use a pencil or your finger to block them Or you can buy a micro cleaning attachment for your vacuum cleaner as reader Kevin Fields points out Shop Vac makes the 1 25 inch Micro Cleaning Kit for around 12 It s available from Shopvac com Amazon com Wal Mart and other retailers I have used this kit myself for several years Although neither Inor any of my equipment has ever suffered any ill effects itis still a good idea to prop erly ground yourself before performing any maintenance inside a PC Wise words Of course that might not be the problem at all You may have a faulty power supply or other hardware Check out the Doctor s answer to J P Allen on page 18 and starttesting your Static Prevention If I wear latex gloves to handle PC components like videocards processors memory and hard drives do I still have to worry about static electricity Reggie Wong Merely wearing gloves won t necessarily help prevent static HAVE SOME FEARS ABOUT OPENING UP MY PC AND ACCIDENTALLY DAMAGING IT hardware piece by piece if you feel comfortable doing so Otherwise it might be time to take itto the shop Missing RAM I am running 64 bit Windows 7 RC1 and can access only 3GB of my 4GB of RAM I m running an Asus P5B Deluxe
69. e away for viewing this year s 3D ads during Super Bowl works perfectly for example You can also purchase a pair for less than 2 online http bit y ONYgK During game play you can toggle anaglyph view with the Ctrl T shortcut Since anaglyph 3D is based on color filters games can lose a bit of their vibrancy when you re playing in this 3D mode Left 4 Dead for example works wonderfully but games with lots of red and blue color tones like Team Fortress 2 do not We recommend adjusting the 3D depth with Ctrl F3 and Ctrl F4 to find the best level of comfort for you Control Your PC with While some of us who jumped on the Wii bandwagon have a great time with Super Mario Galaxy and Cooking Mama there are undoubtedly a few regretful gamers who just can t get the hang of Nintendo s waggle based gaming console But there s no need to chuck that Wii out the window yet you can use the Wii Remote as a wireless pointer for your PC FIND A COMPATIBLE BLUETOOTH ADAPTER The Wii Remote uses Bluetooth to connect to the Wii but Windows will also recognize it as a Human Interface Device To connect the Wii Remote to your you ll need a compatible Bluetooth receiver Most new laptops have integrated Bluetooth but you can also purchase a USB Bluetooth receiver online for less than 25 Check the Wii Brew wiki http bit ly oO7et for a list of compatible adapters PAIR THE WII REMOTE WITH YOUR PC We paired the Wii Remote with
70. e n e wee 0 gt o r a Tg Vou cor om treet ov ru d by 1 Seams POP costes al al frat has ameet 010 Coane POF al mad s cad Tac ahead Dee ka oo omab ibe erio hee mu m 1 Pan messages wieed a POP pe we s oos Comhgere yom ered chew o g Osten Poss Uwe IMAP service and access the Configuration Instructions if you re planning on still using a desktop mail client Once you re up and run ning with your mail client you might even feel like dragging and dropping messages stored on your machine over to Gmail This will allow you to search view or access any message across all of your machines You can also use a mail client to drag mail from Hotmail or other services over to your new email account In addition to keeping your email ses sions in sync Gmail offers an innovative ser vice called Mail Fetcher http bit ly 3ij T2 If you head back over to the Settings link you can then click Accounts followed by Add a Mail Account You Own Simply enter your email address and set up the rules regarding incoming messages You can tell Google to leave a copy on the POP server for safe keep ing or to automatically redirect incoming messages to a dedicated folder making your email easy to sort ILLNM s diio qma 2 4 m D ery rm tem ow o o 9 Te Lol o Tp d Using any webma
71. e was surprisingly noisy considering the T1i s relatively large CMOS sensor It s not terrible and it s better than the majority of pocket HD cams but we were hoping perhaps foolishly that the T1i s low light video would rival that of the superb and pricey EOS 5D Mk II Sadly audio is only mono and there s no provision for mic in The trigger for the video is also poorly placed The low light capability of the still images was far more satisfying Although we ve heard complaints of noise issues at high ISOs with the EOS 50D sensor that the T1i is based on we felt the noise control was quite good And when compared to an older generation body such as the 10MP EOS 40D the T1i has the ad vantage The T1i s 3200 ISO is on par with the 40 at a lower 1600 ISO which is quite a feat when you consider how many pixels Canon has jammed onto the APS C sensor format in the Rebel Generally as the pixel density increases on an imaging sensor so does noise The maker can increase the sensor s size but that adds cost Today the APS C size is all budget consumers are going to get Is the T1i the perfect budget DSLR Cer tainly not but it is hard to ask for more in a body at this price Sure we d love to see 24fps 1080p a mic in jack and perhaps a higher performance autofocus system as is it s fine for the majority of folks but for 900 those wishes are unrealistic Of course there was a time when our wishes for a lar
72. ect Properties Click the Security tab then the Advanced but ton Go to the Owner tab and Edit it to give ownership to your computer s administra tor primary user Be sure to include subcontainers and files Now click OK Go back to the Security tab highlight the Administrator you just gave ownership to and hit Edit then give Full Control permissions for that drive You should be able to fully access everything on the disk Dust to Dust I have a roughly year old refurbished computer and for the past few months the fan has been rather loud and more recently the computer has been shutting down on 1 its own especially when I m playing games or even when I m just on AIM or surfing the Internet I believe the computer might be overheating from dust caught in the fans but I m not entirely sure If that is the case how do you recom mend I clean the computer I m quite comfortable work ing on the computer but unfortunately I have very little experience working on the insides of my machine so I have some fears about actually opening up my PC and accidentally breaking something or damaging it Any advice Doc Michael H Its important to keep your computer clean and free of dust pet hair and other debris The best way we ve found to clean out a computer without endangering any of our precious components is to clean it with a can of compressed air Unplug your computer and remove the si
73. ed to tessellation They reside in the geometry processing stage between the Vertex Shader and the Geometry Shader Tessellation can rapidly create the primitive elements that go into the creation of a complex three dimensional object by subdividing just a few at a time In this case the primitives are called patches which are defined by control points visual ize Photoshop s pen tool except that DX11 s control points manipulate a surface instead of a line Patches replace the triangles used in previous versions of DirectX Each subse quent subdivision creates more primitives with each group being smaller than the last Increasing the number of primitives in a model makes that model look more realistic The Tessellator can also reshape these primi tives by adjusting the control points to form more complex geometry While it s very easy for GPUs to produce coarse objects like cubes they have a much harder time creating objects with smooth curves By tessellating a coarse object a cube for example a GPU can transform that object into something that does have smooth curves such as a sphere and the kicker is that this process requires relatively little GPU horse power and graphics memory Here s a broad overview of how tessel lation works The Vertex Shader outputs patches which then travel down the pipeline to the Hull Shader The Hull Shader analyzes the patches control points to determine how the Tessellator should be
74. el and E It s not quite as pretty as the Storm Sniper but the HAF 922 is nearly as good and 50 cheaper mesh bezels Front panel connectors include two USB ports eSATA and audio A front switch lets you turn off the fan s LEDs Like the Storm Sniper the HAF 922 has a mesh side window the HAF logo is printed in black on black on the left panel The top panel seems a little sparse and unfinished but there s room there to mount an external radiator for a water cooling setup Though it lacks some of the features we ve grown used to like removable dust filters and seems at times like a budget ver sion of the Sniper the HAF 922 is still an excellent case with plenty of airflow and room to add more fans And because it s 50 cheaper than the Sniper you can buy more fans with the money you save We HAF to recommend it EDWARDS EH VERDICT COOLER MASTER HAF 922 Roomy great airflow We could use more prettier than its prede LEDs interior is cessor good value Unpainted a side fan would be nice 130 www coolermaster usa com IN THE 1 REMEWSOFTHELATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Toshiba Port g A605 A top of the line ultraportable in lower rent wrapping roundup we fell hard for Toshiba s Port g R600 the lightest sleekest ultraportable notebook we d ever tested At 2 150 how ever that notebook isn t cheap This month we tested Toshiba s more aff
75. er UI and software functionality of both products are virtually the same It s close enough that we have a pretty strong suspicion that the underlying chipsets and software come from the same factory in China There are a few key differences though The first is the construction The Tornado has auto retracting cables making it a nice portable package On the other hand the ezShare works with Macs That s right by plugging one side into a PC and the other side into a Mac 10 4 or greater you get the same Windows Explorer like view and ability to drag and drop files between the two ma chines That ll make it even easier to switch from OS X to Windows 7 this fall We compared our original Tornado with the ezShare by copying files between a Win XP ThinkPad T60 Core Duo notebook and our midrange Core 17 Dream Machine running Windows 7 64 bit It was virtually a tie with both transfer cables taking about 530 seconds to move a 9GB file from the notebook to the desktop Actually we re happy to report that we could even move the large file after we 80 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com n d Beas x 7 we peeve IA omm A simple Windows Explorer like interface pops up on both machines when copying files published our review of the Tornado in 2007 some people reported problems moving files larger than 4GB and we even subsequently experienced occasional issues when u
76. es I d love a presence app like Loopt or Google Latitude that lets me see public profile information of people who share my coordinates in meatspace Right now have no way of knowing that the guy standing next to me on the bus is my college roommate s brother in law But if my phone played a quick game of Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon with his Facebook profile might end up talking about something more interesting than the Giants game on our shared bus ride In fact with a large enough social circle may never meet another stranger again can t help but think that that would enrich my life Isn t that what technology is for LETTERS POLICY Please send comments questions and Sweet Tarts to will maximumpc com Include your full name city of residence and phone number with your correspondence Unfortunately Will is unable to respond personally to all queries page 60 7 OCT 09 Reality Revolution AUGMENTED AWESOME Canon Rebel Tli Netbook Upgrad White Paper Q U R T THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL pgr Amid all the positive press surrounding Microsoft s promotional upgrade pricing some details have been obscured justin kerr W hen Microsoft revealed that Windows 7 upgrade editions would start at a mere 50 Apple fan boys were sent scrambling for their EpiPens to stave off the shock induced by the unbelievable news Sure Leopard users wi
77. ess the power button before your system turns off Options are Instant Off and Delay 4 Sec With the latter option 7 fF PD Us lew Safe Defauite item rid lt Seave ESC FicGheweral I GS INTIP Defeutte enabled pressing the power button as opposed to holding it for four seconds puts the PC in a suspend state feeding a small amount of power to the system WWW maximumpc com ocroo MAXIMUMPG 53 PME Event Wake Up Short for Power agement Event this redundantly named is usually the culprit when you find that yo PC has turned on during the middle the even though you remember turning it o before going to bed Also referred to as Wake on LAN Wol network activity or a stray electrical signal tells your PC to fire up if you have this setting enabled Power on by Ring You might also see this entry labeled Wake Power Up on Ext Modem Enabling this setting tells the PC to turn itself on when a call comes in on a phone line connected to the modem Resume by Alarm Used to specify a time and date of the month or every day for the PC to turn on automatically Some ITs find this handy for ensuring PCs are up and running on Microsoft s Patch Tuesday and businesses find it useful for making sure PCs are up and running when employees start arriving in the morning You might also see this entry labeled Resume by RTC Real Time Clock Alarm HPET Support Short for High Precision Event Timer Microsoft
78. essors clock speed Intel Turbo Boost Tech New to Nehalem Core i7 enabling this feature will temporarily boost processor cores to run faster than their stock frequency de pending on the given power current and temperature levels CPU Cores Enabled Allows you to enable all or just some of your processor s cores CPU Multi Threading Enable this option to take advantage of Intel s HyperThreading technology CPU Enhanced Halt C1E A power saving feature in Intel chips enabling C1E will allow the operating system to send a halt command to the CPU when inactive This halt state reduc es both the processor s voltage and multiplier so that it consumes less power and runs cooler This doesn t affect performance though some power users have noted better overclocking headroom when disabling this setting C3 C6 C7 State Support Essentially a revised version of C1E these higher numbered halt states put the processor into an even lower power state when idle Again overclocking results may vary but performance does not CPU Thermal Monitor First introduced with the Pentium 4 current iterations take a somewhat different approach by dropping down the core clock speed and voltage when things get a bit too hot under the collar CPU EIST Function Short for Enhanced Intel SpeedStep this power saving setting allows Intel chips to dynamically change frequency and voltage levels in small increments based on need Vk ff RATS
79. f storage to your rig without compromising performance Next year s high powered rigs will almost certainly have solid state drives for their operating systems but they ll still need high capacity drives for the grunt work And at 240 for 2TB of decently fast low power draw storage the Barracuda LP will find a home in many a PC NATHAN EDWARDS on VERDICT SEAGATE BARRACUDA LP 2TB You can get two 1TB Barracuda 7200 12s for less than the price of one of these and they ll be faster Among the fastest reads and writes of any high capacity drive low power consumption competitively priced n WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MANIMUMPG 75 IN THE LAB Bevis or THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Cooler Master HAF 922 And now for something rather similar ooler Master wowed us last year with its full tower HAF 932 which gar nered Maximum PC s coveted Kick Ass Award November 2008 Now we ve gotten our hands on the midtower version of the HAE the 922 and it looks awfully familiar Superficially the HAF 922 is like a cross between the full tower HAF 932 and last month s CM Storm Sniper In fact HAF 922 s interior is virtually identical to the Sniper s it has the same fixed motherboard tray with the CPU backplate cutout cable tie downs and cable routing holes The five 5 25 inch drive bays use the same toolless retaining mechanism and the five 3 5 inch hard drive bays use
80. ge buffer video mode and a high resolution screen in a sub 1 000 body were unrealistic too Overall the T1i is the pinnacle of the sub 1K DSLRs it will make anyone looking for a step up from a point and shoot grin from ear to ear GORDON MAH UNG VERDICT CANON EOS REBEL T11 5000 Good low light perfor HD videois slightly mance and HD Video noisy and audio is a sub 1K body mono only IN THE LAB Bevis or THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE D Link DIR 685 Xtreme N Storage Router Love the features hate the performance and the price tag Link s DIR 685 Wi Fi router gener ated a lot of buzz at CES this past January And when we took a gander at its spec sheet we thought it a contender for Best of the Best in the router category something that would finally displace the Linksys WRT600N which is becoming hard to find Alas twas not to be The problem certainly isn t with the DIR 685 s feature set This router is absolutely loaded with goodies The 3 2 inch color LCD can inform you of the router s status and configuration present digital photos from Flickr Picasa and Facebook display RSS feeds such as sports scores weather reports and stock quotes and a lot more this is one router your significant other won t insist
81. h these pins when in low power mode or 500 milliamps in high power mode Although some USB connec tors will provide maximum power without any questions asked most won t unless the USB device requests high power using the proper protocols Most USB hacks aren t that sophisticated and are therefore limited to about 100 200 milliamps of current One last warning An improper USB mod that results in a short circuit can fry your USB port or even your motherboard So make abso lutely sure that all wires are spliced correctly and that any exposed cop per is covered with electrical tape or heat shrink tubing Our first project is to turn a case fan into one we can use on our desk to Using very much the same procedure as above you can convert keep us cool as we work All that s an old battery powered reading light into a USB powered lamp needed is 5 volt case fan preferably illuminate the back of your case you need to do is find with grill and an unused USB cable an LED reading lamp that uses around 5 v e equivalent of First you ll have to expose the about three AAA batteries and open it up wii a screwdriver four internal wires in your old USB Under the battery compartment you should find a red and cable so snip it near the end furthest black wire image D from the connector for the PC and Splice the two wires to the wires in a USB cable just like with use a razor blade or other sharp the fan then put the ba
82. he final 90 percent of the time 14 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com i D R IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TIME This month the Doctor tackles DRAM Demystified DRAM Demystified Could you please explain the many ways DDR3 speed ratings are stated Tom Ellison DDR3 is commonly referred to in two different ways by the module name which denotes the module s theo retical bandwidth and by the effective clock speed at which it runs For example a common performance DIMM is a PC3 12800 mod ule which gives it a theo retical bandwidth of about 12 800MB s The same mod ule can also be referred to as a DDR3 1600 DIMM which means it has an effective clock rate of 1 600MHz Why the two naming conventions Politics and marketing The module name actually goes back to the days when DDR was compet ing with Direct RDRAM A PC 800 RIMM had an effec tive clock speed of 800MHz and a theoretical transfer rate of 1 600MB s per module with dual channel offering 3 200MB s transfer rates Since the initial single channel only DDR 266 modules didn t sound as impressive as a PC 800 module the compet ing SDRAM industry decided to name it PC 2100 for its theoretical bandwidth of 2 100MB s a much bigger number than 800 Outputting Outlook I am starting to back up all my files to CD in anticipation of buying a new computer 16 MAKIMUMPE OCT 09
83. he Google Chrome browser E According to a post on Google s blog Speed simplicity and security are HH the key aspects of Google Chrome OS We re designing the OS to be fast and HE lightweight to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds The user HHE interface is minimal to stay out of the way and most of the user experience HHE takes place on the web HHE The bare bones approach isn t surprising considering that Google s H Chrome browser follows the same philosophy Essentially Google is tweaking HH the Chrome code base to run within a new windowing system piggybacked on HHF a Linux kernel It will run on both x86 and ARM chips and Google has already HH put the wheels in motion with various OEMs to bring several Chrome based IE netbooks to market in the second half of 2010 HHE While Google Chrome OS is still a year away from shipping Google said it HHH will have more updates this fall PL HH www maximumpc com MAXIMUMPG 09 10 THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL Kindle Faces Competition Borders Barnes amp Noble enter ebook fray Now that Amazon com s Kindle ebook reader has made a serious business out of digital bookselling the company is expected to make 310 million off the device this year alone other major indus try players are looking to get in on the action In July Borders U K introduced its own ebook reader called Elonex The
84. he current era of mobile computing Netbook users will probably want to use the Basic or Home Premium editions when the full release is available on October 22 As is we found that the UI design in Windows 7 isn t optimal for netbook use At 1200x600 resolution the buttons and menus take up too much screen real estate While we can t say Windows 7 is a memory hog in fact it s quite snappy with just one or two apps running it is overkill for a netbook At its core it s still designed to support a robust selection of applications such as Adobe NE T e he Pu O ee t O smeg e ws n oom dm oa p song v ome _ oe w AB am e gt 42 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Ubuntu Netbook Remix offers a scaled down UI that s suitable for netbook screens but retains all the functionality of the full Linux distro Photoshop and ProTools It s a multitasking behemoth that taps in quite well to the processing power of Intel s multicore CPUs and is far heavier in terms of disc space usage than some of the alternatives In tests over several days with Windows 7 memory problems became an issue you ll definitely want more than 1GB of RAM if you plan on using it But Microsoft s OS does have one huge advantage over Linux alternatives you won t find better softw
85. if Hf LA y breaking hard ack 0 projects will give new hardware D FLORENCE ION range from relatively safe software tweaks to more challenging technical exercises You ll learn how to bendyUSB connec tions to your will and imbue home rout ith robust new en some inspi ers and digital cameras A features We ve also t ration from projects we ve seen online including building a Blue laser gun and making a digital pic ure frame you can mount on the wall of your office These hacks will help yo showcase ness and give youre 3 better understanding of how your elec WE work An the best part is that you Pooley agan WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 23 Power Everything with USB A simple first modification for budding do it yourselfers is to alter anon USB gadget so that it can be run off of USB power from your computer This mod is fairly easy to perform and is an important part of many more complicated DIY projects such as the USB charger on the next page Here we show you how to use USB to power a desk fan and book light lamp First a quick primer on USB power Any USB cable 2 0 or 1 0 is composed of four wires two for data and two for electricity The power is delivered across the outer two pins a 5 volt wire and a ground USB connectors are configured to provide 100 milli amps of current throug
86. igher than with the Thermalright cooler The 10X is even bigger than its peers too At 5 3 inches tall 4 inches deep and 6 3 inches wide it s slightly larger in every dimension than the Noctua U12P and it weighs more than two pounds The 10X comes dangerously close to being too large some orientations just don t work because the heat pipes bump capacitors or the The Zalman CNPS10X is even bigger than its simi larly shaped peers And we really wish manufacturers would stop calling their coolers Extreme NATHAN EDWARDS VERDICT northbridge heatsinks Both the Noctua and Thermalright coolers can mount additional ZALMAN 5 10X EXTREME fans the Zalman doesn t have that option ee eee SIDS O SAECO CASA OR OSS EGS SES OS BOR AES D SE OO RESO OS OS OS IDES eon aboonsonemodaeooes Good looks variable Bigger more expen speed fan controller sive and not quite as effective as its peers Nomulti fan support can you easily replace the included fan with a higher performing one as many air cooling users prefer We appreciate Zalman s efforts to hit a higher performance mark with its products and we like the CNPS 10X s looks 80 www zalman com and fan control Zalman also BENCHMARKS gets points for including mount ZalmanCNPS Thermalright 10X high U120 eXtreme Stock Cooler ing brackets for Core i7 Core i5 and AMD motherboards But the Id
87. il based service is the ultimate way to keep all your email contacts and calendars in sync However for a certain percentage of the population Outlook is a safety blanket they simply refuse to live without If you fall into this category it s OK you still have options Google Calendar Sync allows you to manage your calendar both through Gmail s web interface and using Outlook Calendar Sync is currently compat ible with Windows XP Vista and 7 and is designed for use with Outlook 2003 or 2007 Google avum Al tm fm Lows m Tyee Ogtern te gt o o m Meo tt 5 o gt lem serpe eote h Beemt 4 ww oo een oho eon edi ned Cod e A nt et om 9 os UD 4 Aaa s Lama wm Your first step will be to download Google Calendar Sync Client http bit ly g6nb0 and run the installer Once this is complete you will see the above configura tion screen which will allow you to input your Gmail Account details and if you want one way or two way sync When making your decision we recommend that you pick the option that most realistically matches your usage scenario Calendar sync works well but you can further remove the odds of conflicts or corruptions if you select one way sync You can also configure the time between sync sessions the minimum selectable is 10 minutes www maximumpc com 09 MAXIMUMPE 69
88. ile sharing is easier than ever with a centralized PC We ll show you how to build configure and tweak your own Windows Home Server Top Secret Hardware For now we re sworn to secrecy but expect to get all the details ona very high profile product including benchmarks Clean Your Make your machine neat and tidy with our piece by piece cleaning guide 09 MANC 95 Www maxin iumpc com UnleashayourapO s Potential sve Ey FN GS ke ERATUM MAXIMUM p Each issue of me um Maximum PC features Brutally honest product reviews Hard hitting editorials Tips to blast your machine s performance E insightful and innovative How To s CD loaded with new software utility and game demos Reserve your 2 FREE Trial Issues today There s no obligation To order head to www maximumpc com archive BEST OF THE BEST A PART BY PART GUIDE TO BUILDING A BETTER PC 120 eXtreme s tired as we are of the extreme moni ker we can make an exception here Thermalright s Ultra 120 eXtreme is worthy of the name Like all the top performing air coolers we ve tested recently the Ultra 120 uses a Skyscraper like configuration of cool ing fins rising high above the heatsink and features a 12cm fan clipped to the front Make no mistake the Ultra 120 is big It s heavy and installation is tricky but once it s on it works like a
89. ing for memory modules RAS to CAS is typically the second number in the set of four tRP Also referred to as DRAM RAS Precharge this is how long it takes for the memory to stop accessing one row build up a charge and access another The lower the number the fast this takes place When shop ping for memory modules RAS Precharge is typically the third number in the set of four tRAS Also referred to as Precharge Delay this number represents the minimum number of cycles that pass between an ac tive and precharge command The lower the number the faster the performance The Pre charge Delay is typically represented by the last and highest number in the set of four gt Command Rate CMD The Command Rate is the delay in clock cycles from when a memory chip is selected and when the first active command can be sent A 1T command rate offers better performance than 2T but if you experience instability you ll want to change this to 2T Channel A B C Turnaround Settings These submenus control the read and write delay settings again separated by channel LEARN MORE AT P http bit ly 43mEh6 Updating or flashing the BIOS carries a certain amount of risk but the potential rewards make it worth the effort Motherboard makers are constantly enhancing the BIOS firmware and the result can be significantly improved performance less buggy behavior additional functionality improved overclocking performance
90. io button You ll be prompted to select Empower Your Mini PCI E SSD Huge performance increases await you So you were a netbook early adopter You grabbed a netbook with a tiny Mini PCI E SSD like the Asus Eee 901 we re viewed in December 2008 You don t mind the tiny keyboard and you love the battery life But gosh having just 12GB of molasses slow storage is painful and there s no room for a 2 5 inch SATA drive Fortunately several manufacturers make netbook specific Mini PCI E SSDs We swapped out our Eee 9015 original drive with two aftermarket Mini PCI E SSDs to see if we could wring some more performance out of the machine In both cases we left in the 2GB RAM upgrade from the beginning of the article it s such a cheap and easy up grade that we recommend every netbook owner do that first Both RunCore and Super Talent make Mini PCI E SSDs specifically for 900 series Eee PCs We tested RunCore s 64GB Pro SATA Mini PCI E SSD 220 www runcore com and Super Talents Mini PCI E 64GB MLC SSD 205 www supertalent com If you have a different Mini PCI E netbook both vendors sell find aftermarket SSDs for devices Cloning your C drive to a Mini PCI E drive can be tricky The RunCore drive has a USB port on it making cloning easy but the Super Talent doesn t Eee 901 users are in luck however though you l eventually use your new SSD as your C drive you re actually replacing the 8GB D drive the C dri
91. iority classes should be reserved for normal web surfing downloads and peer to peer networks like BitTorrent where trial and error will help and we recommend that you Under the Classification menu you ll have to assign specific utilize Tomato s Graphs feature to show you what effect your services to class rankings image C You can identify services configuration has on your current traffic We also recommend based on their network protocol type port or packet size You referencing the Tomato wiki http bit ly aAu73 for further can even use MAC addresses and local IPs to relegate one user clarification on all of the firmware s varied settings on your home network to a specific prioritization class This is 32 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Turn Your iPod into a Mini PDA For most people an MP3 player serves a pretty narrow purpose It plays music maybe a video here or there if you ve got a newer model and might have a handful of applications All in all though MP3 players are rarely treated as anything more than tiny portable jukeboxes which is a shame because as gadgets they ve got the potential for so much more That s why we re going to show you how to install custom Rockbox firmware to add support for new codecs gapless playback and even Doom on your MP3 player Rockbox is open source replacement firmware for MP3 play ers It supports a wide range of players including many but n
92. just how far this camera has come The original DRebel sported a dust sensitive 6 3MP CMOS sensor and a pathetic four shot JPEG buffer The new EOS Rebel T1i 500D ups the megapixels to 15 1 and features a massive 170 shot JPEG buffer at 3 4fps Dust cleaning once rare in DSLRs is featured as is Live View or the ability to use the LCD screen to focus and frame a shot The three inch screen is a gorgeous 920K pixels and makes smaller and lower res screens seem antiquated The real eyebrow raising feature of the Megapixels 15 1 4752x3168 Max Resolution 22 3mm x 14 9mm APS C CMOS 3 2 ratio with self cleaning 1 6 FOV Image Sensor Autofocus 9 point TTL CT SIR Shutter Speeds 1 4000 to 30 sec X sync at 1 200 sec Shooting Buffer 170 large fine JPEG 9 RAW Video Mode 720p 1280x720 30fps 1080p 1920x1080 a 20fps VGA 640x480 a 30fps max single file size 4GB Storage SD SDHC 500 shots without flash per charge Rated Life or 400 using 50 flash Rebel T1i though is its support for 720p and 1080p video modes While we once believed that DSLRs would never do video it s now the top checkbox on newer models The T1i sup ports 720p at 30fps but at 1080p resolution the frame rate drops to a nearly unbearable 20fps Video is compressed using H 264 and is stored in a QuickTime MOV container We found the video quality to be mixed The low light performanc
93. k to get to 4 1GHz Maingear preferred a 21x multiplier with a 160MHz base clock to get to 4GHz Even in SSDs there s a similar but different feel Maingear tapped two Intel 80GB X 25M drives Digital Storm opted for two of Corsair s 64GB M64 SSDs Our performance tests yielded a few surprises The water cooled 4 1GHz Core i7 runs circles squares and heptagons around our now ancient Core 2 Quad zero point But good against a Core 2 is one thing good against another Core i7 that s something else When compared with Maingear s ePhex the 95051 was able to grab two benchmark crowns by nudging the ePhex aside in the multithread lovin Main Concept Reference and ProShow Producer tests But then things got a little odd Despite its slightly higher clocks 4 1GHz vs 4GHz the 950Si actu ally fell to the ePhex in Photoshop CS3 and Premiere Pro CS3 by about eight percent and 10 percent respectively We re not sure why VISTA 64 BIT BENCHMARKS ZERO POINT Premiere Pro CS3 1 260 sec but perhaps it s the result of the higher OPI from the bclock overclock versus the straight multiplier overclock Or perhaps it s the RAM Although we have not known this to impact performance the ePhex packed 12GB of Kingston DDR3 1600 while the 950Si loads up with a lean 6GB of Mushkin DDR 1600 The clash of the titans came in gaming where it was the 950Si s quad SLI two dual GPU GTX 295 cards against the ePhex s tri SLI three GTX
94. l at the top of the heatsink or more usefully be routed to the outside of your case with the included extension wire The fan has three auto speed settings low up to 1 500rpm mid up to 1 950rpm and high up to 2 150rpm and one manual dial for fine tuning between 1 000rpm and 2 150rpm Like similar coolers in order to mount the heatsink to your motherboard you have to remove the cooler s fan But unlike the Thermalright and the Noctua which use clips the Zalman s fan is screwed on making installation difficult Worse the fan s very short four pin connector is routed behind the fan inside the cowl which makes it very painful to install Aside from the fan issue mounting the Zalman on a Socket 775 moth erboard is easier than installing most of its peers There s no backplate and the mount ing bracket attaches with a pin mechanism that is quite sturdy The retention mechanism is the same as on Zalman s previous coolers and attaches with four spring screws Unfortunately though the Zalman 10X s form matches that of the category s top coolers its performance does not In our tests the Zalman at maximum fan speed couldn t match our current champion the Thermalright U120 with one fan Idle tem peratures from the Zalman were within two 84 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Pili degrees Celsius of the U120 but temperatures at full CPU burn were four degrees C h
95. le MN os 42 performance isn t quite at the 100 Burn 46 5 425 72 25 level of our slightly smaller more customizable champions and the price is higher Best scores are bolded Idle temperatures were measured after an hour of inactivity load tempera tures were measured after an hour s worth of CPU Burn In four instances Test system consists of a stock clock Q6700 processor on an EVGA 680i motherboard inside a Cooler Master ATCS 840 case with stock fans IN THE LAB Bevis or THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Cisco Director Wireless N Music Player It s no Sonos or Squeezebox for that matter y launching a full line of music streaming products including the Director DMC250 reviewed here Cisco clearly has the Sonos Digital Music System in its sights unfortunately it s fallen well short of the target Our biggest complaint has to do with the convoluted setup process which in cludes installing Cisco s LELA Linksys EasyLink Advisor on at least one PC LELA isn t a bad utility if you re completely ter rified by the prospect of setting up a home network If you re an old hand it s a waste of computer resources The default installation also forces you to set up a user account on Cisco s website A spokesperson tells us this is because Cisco needs to act as an intermediary between you and Rhapsody Really What if you already have an account with Rhapsody What if you decide
96. le image B With a well made well measured frame the actual assembly of the photo frame shouldn t be much of a challenge First make sure all of the motherboard cables are attached including the LCD ribbon the HDD SATA cable the connection to the I O board if there is one and the power cable To mount the moth erboard into the case you ll need to create some small spacers so that it doesn t sit directly on the LCD screen s backing You can use whatever s handy we cut ours out of dense packing foam With a netbook motherboard heat shouldn t be much of an issue but just in case try to place the spacers under screw holes near the corners away from the CPU To fix everything in place permanently glue the spacers to the frame and use pins through the screw holes to hold the motherboard down APG www maximum The Wi Fi card attached to your motherboard should have two wires attached to it The card needs these antenna wires to function so make sure they re secured inside the frame with the ends taped down at least six inches apart You can use additional foam spacers on the cor ners of the motherboard to hold the I O board and HDD in place or you can screw them to the back edge of the frame image To configure your picture frame plug a USB keyboard and mouse into the motherboard alternately you could do your entire software configuration on the netbook before you take it apar
97. ll be able to upgrade their OS for just 30 but Macs who skipped the last upgrade cycle in 2007 are looking at a whopping 130 and non Intel hardware need not apply Windows XP users on the other hand who purchased a copy at launch in 2001 will have enjoyed more than eight years with their OS license and for this crowd a 50 upgrade fee sounds quite reasonable Pre orders of the Windows 7 upgrade editions are rumored to have sold extremely well but the entire process was shrouded in ambiguity Microsoft did a fantastic job of finding a popular price point with con sumers but it s fair to say the vast majority of those who pre ordered had no idea what they were getting and in some cases still don t The alphabet soup of product editions brought back the version anxiety that began with Vista and the upgrade requirements were extremely vague For those who are still on the fence about what version to buy it s important HOME PREMIUM CAN BE EASILY DUPLICATED WITH __ FREE THIRD PARTY APPS to remember that Home Premium actually does deliver almost everything non business users will need The Professional edition offers up domain support used by large corporations and Windows XP mode might sound useful but it only really allows you to run 2D applications that home users 08 MANIMUMPG oct oo www maximumpc com gt Windows 7 Windows 7 upgrade editions seem like a great deal but having to reinstall and activ
98. ll shift from yellow to red as your battery gets closer to being empty Finally to make your widget something more than just a bunch of floating meters you ll need to add some graphics This is ma terial for an entire how to of its own though m De pee pee em eee OF 4Q Oe Let o owt Li slo cu Pe A i we Te Oe oe No betga 682 tapag tme Ld nme 66 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com JG B teak Fresh ow CA L A te eet ee tan wen m Gmg Wes em SS ee hat 2 wee too o 9 E TY hers ve tom tog a e z t rten Par ara gt gt PI gt gt m E we le Ow gt Lot a repagi mms Gu sty aibe to L sw o ere aes so for now we re only going to cover the simplest graphical elements Let s add a black background for our two line graphs To do that click the Edit Graphics tab and click Add Background Object From the drop down list select Add Rectangle Unlike meters graphics have only one panel which determines their appearance Set your rectangle s color to black and make it as tall as your line graphs and as wide as ie T ow c i am omer both graphs combined Click and drag
99. lso access a stripped down interface in tended for mobile phones at http mobile xmarks com SYNC MAIL AND CALENDARS WITH GOOGLE You probably hear us talk about Gmail a bit more often than its competition for one simple reason It really is better than the rest Gmail has a lot going for it these days The web interface is lightening fast Google Labs allows you to enable tons of great plugins and one feature in particular makes it stand out from the crowd IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol is a vastly superior solution to the traditional POP based email supplied to you by your ISP It will allow you to access your mail from any email client the web or both at the same time all while keeping your sessions in sync You can read delete edit and save drafts all while knowing that changes will ripple across your desktop clients It s so good in fact that many folks have abandoned dedicated email clients almost entirely Gmail is one of the few free IMAP options available right now but it s important to know that IMAP is not enabled by default To get started simply surf over to the Gmail homepage sign up for a Google account and head into your new or existing mailbox Once in scan along the top right for a link called Settings followed by Forwarding and POP IMAP Once here you can enable the Lamm Tw v re Forwarding and o o e bisse Morse bread stoy nei
100. mprehensive realism Schizophrenic allied complex open warplay and enemy Al some unique and intense unintuitive controls experience 50 www arma2 com ESRB WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 91 IN THE LAB Canes on wit THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ooking up New Benchmarks Newer faster hardware requires a new yardstick for measuring performance the hope of putting them in service before the end of the year As ware I m also closely examining always we will stick with real world applications to measure how Sony Vegas 9 Pro as a substitute for fast a system performs as much as we possibly can Premiere Pro CS3 I like Vegas s ability Photodex s ProShow Producer and Main Concept Reference to natively handle RED formats even 4K material as well as EOS 5D Mark II H 264 files We may also replace the venerable Photoshop ve been working on revamping our system benchmarks with app updates to stress today s hard will likely make a return but with updated source material and WILL SMITH EDITOR IN CHIEF With light 3D ac celeration in the latest versions of VirtualBox my favorite virtual machine app killed my trusty Ubuntu partition in favor of an infinitely more acces sible virtual machine I ll gladly suffer the slight performance penalty because I find myself using Linux more frequently when I don t have to reboot in order to fire up
101. mpute A vertices Shader Data Structure 99 Compute Shader The Compute Shader s results can be passed back to the Direct3D pipeline for additional rendering Shader Model 5 0 adds three new stages to the Direct3D pipeline in order to perform tessellation The new Compute Shader will be a boon to the general purpose GPU initiative which aims to harness the parallel processing power that modern graphics processors have in such abundance Data structures can include algorithms for image processing physics computations artificial intelligence routines and much more The previous stage s results can be output to a memory buffer and then circulated back into the pipeline 60 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com NUN AUTOPSY We couldn t find anyone willing to tap AMD s tessellator either because AMD s original implementation of the technology isn t compatible with Microsoft s sacrifice a shiny new iPhone 36S to the autopsy knife so we put an OG iPhone under the blade instead Here s what we found COMPUTE THEREFORE AM If you ve followed the evolution of modern GPUs you know that they ve moved from being single core processors designed for one specific purpose processing graph ics to massively parallel devices with hun dreds of processing cores Modern GPUs are capable of performing more than a trillion floating point operations per second which has been a
102. n be upgraded with custom software to endow it with professional features like RAW image recording and live histogram feedback CHDK Canon Hack Development Kit http bit ly VXbz is an easy to install software package created by a savvy group of programmers to supercharge the Canon PowerShot We show you how to safely install and configure this free firmware add on with no risk to your camera FIND THE RIGHT SOFTWARE Download the version of CHDK software that s appropriate for your Canon PowerShot CHDK only works with a camera using Canon s Digic or newer image sensor any PowerShot made after 2005 should work To find the right download you ll have to first find your existing firmware version number Using Note pad or any other text editing tool create and save an empty file named ver req You ll have to disable the Hide extensions for known file types setting under Windows Explorer s Folder Options in order to change the file extension to req Using a USB card reader drop this file into the root direc tory of your SD card not while the card is in the camera Put the card back in your camera turn on the camera under play back mode and press the set and disp buttons together If done properly the camera should display the firmware version number Firmware Ver GM1 00C Next head over to the CHDK download site http bit ly mscif and find your camera model and firmware version Download the cor
103. n which one your motherboard manufacture has chosen finding this setting might be obvious On board Audio or a bit obscure Azalia Codec AC97 Enable this if you plan to use the included audio chip and disable this setting if you plan to get your groove on witha discrete soundcard Onboard H W 1394 Refers to your mother board s FireWire port s Onboard H W LAN Depending on how many LAN ports your motherboard comes with you may see one or several differ ent entries LAN1 LAN2 etc Keep these enabled if you plan to do any kind of wired networking including connecting your PC to a DSL or cable modem Green LAN A power saving feature en abling this option tells your motherboard to disable the network socket and onboard LAN chip when it doesn t detect a connection s M l ERIPUIT lLategrated Per iphewe tbe WET IPTE UM wh I I Relive 1 0 Coetret ias 2 LIMIT EMI CIS M OU foe MIT Xl ANT BAL S T Gebers dt How 10 11 Ll IAM tw Lee Erase LAN LIST LIII USS Beet LII Tl UIITTIE Vara ite LII ITA ITI Pe 1 I 2 511m 1 FI Sew PE Feili EDT T lag cg IM LIT SMART LAN Performs a diagnostic on your motherboard s integrated LAN ports Onboard LAN Boot ROM This refer to booting your PC rem LAN port Instead this is intended for newer Gigabit LAN ports to operate at their full
104. ns of our magazines are also published in 30 other countries across the world P nmm future MEDIA WITH PASSION Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange symbol FUTR FUTURE plc 30 Monmouth St Bath Avon BA1 2BW England www futureplc com Tel 44 1225 442244 NON EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN Roger Parry CHIEF EXECUTIVE Stevie Spring GROUP FINANCE DIRECTOR John Bowman Tel 44 1225 442244 www futureplc com REPRINTS For reprints contact Marshall Boomer Reprint Operations Specialist 717 399 1900 ext 123 or email marshall boomer dtheygsgroup com SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES www maximumpc com customerservice Maximum PC ISSN 1522 4279 ATHING ORTWOABOUTATHINGORTWO ED WORD a On the Cusp of an Augmented ou may not have heard of it before but augmented reality is coming and it s more than just cool tech it will change the world Augmented reality has been a Hollywood staple for the last 30 years although its more commonly associated with robots and cyborgs than people or PC enthusiasts Put simply it s a technology that overlays a real world scene with relevant contextual information directly from a computer In Robocop and Ter minator augmented reality was used by the movie s eponymous characters to overlay friend or foe info In Minority Report it was used to display targeted ads unique to each individual as they walked through a city landscape More recently in the
105. of plywood cabinets It delivered TCP IP throughput of just 45 4Mb s com pared to the Linksys WRT600N s 98 9Mb s The D Link turned in a particularly poor performance in our Media Room test where the client is located in a double insulated room within a room 35 feet from the router managing TCP IP throughput of just 4 54Mb s The 2 5 inch drive bay limits your choice of hard drives to notebook models and D Link provided us with an 80GB Seagate Momentus 5400 5 hard drive for this evalu BENCHMARKS NAS PERFORMANCE D Link DIR 685 QNAP TS 109 Pro You won t find a prettier wireless router but you ll encounter plenty that are much much better ation But we find the router s lethargic NAS performance more troubling than this physi cal limitation The DIR 685 took a full 8 53 min sec to copy a single 3GB file from a PC Compare that to the Onap TS 209 Pro II our Best of the Best NAS pick which copied the same file in just 2 27 We won t complain about a high price tag if a product s features and performance justify it but the DIR 685 s 300 price tag which doesn t include a hard drive just rubs us the wrong way MICHAEL BROWN Hn VERDICT D LINK DIR 685 XTREME N STORAGE ROUTER seesssesecescescesesanssoseseessoceseessosscoeesoessdesesessoeecccsseesoscossesocesecsesecesoesseessosseesss Linksys D Link DIR 685 WRT310N Kitchen 20 feet Mb s 45 4 98 9 Bedroom 60 feet Mb s 16 4 6
106. on 1024x600 without some manual NI configuration editing Like casual games Great news PopCap s casual blockbusters Plants vs Zombies and Peggle run great on netbooks and are has the Game of the Year edition of Deus Ex for just 10 both available on Steam Plants vs Zombies is 10 and Peggle If you have old copies of Blizzard games like Diablo II and Complete is just 15 Indie physics puzzler World of Goo is also Warcraft you can enter your CD keys into your Battle net ac on Steam for 20 count and download them or pay 20 for a fresh digital copy of Your new netbook is also a perfect excuse to revisit the great either www blizzard com games of yore Good Old Games has a huge collection from the If you re itching for some twitchy multiplayer frag fests original Fallout and Fallout 2 to Duke Nukem 3D 6 each And Quake Live www quakelive com a free to play browser version LucasArts has begun releasing its enormous back catalog of ad of Quake Ill runs great on nearly any netbook venture games on Steam at press time that included LOOM The You won t be playing Crysis but there s plenty of gaming Dig and Indiana Jones amp the Fate of Atlantis 5 each Steam also action to be had on a netbook NE FEAR NOT THE It might look freaking scary but your PC s BIOS actually offers a world of wonder and possibility if you dare to dive in Power users routinely punch into their PC s BIOS
107. on dying batteries Whether or not these incongruent bits of design break the game or just distract you from the fun at hand depends on your patience And Disciplined tactics and squad maneuvers are key to getting ahead in ARMA 2 Ramboing into a war zone won t get you very far as most of them are Al related it s fortunate that the prime moments still exist in co op mode Loading into aircraft with a few buddies laser marking an APC while a teammate drops a bomb toward the target calling out military jargon over voice chat ARMA 2 thrives on these emergent war scenes it s at its best when your actions and not the game itself are script ing the battle That openness of experience extends to a deep mission editor that will delight modders And graphically ARMA 2 has system busting credibility Explosions feel organic and the motion blur and first person head bob when you sprint is incredibly immersive but for all but owners of the beefiest systems the unscripted AI means the frame rate dips as more objects and action enter play If looking down the barrel of dozens of nuanced firearms unpredictable warfare and plugging in a flight stick float your gamer boat ARMA 2 isa refreshing shift from mainstream gun games that suits the PC s complexity even with a few bugs LAHTI VERDICT oococooncooobocogOoOoDooOhconndoOncOoSOoOcOODOOOncOOnDOGgOOnOUDOUgOOOODOOnOOncOOOOOoDUODODODcoDOncOonconOGonocosoooood Co
108. on its pre programmed SPD settings If overclocking or tuning for additional performance you can manually set the multiplier DRAM Timing Selectable You may see the letters SPD in this section This stands for Serial Presence Detect and refers to the information programmed into your memory modules by the manufacturer which tells the BIOS which latencies and voltage to use at any given clock speed to ensure compatibility If left on Auto your RAM will run at its pre programmed SPD settings when overclocking Otherwise you can change this to Manual or Disabled to set your own latency timings 58 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com m MIIL TN LI b E HP 9 i pien 11 Tie Channel A B C Timing Settings Refers to your timings or latencies separated by memory channel gt CAS Latency Time Short for Column Address Strobe this number dictates the number of clock cycles that pass before data can be read or written to where it s stored in a column address The lower the number the faster this takes place When shopping for memory modules the CAS latency is typically the first of a set of four numbers for example 8 8 8 24 gt tRCD Also referred to as DRAM RAS to CAS Delay this number represents the clock cycles it takes between finding the row of a location in memory and finding the column The lower the number the faster this takes place When shopp
109. or breakfast e haven t seen a new two terabyte drive on the market in a while not since we reviewed the Western Digital Caviar Green in May in fact but Seagate has finally added a 2TB drive to its Barracuda LP line of desktop drives The LP or low power line is Seagate s green offering equivalent to Western Digital s GreenPower and Samsung s EcoDrives With an unusual 5 900rpm rotational speed down from the 7 200rpm offered by the rest of the Barracuda line the LP series trades perfor mance for power savings and reduced heat output Thankfully it doesn t sacrifice much speed in the process Unlike the performance oriented Bar racuda 7200 11 and 7200 12 series the LP focuses on low power consumption at both idle and full spin states We praised the low power consumption of Western Digital s 2TB drive compared to the 1 5 Barracuda 7200 11 but the LP series evens the playing field On our test rig the 2TB Barracuda drew around 4W at idle slightly lower than the 2TB Caviar Green s 5W and 8W while operating while the Caviar operated at around 9W Both drives draw less power than the Barracudas of yore The 5 900rpm Barracuda LP hand ily outpaces the Caviar Green which has a spindle speed somewhere between 5 400rpm and 7 200rpm In our h2benchw tests the 2TB Barracuda LP s sustained average reads and writes were 20 percent faster than the Caviar Green s around 91MB s compared to the W
110. or the most part no one cares if you break the law This is not an answer lawyers can give you but can Give songs to friends Xerox library books do terrible mashups of the Top 40 no one is coming for you The good news Is that most of us are more sensible and moral than the law We can tell what s harmful and won t do it though we all get confused in the grey zones The real answer to your copyright questions is ignore the law when it doesn t matter and obey it when it does But how can you tell You can t Isn t this fun Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications Her work has ranged from legal journalism to the inner life of pirate organizations THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL 8 Computing Laws You ve Probably Never Heard Of MOORE S SECOND LAW COLE S LAW AF Da ASIMOV S THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS PROTECT OBEY AND DON T INJURE US 7 4 AMDAHLS LAW Multiple CPU cores are only as fast as the slowest serialized code METCALFE S LAW A network s worth grows proportionally to its number of users squared THE MYTHICAL MAN MONTH Adding more programmers to an already late project will only make it later PAGE S LAW Software gets twice as slow every 18 months CARGILLS NINETY NINETY CODING LAW The first 90 percent of code takes 90 percent of the time The last 10 percent accounts for t
111. ordable ultraportable the Port g A605 to see how this consumer class model compares with its fancier business class kin In looks the two machines are quite different While the R600 wowed us with its silver svelte stylishness the A605 looks more commonplace Inside and out it s adorned with that shiny black plastic you see everywhere these days which looks really good until you smudge it Its keyboard thankfully has the same fingerprint proof silver coating as the R600 s and more importantly sports the same full size dimensions that make typing on it easy The A605 which measures 11 3x8 8x1 2 inches is close in size to the R600 just not as wafer thin and it s a noticeable three quarters of a pound heavier Like the R600 the A605 offers a generous selection of ports and expandability options including a USB eSATA port in addition to two standard USB ports ExpressCard slot and an SD media reader Inside the R600 and A605 sport the same ultra low voltage 1 4GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 n our August 2009 ultraportable notebook CPU 1 4GHz Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo 519400 3GB DDR2 667 Chipset GS45 Storage Hitachi 320GB 5 400rpm HTS543232L9SA00 Optical Matshita DVD RAM UJ862ES Screen 12 1 inch 1280x800 Ports Ethernet two USB 2 0 USB eSATA VGA ExpressCard 54 SD Lap Carry 3 lbs 2 oz 3 lbs 12 1 oz 78 OCT 05 v matirimpc com
112. ore went from 4 268 to 5 167 Read speeds increased from 47MB s to more than 80MB s while we lost around 20 minutes of battery life from 6 30 hr min to 6 10 The RunCore drive s gains were more impressive RunCores5 Pro IV SSD uses the same Indilinx controller as the blazing fast Patriot Torqx drive we tested in September It also gets bonus points for coming with an external SATA to USB enclosure With 2GB of RAM and the RunCore SSD the NB205 s Photoshop benchmark time improved by eight percent while the PCMark05 HDD subscore shot from 4 268 to a whopping 20 339 And no wonder the RunCores average sustained read speed exceeded 100MB s more than twice the speed of the original drive Random access time plummeted from 18 1ms to 0 3ms We didn t see as much battery life improvement as we ex pected though In our battery rundown test the RunCore equipped NB205 bested the standard loadout by a mere four minutes Similar SSDs will offer similar results your computer Refer to the Transform Your Hard Disk Drive and Empower Your Mini PCI E SSD sections of the main article to determine your specific path Once your new drive is connected you can use the free trial of Acronis True Image n to clone your old hard drive to it The trial is fully functional for 15 days the full version is 50 Download and install the trial then run it and hit Utilities in the left hand menu Click Clone disk then select the Manual rad
113. ormerly moribund carriers and hardware manufacturers to innovate again which is good news for anyone with a cell phone WILL SMITH VERDICT Faster everything Battery life could improved camera be better still can t is great it s gota change some alert compass tones IN THE LAB 5 HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme The radial copper finned stalwart tries something new he Zalman CNPS line especially the long lived 9000 series is known for its distinctive copper finned air coolers which are nearly always orga nized in a circular pattern around the fan This arrangement worked well for a long time with the CNPS9700 and 9900 garner ing rave reviews in these pages But all the top performing coolers we ve tested recently July s Thermalright U120 eXtreme and August s Noctua U12P have had one thing in common a skyscraper formfactor whereby a tall stack of closely packed cool ing fins jut upward with one or more 12cm fans strapped to the side Now Zalman is getting in on the game with its latest CNPS cooler the 10X Extreme which takes the skyscraper and 12cm fan design and adds variable speed fan control The Zalman CNPS 10X Extreme sports five heat pipes running through a closely packed array of black nickel plated fins It s a great look and proves that Zalman doesn t just do copper well The fan remote can be slotted into the plastic cow
114. ot all players from Apple Archos Cowon iRiver Olympus SanDisk and Toshiba Before reading any further check out the chart at the top of the Rockbox homepage www rockbox org to see whether your specific model is supported If it s not you are sadly out of luck for the time being POTE few We ccm metes Semi pes Greer r the yee per sate pam cok Me chos mms bw 4 BH OPTIONS Rockbox s Notable Features ADVANCED MEDIA PLAYBACK INSTALL ROCKBOX First you ll need to go to the Rockbox website and download the Rockbox utility http bit ly K8Eat which includes an automatic installer tool that works with any of the supported MP3 players Simply run the utility and it will automatically detect that this is the first time it s been run and ask if you want to install Rockbox on a new device Plug your device into your computer then select whichever drive letter has been assigned to it and specify what model it is image A Click OK The Rockbox utility will now allow you to customize your Rockbox installation Generally clicking Complete Installation is advisable as it will also install the full set of extra plugins to allow you to get the most out of your hacked MP3 player Sit tight for a bit while the installation completes then select whichever theme you want installed on your MP3 player image B You ve now got a hacked MP3 player Yo
115. ou haven t enabled password sync in the past Xmarks will supply a dialog box allowing you to opt in or out of the service For those of you who are worried about security let us 68 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com ee ore peer A ocu qum pop ad oam ge romper c osa otter oe noy 4 be soret oma PP mt e e mti A d om im o omm msc Pus mande ae bey eui voe ce me pam dorum put your mind at ease Passwords are stored on the Xmarks servers using very strong AES encryption All of your passwords will be encrypted before transmission to the Xmark server and can only be decrypted using the pin number you selected as a master password You can rest easy knowing that not even Xmarks will be able to decrypt your passwords assuming you picked a strong pin code If you re installing Xmarks on a second machine you ll be presented with the dia logue box asking how you would like to deal with the bookmarks already stored on your ua uas uoc aT 4 aao omo mee ee amp er TBP hai SO m MEL ee ee machine versus what is on the server You can merge the two databases or throw away either Once you ve synchronized you can also access your list of bookmarks from any browser no plugin required Simply navigate to the website and log in You can a
116. p22 Incredible Applications and Utilities to Install Today IMUMPC MINIMUM BS OCTOBER 2009 Hardware HACKS NEIBOOK UPGRADES p 36 Anyone Can Do p 3 TAPA Convert a netbook to a digital photo frame UPGRADE THE HARD DRIVE Build a portable USB device charger SWITCHTO A BETTER Supercharge your digital camera NETBOOK OS WE SHOW YOU HOW Your Desktop ET HOW TO REVIEWED BIOS GUIDE E 9 Customize and Seagate s 2TB Every Setting 4 Add Widgets to Speed Demon Explained Tweak Without Fear UnleashayourapO s Potential sve Ey FN GS ke ERATUM MAXIMUM p Each issue of me um Maximum PC features Brutally honest product reviews Hard hitting editorials Tips to blast your machine s performance E insightful and innovative How To s CD loaded with new software utility and game demos Reserve your 2 FREE Trial Issues today There s no obligation To order head to www maximumpc com archive WHERE WEPUTSTUFF N LI ee re Hacks that will open new possibilities for 36 erment so much more than when you ght it with these easy upgrades ae NEW 08 NEWS Which version of Windows 7 is right for you 14 THE LIST Eight obscure computing laws R amp D 60 WHITE PAPER The skinny on DirectX 11
117. peakers and run an Internet radio portal To control the frame you can hook up a wireless keyboard and mouse Our netbook had Bluetooth capabilities so we used Bluetooth peripherals including the Wii Remote 1 www maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 35 36 MAXIMUMPS OCT 09 www maximumpc com 5 can Your Upgrade Path to Netbook Self Realization BY NATHAN EDWARDS There s no denying that netbooks possess many positive attributes as evidenced by their meteoric rise in popularity But all the attention garnered by their portability and low cost can t mask the deep and troubling performance that netbooks suffer The fact is there are undeniable trade offs inherent to a sub 400 computer You re just not going to get the same performance netbook as from something that costs three times as much fi Slow single core Atom processors middling hard drives pokey undersized SSDs and only 1GB of RAM rob the netbook of its potential But there is hope Whether you have an old Eee PC with a 12GB SSD or a new netbook with an Atom N280 chip and a 160GB hard drive you can make substantial improvements without forking over too much dough We ll show you first hand how netbooks can overcome their humble begin nings We ll upgrade a typical older netbook an Eee PC 901 with a 4GB SSD soldered on the mobo and an 8GB PCI E SSD as well as a brand new Toshiba NB205 to show how every netbook f
118. r channel into an eight ohm load Cisco uses spring loaded binding posts so forget about using banana plugs We auditioned the amp playing Paul Thorn s Lucky Seven Ranch through a pair of TBI Audio s Majestic Diamond IR monitors and were not at all impressed Low and midrange frequencies sounded as though they were passing through a wall of mud while the highs sounded para doxically shrill Very odd We had a better experience when we used the Director s line level outputs to connect the player to TBI s Millennia amp As with the Sonos system you can also plug an analog source a cassette deck or a turntable with an integrated pre amp for instance into the Director and stream its au dio over your network You can also stream music from a host of free Internet radio stations but not from LastFM Pandora or Slacker Cisco does top Sonos in device con nectivity The Director is capable of hosting both a USB storage device and an iPod using an optional dock MICHAEL BROWN E VERDICT LINKSYS DIRECTOR MUSIC PLAYER Dual band 802 11n Crappy integrated amp radio DLNA compli gt glacial start up won t ant supports FLAC display embedded album art 450 www linksys com Canon EQS Rebel T1i 5000 DRebel you ve come a long way baby anon s original Digital Rebel 300D lit the fuse that started the sub 1 000 digital SLR war With the DRebel now in its fifth iteration it s hard to believe
119. r it either when booting the PC or when attempting to enter the BIOS HDD S M A R T Monitor Short for Smart Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Tech nology S M A R T serves as a preventative diagnostic to help predict imminent hard drive failures When enabled supported hard drives will report any problems that could ultimately lead to outright failures Limit CPUID Max to 3 The only folks who should have this setting enabled are those running a legacy OS with a Pentium 4 processor or higher CPUID instructions are used to identify the type of processor 50 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com installed and the higher the number the more information can be shared with the OS Operating systems released before the Pentium 4 had trouble handling the ad ditional CPUID parameters which is where this limit comes into play Vista XP and Windows 7 users can safely leave this option Disabled No Execute Memory Protect This safe guard prevents buffer overflow attacks both AMD and Intel support this feature it s just labeled differently When enabled certain areas of memory will be marked as non executable preventing the processor from executing potentially dangerous code in those areas Delay for HDD Secs Also known asa Hard Disk Pre Delay this feature mostly applies to older IDE hard drives In some cases older slower HDDs were incapable of spinning up in time to be initialized rendering them unde tect
120. re a throwback to older Linux distros they re just not as slick or user friendly as those in more modern distros Functionally we were disappointed by the lack of native support for PDF documents and Flash movie files a sign that the OS has fallen behind other options However there are plenty of apps included with the distro including OpenOffice tools and the Evolution mail client JOLICLOUD A final option is Jolicloud www jolicloud com a hybrid OS from the creator of the Netvibes com web aggregator Based on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix distro the OS offers some truly innova tive features but for the most part works almost exactly like Ubuntu The idea behind Jolicloud is that it is a consolidated and streamlined gateway for accessing open source and web applications Jolicloud s lets you install free soft ware like Skype and Dropbox in much the same way you would on 44 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com an iPhone or with Google Android Intel s Moblin has lots of potential but its streamlined interface is hindered by minor development bugs Compatible apps are listed in a dashboard which also reports the latest Jolicloud news and support forum info with an Install button When you click Install a small progress bar appears The idea is that you can click this option and then perform other tasks although in the beta we tested as soon as we left the dashboard the install would stop Still it
121. real world augmented reality has been used in adver tisements rendering 3D animations attached to 2D surfaces you hold up in front of a webcam Check these sites for demos http bit ly v4FCu and http bit ly mlM9p The Mini Cooper ad is espe cially neat because you can explore a 3D rendering of a car using a 2D ad and your PC To date the applications of augmented reality tech have been cool but not particularly useful That s about to change Armed with GPS sensors accelerom pade 87 eters and compasses many smartphones like the iPhone 365 and Google Android phones have the hardware required to de page 36 termine your position and orientation in the world With that info your phone will be able to display a HUD overlaying info from the DirectX 11 Internet atop a direct feed from your phone s camera The first of these apps is likely to be acrossair s Nearest New York Subway app for the iPhone The videos we ve seen of the app are amazing hold the phone parallel to the ground and you see a traditional 2D map of NYC s subway system complete with your location When you hold the phone perpendicular the camera turns on As you rotate it displays icons revealing the direction to and the key info for the nearest subway stations over a live feed from the camera see the video go to http bit ly aToJf As computing becomes more integrated with our day to day life it becomes easy to envision ever more interesting use cas
122. responding Zip file under the column labeled Complete LOAD CHDK With your SD card back in a card reader and connected to your PC extract the entire contents of the software package into the root directory of the card Now you re ready to run the CHDK software Put the card back in your camera again and turn on your camera under playback mode the lens should be re tracted Hit the Menu button and scroll down to the bottom of the first menu tab You should see an option for firm update Select this and choose Yes when prompted This is an entirely safe process since CHDK installs additional software instead of replacing the existing firmware in your camera CHDK should automatically load in a few seconds and display its logo You can now switch the camera to capture mode to begin using the new features Keep in mind that since your core firmware hasn t actually been modified CHDK will be disabled every time you turn off your camera and you ll have to manually enable it with every boot We ll go over how to make CHDK automatically boot later 28 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com CONFIGURE THE NEW FEATURES The first thing you ll notice with CHDK enabled is that the onscreen display OSD shows new information including the remaining battery life as a percentage focus distance in meters and a digital clock To enter the special CHDK menu you need to enter Alt mode by pressing the Shortcut button on your camera this
123. rge USB devices which need about 5 volts with a 9 volt battery If electrical engineering sends you into a cold sweat don t worry this is about as simple as a circuit can get We ll be connecting the positive red wire from the bat tery clip to the Vin pin on the voltage regulator and the Vout pin to the 5V pin on the USB connector We ll also connect the ground wire from the battery clip to the ground pin on the regulator and the USB connector Confused Just solder everything together according to the diagram image B Voltage Regulator 9 Volt Battery COMPLETE THE PACKAGE After you re done soldering wrap the connections in electri cal tape so they don t short out as we install the circuit in the tin casing Since both the battery clip and voltage regula tor are smaller than the USB connector you should be able to feed them through the hole first and then fit the USB connector into it so that the lip of the connector rests on the edge of the hole Once you ve got everything tucked neatly into the case with the voltage regulator sitting beside the connector use some hot glue or epoxy to hold the wires in place WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 25 Get Stereoscopic 3D with Your Existing Hardware Stereoscopic 3D is the Next Big Thing for PC gaming at least if you believe Nvidia s marketing department But not everyone has 200 to spend on Nvidia s 3D Vision kit let alone a new 120Hz LC
124. rom bottom of the barrel to top of the line can ben efit from upgrades Consider this your guide on the journey to netbook empowerment OCT 09 37 NETBOOK UPGRADES Uplift Your Memory Pep up your load times and app performance with more RAM Adding more RAM is nearly always the cheapest and easiest way to upgrade your netbook In order to get netbook pricing for Windows manufacturers limit them to 1GB of RAM Fortunately most netbooks have easily accessible RAM slots and use standard 200 pin DDR2 SODIMMs For less than 25 online you can buy a 2GB DDR2 SODIMM to replace the 1GB in your netbook most have a single SODIMM slot so you can t just add an other 1GB and the Atom platform is limited to 2GB of RAM We bought a 2GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR2 667 Weluseds PC2 5300 module the Atom N280 platform in new 2GB DDR2 667 netbooks has a 667MHz front side bus older netbooks SODIMM from with the N270 chip have a 533MHz FSB and will under Corsair for clock the RAM On the Toshiba NB205 the RAM slot is easily accessible from It costs less In nearly all netbooks replacing the RAM will take the bottom of the netbook s chassis than the less than five minutes First power down your netbook remove the battery On the bottom of the chas sis will be one or more panels that can be removed to RAM registers then boot your computer normally reveal the RAM and or hard drive
125. round to different machines and need to access the content from anywhere Now that we ve got you all excited here s the downside Live Mesh only works as designed with less than 5GB of total data and dragging and dropping files into the on line storage only works in Internet Explorer using ActiveX As a result Linux users will be able to view and download files on the virtual desktop but cannot upload changes Macs are able to participate fully with the assistance of the desktop client software ADD DEVICES INSTALL CLIENT SOFTWARE To get started head over to Mesh HO www mesh com and click the big orange Sign In button on the greeting page Once you have done this you will need to log in using your Windows Live I D an Xbox Live or Hotmail account will also work Once you re past the login screen you will be greeted with a diagram of your Mesh You will need to add all your desired devices to this Mesh Click the large orange button select What ts Live gt em pe tend Dfa me tma VAT maf 4 g Wo Pet 142 e Get started S Gal art te wow pte m oso b a your operating system then download and install the client on each machine you wish to include Once the installer is finished it will automatically launch and prompt you to enter your Windows Live again After clicking Next you will need to pick the name you will use to identify your comp
126. rty peripheral such as a Creative X Fi soundcard your first order of business should be to disable your motherboard s onboard equival nt to prevent any conflicts The Integrated Peripheral screen is where you ll find those options The other school of thought here is that by disabling unused peripherals and ports you can recover additional resources for im proved performance For a time this might have been true However now that 2GB or more of memory has become standard you re not likely to gain any significant ad vantages by disabling unused LAN and other dormant ports In fact you run the risk of forgetting you disabled a previously unused port in the BIOS and later thinking you have a bad mobo when that port is needed Keep that in mind before you go disabling every thing in sight SATA RAID AHCI Mode Depending on the lay out of your mobo you might not find this setting under Integrated Peripherals and it could be labeled slightly differently but the options are the same Here are your three possible choices Oftentimes the default option this sets up your system so that your SATA drives run in IDE mode AHCI Short for Advanced Host Controller Interface AHCI takes better advantage of SATA drives by enabling hot swapping and NCO but there s a caveat If you ve already installed Windows sud denly switching from IDE mode to AHCI will quickly muck things up gt RAID IDE As the name implies choose
127. s Ti ove FEeter Select FS5S Provioss We louns 56 MANIMUMPG oct 09 www maximumpc com 1 ut tu Fail afe Uefa 11 Reoet Cane Upee Statue Sottwere Copsi ight IC 19M IRRA Award PC Health Stetu litem Mele e 1 fell FAN Fall Warning fell Marni CPU Smart FAN Coatrol JE IESU Ube love 5 ESC rliteneral Ne Optimicvd Defaults CC 1904 209 Award Seoftesre PC Meaelth Staten i m II Seba Y Ela Pu L4 gt t la E SYSTEM FAN Feil b j Abort VUES 2 4 Fail Tr vate 0 i f Advanced DRAM Features If your motherboard allows you to manually tweak your RAM s latency timings you ll find them in the overclocking section This will most often be labeled as MB Intelli gent Tweaker Gigabyte Cell Menu MSI Advanced Chipset Asus or Genie BIOS Setting DFI Performance Enhance Applicable to Giga byte boards this section tells the BIOS how aggressively to auto tune your settings Extreme Memory Profile X M P X M P compatible RAM contains additional pre programmed settings tuned for both perfor mance and overclocking System Memory Multiplier Left on Auto your BIOS will determine the safest multiplier or FSB DRAM ratio and resulting memory frequency for your RAM based
128. s never been a better time to automate the process allowing you to keep every aspect of your digital life in sync This guide will educate you on the best ways to sync files browser bookmarks emails and even your contacts calendars to any platform or device you may have We dive deep into the major sync technologies being offered today showing you step by step how they work so you can decide for yourself which solution will work best for you JUSTIN KERR SYNC FILES WITH LIVE MESH Live Mesh a service from Microsoft is easily one of the most innovative and ambitious sync concepts on the market Live Mesh enables users on Windows Macs and Windows Mobile phones to keep updated versions of folders both online and locally across as many devices as they choose Microsoft s servers take care of distributing updated copies of your files to all machines as they come online or if you re using a de vice with limited storage such as a netbook or a phone you can choose to access it solely from the cloud Using Live Mesh with your documents folder for example ensures that you always have updated copies of your work which can then be automatically distributed to all your devices the next time they connect The primary innovation behind Live Mesh is the Virtual Desktop This allows you to access a copy of any file contained within your synced folders without any extra software This is useful if you re constantly moving a
129. s HHE sated just as Internet stations do to download the song from either iTunes H Pandora is not alone in its efforts With or the Amazon Music Store promote music E waning revenues from music sales many sales through individual song purchases HE record labels have begun focusing their In the agreement Pandora reached with attention on commercial radio stations in rights holders the webcaster will pay either the United States for increased revenue 25 percent of its yearly U S revenue or a E Radio stations insist that they re simply per song per listener rate whichever is Hu promoters of music and that their goal is to higher To meet this obligation Pandora will d drive interest in the artists that they play now charge users who exceed 40 hours of HE which in turn leads to album and ticket listening a month 0 99 for unlimited use E sales as well as publicity opportunities Those listeners will still be presented with H Pandora could argue the same thing each advertisements and limited to how many E time a listener sets a station the probabil songs they can skip Pandora expects this to H ity that he or she listens to a new artist or affect only 10 percent of its user base FI H GOOGLE OS ON THE WAY _ Company challenges Microsoft with a minimalist HE web based approach H G oogle set tongues wagging when it announced plans to release a EIF Chrome operating system which reportedly will be a natural extension IH of t
130. s even faster transfers and is useful for daisy chaining multiple parallel port devices Power Management With the recent push toward reduc ing carbon footprints and going green power management schemes have star garnering a lot of attention Some basi power saving features have been included on most motherboards for some time now and this is where you ll find them ACPI Suspend Type Short for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface this setting dictates which power saving state your system goes into ACPI replaces the older Advanced Power Management APM scheme and requires a compatible OS such as Windows 98 and up along with several Linux distributions gt S1 POS In an S1 state the CPU stops processing cycles but it along with the RAM are still fed power gt S3 STR Also referred to as Suspend to RAM this option saves the data to RAM before putting the PC into a sleep state In most cases fans and all other devices will be powered down so it appears as though the PC is actually turned off CMS Setep Utility Coperight C 1904 2089 Award Software Power Manaqesent Setup TT T RT Soft Off by PWA PE fvent Make Power by Ring Resume by Alara Sepport Mode Power On CM Mouse Power On By Keyboard AC Beck 11 Eeter Select FS Previews Fail Soft Off by PWR BTTN This lets you adjust how long you need to pr
131. sing Windows XP 64 bit Data Drive Thru was never able to replicate the problem however It now seems likely that the culprit was some obscure configuration of the OS as we didn t experi ence any such conflicts with Windows 7 We also tested the ezShare with smaller transfers and moved about 1 34GB of image files in 96 seconds top notch performance for USB 2 0 transfers So what s not to like The ezShare s presentation doesn t exactly impress While the Tornado makes for a tidy package the ezShare looks like a plain run of the mill cable But at 27 vs 50 for the Tornado we ll live with the ugly cable And with Mac compatibility thrown in to boot the ezShare is an obvious winner Now all it needs to win a Kick Ass is Linux support GORDON MAH UNG En VERDICT VANTEC EZSHARE ADAPTER Cross platform sup Has all the style and port low price good grace ofa plain white performance USB cable 27 www vantecusa com nce upon time I dismissed the iPhone as a wannabe smartphone lacking the key features that truly warranted that label Since I wrote that column about two years ago Apple has gone on a feature adding rampage adding push email support for Exchange servers third party applications and a veritable alphabet soup of new acronyms GPS MMS and 3G for starters Two years into the iPhone era the device is so much more than a phone with an iPod attached it s an instant on
132. ss and volume at 50 percent and all radios off zr DATA MIGRATION Affirm Your Drive Image So you re all ready to swap out your old hard drive and replace it with something better But reinstalling your operating system programs and files can be a real pain in the ass espe cially since you don t have an optical drive Rather than messing with all of that nonsense we ll show you how to use a drive imaging program to make an exact clone of your netbook hard drive It s easy and cheap and you can be ready to go as soon as the new drive is installed in your computer First you re going to need a way to connect the new drive to 46 SE l 09 www inaxim uimnc com RunCore s Pro IV SSD ships with external USB to SATA enclosure for drives that don t enclosures are easy enough to find online Replacing your hard drive pro vided you can access it is easy All you need is a 2 5 inch external USB to SATA enclosure and a trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2009 Put the new drive into the enclosure plug it into your computer s USB ports and then image the drive see sidebar below for more details on this Adding the 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200 4 drive to our netbook gave us a big boost in capacity modest gains in performance and a minor drop in battery life With the Seagate our netbook s Photoshop benchmark time im proved five percent and its PCMark05 HDD subsc
133. sue and double click only to have the computer slow down bit and open a new box for the search Is there a way to modify the default option for a double click Dave Neto According to Microsoft this can start happening if you ve recently edited the file type dialog box for Drives or Folders There are two ways of fixing this According to Knowledge Base article 321186 http bit ly WeR7t which discusses this problem it can be done with a registry edit Open regedt32 exe and goto HKEY CLASSES ROOT Drive shell hit Modify in the Edit menu then type none sans quotes in the Value Data box and click OK Others on the web say it can be solved by entering regsvr32 i shell32 dll in the Run command in your Start menu 22 MAXIMUMPG os Ee a j G t Your These 9 amazing D meaning to your o By ALEX CASTLE NORMAN CHAN are too often tempted bythe lure technology leaving perfectly good are drifting in the wake of compul sivefupgrading And while we getting new gadgets as much as the next geek we also like how a new purchase gives us the opportunity to take apart and tinker with r older gear in the Lab Whether it s by oldering circuit boards of loading open source firmware we pride ourselves on being able to stretch thedlifespan of older electronics by performi g undocumented Ware hacks f PA projects v ove included here Ij i l p
134. t Remove any unnecessary software such as image editors office suites and antivirus applications and sweep your hard drive You ll also need to download and install a slide show application to display photos you have stored on either your hard drive or USB thumb drive or accessed via an RSS feed We used Flickr as our photo storing service we chose this service because you can update your feed remotely from almost any Internet capable device that can send picture at tachments There are actually several programs that can runa Flickr slide show though we picked Google Photo Screensaver http bit ly 11q4dx Once you ve downloaded and installed the screensaver either run the application straight from the installer or right click your Desktop and select Properties Then under the Screen Saver tab choose Google Photos Screensaver and go into Settings From here you can configure whether to stream your photos from a list of RSS feeds Picasa or a specific folder on your computer To run the screensaver from Flickr go to your photo stream flickr com photos yourusername scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the RSS icon Copy the RSS address and paste it under the Configure option in your Google Photos Screensaver preferences Click OK and you re all set up In addition to the slide show you can set your frame up as a digital wall clock have it stream daily headlines from a news RSS feed or hook it up to a set of s
135. t a couple of bucks GATHER THE PARTS First you ll need to find a suitable casing for your USB charger A perennial favorite of amateur gadgeteers Altoids style tin boxes They re cheap sturdy and relatively attractive The traditional tin about as big as a deck of cards provides ample room for the components we ll be using but if you re ambitious it s also possible to cram them into the newer small Altoids tins In addition to the tin you ll also need the following parts The total cost of parts sans tools should be only a few dollars but you ll either have to do some scavenging or place an order online to get some of the components A 9V battery clip A 5 voltage regulator A female USB connector A 9v battery Insulated copper wire Soldering equipment A Dremel tool CUT THE ALTOIDS TIN To start we need to make a hole in the side of the tin big enough to hold the female USB connector image A When done this is where you ll plug in your gadgets it will be the only visible difference between your charger and a run of the mill Altoids tin Make the hole on one of the narrow ends of the tin a little to the left or right of center We used a Dremel to make our hole though you can also do it witha drill or a hand file Try to make the hole just big enough for the connector to fit into and no bigger WIRE THE CIRCUIT Next we ll need to put together the circuit that will allow us to cha
136. tem in a production environment I have fewer reservations about recom mending itto the home enthusi asts who read Maximum PC than Iwould encouraging readers to spend their hard earned money on Vista or XP this close to the Windows 7 launch Incidentally a CODA fix can be found here http bit ly 4jo WRT Deficit PC Spending I took particular interest in the Recession Special rig in your September Dream Machine 2009 story I cross referenced the prices you quoted with various web stores and I beat your pricing on all but one item the Antec 900 case You listed a price of 77 but I could not find it for less than 107 Even so I still beat your total price by 14 I d be lying if I said I wasn t bragging but when you re on a budget that s astight as mine you ll dig for the rock bottom price Still the question remains where did you find the case for 77 Kevin R Slagle Senior Editor Gordon Mah Geithner responds Such is the nature of Internet buying prices fluctuate day to day if not hour by hour Most of our pricing was based on what the product sold for at the time without the rebate An editor here did locate the Antec 900 for 77 butunfortunately did not note the store s name I managed to find the case for 79 from Buy com but that was for a refurbished case which really should not matter since it s a case I sus pect that if you kept checking weekly you would find the Antec 900 at or
137. th the software a year of complimentary TiVo service the annual fee thereafter is 40 a standard TiVo remote a TiVo IR receiver blaster combo and a Hauppauge USB ATSC NTSC QAM combo TV tuner The software requires a relatively unobtrusive activation process although if you want to move it to another machine after you ve activated you ll probably need to make a phone call While the package came with only a single tuner you can use up to four tuners with the software Setup was relatively simple and unlike other PVR software we ve tested the TiVo software allows you to eas ily configure multiple sources with different channel information For example we set up the USB Hauppauge tuner with local over the air HD channels then connected a cable box to an ATI TV Wonder 650 using the IR blaster to change channels We had no problems getting the software working i J A D REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE HVR Nero s TiVo in a box includes TiVo remote a USB TV tuner an IR receiver blaster and the software you ll need to get TiVo on your PC with over the air HD or connecting the PC to our cable box but we couldn t get the unencrypted OAM support which our cable provider says is not supported for our area All the standard TiVo functionality is present and shows that you record on other networked Series 2 or higher TiVos in your home can be shared with each other
138. the meter so that it sits behind the two graphs Now click Add Background Object again and make another rectangle Make this one large enough to sit behind all three meters To choose which graphical elements are in front click them and press the up or down arrows at the top of the window This will move the selected graphic to the front or the back respectively You can use a simple text meter to label your graphs And that s how you make a very simple system monitor panel for your desktop To load your widget save your config to the default directory then run the Samurize pro gram Right click the Samurize icon in the taskbar and mouse over Select Config and find your config file You can also refresh your config quickly if you make changes to it by saving and selecting Reload Config This how to guide has only scratched the surface of Samurize though so look out for future articles on MaximumPC com explaining how to make more sophisticated kinds of widgets and how to use graph ics and a custom wallpaper to make your widgets look awesome Sync Your PC and Mobile Devices Keeping your mobile life in sync is becoming an increasingly difficult task these days since many of us use multiple desktop PCs notebooks and smartphones Maintaining these devices becomes even more complicated when you start mixing and matching platforms that have conflicting file systems and format support On the bright side there ha
139. the OS KATHERINE STEVENSON DEPUTY EDITOR Word that Amazon just purchased Zappos has me wondering whether this will change the online shoe seller for better or worse recently come to appre ciate Zappos s superb customer service more than ever after night marish dealings with one of its competitors I would hate to see it degraded by Amazon s acquisition 92 MAXIMUMPG OCT 09 www maximumpc com NATHAN EDWARDS ASSOCIATE EDITOR After assembling disassembling and re assembling so many netbooks I m pretty sure I should start my own upgrad ing business toyed with the idea of put ting an SSD in my own Asus Eee 1000HE but it wasn t until I tested netbook upgrades this month that I realized what a difference it could make CS3 test script with ALEX CASTLE ASSOCIATE ONLINE EDITOR This month I learned a valuable lesson Although it is fun to spray compressed air upside down and it might seem like a good idea to do so in order to see a laser mid air this is actually a miscalcu lation Turns out the bittering agent in the spray will cause you Norm and everyone in the photo studio to feel like vomiting all afternoon Photoshop Lightroom 2 Why Who really waits for Photoshop to do anything anymore The real chip busters are RAW workloads which we re hoping Lightroom 2 will be an accurate predicator of Finally in gaming we ll likely stick with Crysis GOR
140. the different types of data packets as they are routed around your home network and to T your service provider Internet surfing gaming VoIP and Bit x Torrent traffic can all be prioritized so you can run web services apes simultaneously without clogging your bandwidth There s no DD one set of settings that will work for everyone but we ll give you the basics for you to get started QoS works by classifying network traffic types and then ordering those classes for bandwidth prioritization First you have to determine your connections maximum uplink band width since upload traffic is the source of most connection clutter We used Speedtest net to find our upload cap and put that bitrate number under Max Bandwidth image B nsus Next you ll have to configure the upper and lower band en width bounds for each class of packet By default the Highest m ART RED class has a range of 80 to 100 percent This means that packets D iis ranked in this class will always claim at least 80 percent of your i uor bandwidth The Lowest class on the other hand has a range 9 e of 2 to 95 percent This means packets under this class will at 970 WANN most claim 95 percent of your bandwidth if it s available High er ranked classes should be reserved for services that require gt lt steady connections like gaming and VoIP while lower pr
141. ting with the 3G version Depending on the way you use your phone and the apps you use you could experience a substantial per formance boost I even find myself wiping finger grease off the phone less frequently thanks to the new fingerprint resistant coating that Apple uses on the phone s glass touch screen While many of the new software fea tures are also available to owners of older iPhones I d be remiss not to mention them On the software front the 3GS offers all the goodness of the 3 0 software update phone wide search push notifications for apps the voice recorder bunch of other smaller improvements In my admittedly unscientific battery life tests the iPhone 3GS seemed to have a shorter run than the first iPhone in common usage although it still outperformed the 3G The 3GS has real battery life problems when you run CPU intensive apps like the video camera or most games In the gaming test the 3GS battery drained faster than a 3G I have yet to run out of juice before the end of the day but this is definitely a phone that requires a recharge after a full day of use Where does that leave the iPhone 3GS For users of the original iPhone it s a great upgrade Owners of the 3G should probably wait and see what Apple has planned for next year before they make the upgrade And even if you have a moral objection to Apple you have to be excited that the iPhone s suc cess has forced f
142. ttery case Also drill a hole that you can feed the wires from the 9V battery clip through 30 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com This is a long exposure shot in a dark room Your results may vary Next remove the light bulb from its black plastic clip and grind down the clip so that the side opposite the two prongs is totally flat If you remove the metal cap that covers the acrylic laser lens the laser will fit perfectly into the hole in the clip Now hot glue the black plastic clip into the barrel of the phaser and grind out anything in the front of the phaser that would keep the laser housing from fitting in behind it Connect the laser to the battery so it turns on align it so that it s straight and glue it into position Finally fix your switch into the trigger hole of the phaser and use wires to complete the circuit between the battery the switch and the driver circuit Use a little hot glue to stick every thing in place and reconnect the two halves of the phaser The laser will burn many dark colored items including electrical tape and some black plastic and it can also pop balloons Blue lasers are hard to see in the air even at high power so if you want to see the beam use some sort of particles in the air such as smoke or fog Have fun and remember to be safe Upgrade Your Router to Manage Home Network Traffic Third party router software has been around for a while but we can t help b
143. ttery cover back on the lamp chipping knife to cut back the outer rubber out a hole big enough to feed the USB cable through Slap a strip coating Pull back the foil insulation of poster tape on the bottom plant it on the back of your case and locate the four wires inside You and plug it in should see red black white and green wires inside image A Using a knife or wire strippers expose the ends of the red and black wires Your case fan should have two wires one red and one black terminating in a Molex power con nector Snip and strip the wires image B Following convention the red wire is positive and the black is ground just like in the USB cable Simply twist the exposed ends of the red wires together solder and cover with electrical tape or heat shrink tubing to prevent the wires from shorting Image C Do the same for the black wires Just like that you have a USB powered fan for your desk If you want to get fancy make a fan stand out of a bent coat hanger 24 MAXIMUM PG OCT 09 www maximumpc com Create a Battery Powered USB Charger Nothing can ruin a nerd out ing faster than a catastrophic battery failure in one of your vital gadgets Fortunately although you may not always have access to an outlet anda wall wart to recharge it s pos sible to create an emergency backup battery that fits inside a common Altoids tin and can power your toys for at least a few extra minutes all for jus
144. turn it into a Wi Fi enabled digital picture frame We used an old Acer Aspire One for this project but it should work with most netbooks The disassembly process will be different for each netbook model but generally you need to remove all the screws on the netbook s underside which are sometimes hidden under rubber pads to free the motherboard from its plastic shell Be careful not to cut any wires and make note of where you disconnect cables The important components to extract intact are the motherboard hard drive Wi Fi card and LCD screen of course We also kept the small daughterboard which houses two extra USB ports and the power button image A It took us quite a bit of time to decide on where to purchase a frame and how the LCD would be fitted inside We unsuccess fully searched for a premade shadowbox frame that matched the dimensions of our netbook s 8x4 5 inch LCD panel an unorthodox size for picture frames You may have more luck with your own netbook check http bit ly oUgwv for cheap shadow box frames but we had to have our frame custom made at a local shop for 100 After a week we had a custom made frame with the LCD in place We ordered a glassless simple black frame with about three inches of allowance in the back for whatever hardware tweaking was necessary The frame specialists were kind enough to seal in the LCD panel with a piece of cardboard while making sure the LCD ribbon was still accessib
145. u can change your theme whenever you want to using the Rockbox utility Read the Rockbox documentation for your player to find out how you can customize it using the extensive options menu box install includes Rockbox allows you to expand the functionality of your MP3 player In several core ways For instance with Rockbox firmware an old iPod Photo the one before the iPod Video is actually capable of playing mpeg video files Many players can play music and video in more formats and containers than are supported by default such as FLAC and Matroska Additionally Rockbox can add voice to menus and supports voice recognition to make it easier for people with impaired vision to use an MP3 player APPS APPS APPS With Rockbox you get access to an enormous catalog of apps most of them written by hobbyists that you can load onto your player for added functionality or just to have some fun The standard Rock a bunch of apps and games including sics like Mine and Sudoku d Sure trying to gh to make your y factor alone is sure to eel for a few minutes at least Rememb This is how you get it WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 33 Build a Netbook Picture Frame Considering that netbooks get outdated by model refreshes every few months it s quite likely you ll find yourself with an old netbook lying around the house catching dust But there s no need to let it go to waste Instead
146. ut keep recommending it to users who want to add undocumented features to their home network Our favorite router firmware package is still Tomato http bit ly nTxhh which we favor for its compatibility with a wide range 9 of router brands and models user friendly interface and pow erful feature set We ll show you how to upgrade your router s firmware to the newest version of Tomato and then configure the Quality of Service settings to manage your network traffic fumes ma 2621 INSTALL TOMATO FIRMWARE First you need to make sure your router is supported by Zee hee Tomato The Linksys WRT54G series routers work best but 6 some Buffalo and Asus routers also work Check the Tomato FAQ http bit ly nrfnY to see if your router model and version number is supported Download the latest firmware package version 1 25 at press time and extract its files with 7 Zip www 7 zip org Access your router s administration page with its gateway address default is 192 168 1 1 and find the Firmware Upgrade section Choose the firmware bin file that matches your router and begin the upgrade process Tomato T Lon will automatically transfer your router settings over so you al Wie don t have to reconfigure the basic settings image A rw f i MP Bere isea we CONFIGURE QUALITY OF SERVICE manne Quality of Service lets you manage
147. uter within the Mesh Be specific so you don t confuse your devices later on but if you make a mis take you can change it later Here you can also decide if you will allow remote desktop connections to this machine ADD FOLDERS TO SYNC Adding a directory to Live Mesh is as simple as right clicking the folder and selecting Add Folder to Live Mesh After do ing so you will see the configuration screen which will allow you to decide if these files should be stored within your 5GB online storage queue or only shared between certain devices o My 09M Ipe Ne cm tdt to VLC mede gave Ipen p y naf ihe 2 My Pre sae 7 phere 5 USE S eee een Liha cium B lt gt gt lovem o w B cp etree tw Lee Pee P eflc 9 Kul DEE If this was a massive folder full of photos and video for example you might want to select Never with this device as your Live Desktop option For other computers you may wish to select When files are added or modified if you want each device to keep WWW maximumpc com OCT 09 MAXIMUM PG 67 R amp EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE a local copy Use your Live Desktop space wisely 5GB goes by pretty fast and unfortu nately Microsoft doesn t offer the ability to purchase additional space o 005 ee e ee
148. v JOHN BRANDON It s nice that netbook users have a choice of using Micro softs newest OS but it can feel a little oversized on a small screen Chances are that your netbook came bundled with Win dows XP While this is a perfectly fine operating system it was designed for desktop use so it probably has more overhead than you need for your netbook You should be running lightweight productivity applications on your netbook not memory hogging design suites Windows 7 and several specialized Linux distros are better suited for light mobile computing and upgrading to these alternatives is fairly easy You just download the installation disc image mount it on a CD or USB key and boot the install wizard from your netbook s BIOS Some of these operating systems even have a Live CD option which lets you try the OS without partitioning or overwriting your existing software We take a look at some popular Windows XP alterna tives for netbooks While there are pros and cons to each you might find an OS among them that better suits your needs or at least piques your interest in experimentation WINDOWS 7 RC While Vista is simply not an option for netbooks Windows 7 is Microsoft s newest OS is essentially a root level fix for Vista solving some of the most common complaints such as User Account Control and boot speed That said the customization options are similar to what you find in Vista Windows 7 has features designed for t
149. ve delved deeply into one all the others begin to make sense Whether from a cold boot or a reboot getting into your BIOS is as easy as hitting the DEL key as soon as your system starts to POST You might even see a splash screen instructing you to hit DEL but this isn t always the case If mashing the DEL key doesn t do the trick some OEM setups notebooks and older PCs use a differ ent key try punching F1 F10 or the ESC key For really old PCs you might even need to hit a combination of keystrokes in which case your best bet is to consult your user manual or the modern day oracle known as Google for the correct sequence The overall layout will vary depending on your specific mother board model and BIOS type but every modern BIOS shares the same basic settings We re going to cover those now using a Gigabyte X58 motherboard as our test platform Standard CMOS Features Exactly as the name implies this is wh the standard settings are located inclu the date time and drive configuration IDE Channels Technically this refers to the hard drives that connect to your PC using the fat ribbon cables of yesteryear and which require that multiple drives on the same channel be configured as Master and Slave But in our motherboard s BIOS the list also includes any SATA drives Because each SATA drive operates on its own channel Master and Slave settings are irrelevant n gt bi Li L
150. ve is non removable Power down the machine and remove the battery then unscrew and remove the access panel on the bottom of the chassis and unscrew the two Phillips head screws holding the SSD in place Remove the old drive then slot the new SSD into place and boot Windows normally then follow the drive imaging instructions in the sidebar below The cloning process will make your new SSD the active drive but it wouldn t hurt to verify the boot order in the BIOS first Both solid state drives offered much better performance than the pitiful SSD the 901 ships with How much better Try nearly 100MB s reads compared to just 30MB s pre upgrade Both SSDs halved the time it took the 901 to complete our Photoshop benchmark even after the RAM upgrade making it finally competitive with other netbooks The Super Talent performed slightly better than the RunCore on this test but Cloning your old drive directly to the new one is the fastest way to upgrade your netbook s storage your source disk then your destination disk then the method of cloning We stuck with Proportional but you can also do As is or Manual and then resize your partitions later with a partition manager like EASEUS Partition Master www parti tool com After you confirm your choices and start the imaging you ll be prompted to reboot After the reboot Acronis will con tinue working and notify you when your drive is ready Then just swap it for your old drive and
151. w it without an administrator command prompt What is an admin istrator command prompt I am the only user and my account is an administrator account Any advice Jed Carter Jed for security reasons Vista s User Account Control won t run programs with administrator permissions by default even if you re the only user To run an administrator command prompt use the search bar in the Start menu and search for cmd exe When it shows up right click it and select Run as administrator Alternately you can just search for cmd exe and hit Ctrl Shift Enter to open an administrator command prompt Access Denied I decided to do some clean ing of unwanted files on my PC which has had occasional stretches of non use I now get an access denied mes sage on my D drive I have all the latest drivers and updates for Vista Ultimate 64 bit I poked around the Properties menu and am get ting confused about how to regain access permissions The creator is not listed I don t even remember what s on the drive it could possibly belong to my old user admin account before a restore or reinstall I cannot get owner ship of the drive to open it Any suggestions Rick Smith Vista doesn t automatically give administrators full access to folders and files from other installations or users even if the username and password are the same To regain ownership of the drive and its contents right click it and sel
152. wer By Keubo AC Beck Fenction 7 Us lew Fait Sefe De i Move Select FS Peevious Veluwe Power on by Keyboard WP the system by pressing your OW er key Additionally some BIOSes allow you to set up a short password instead of pressing the Power button If setting up a pass word you ll need to mash the Enter key afterward wee NM IM 1 AC Back Function Also referred to as AC Power Loss Restart this setting dictates how your PC responds to an unexpected power loss once the power is restored gt Soft Off Leaves the PC turned off even if it was Pi TT PNE Event Wako Up Seve ESC Exit Fi Geeeral I 1904 27005 Reward Software Setup ite Help rd PURTI faults 21 ptimized Defaults turned on prior to losing power Full On Turns the PC back on follow ing a power loss Memory If the PC was turned on prior to losing power it will boot back up once power is restored But if the PC was off to begin with it will remain turned off Advanced CPU Features Gigabyte s latest boards clump these entries together a handy submenu but depending on your make and model you may find these settings spread out in different sections of your BIOS CPU Clock Ratio Otherwise known as the multiplier this number multiplied by your CPU s base frequency determines your proc
153. with BIOS v 8 00 12 a Core2 Duo E6600 and four 1GB DDR2 DIMMs Asus s website says that my motherboard can go up to 8GB of RAM so why does it say only 3GB is used I have taken out all the DIMMs and tested them individually and they all seem to work fine by themselves Joshua Tolhurst First you ll want to make sure that memory remap ping is enabled in the BIOS If that does not correct your problem you may want to update the BIOS It looks like your BIOS is a couple of years out of date Asus has released numerous beta BIOSes for the P5B Deluxe that address memory issues like the one you re having SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig First grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled email the doctor at doctorfamaximumpc com for advice on how to solve your technological woes shock a big static charge can build across the thin latex of the glove It s essential to properly ground yourself while you work on your computer to prevent static buildup Consider wearing an anti static wrist strap And don t forget Always unplug your computer when you re working on it Resizing OS Partition I am getting an HP TouchSmart tx2z Tablet PC in the next couple of weeks for college However I need to install Windows XP on it as it s a requirement for the engineering software I will be using Is it possible to reparti tion the hard drive

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