_{Cover of the January 2004 issue of Maximum PC}

Maximum PC, known as 'boot' in its earliest days, was my favorite PC specific magazine. It was also still around until a few years ago. The January 2004 issue includes:

Regulars

In/Out - Letters from readers about using an AMD64-FX CPU with an Opteron motherboard dual-GPU cards, motherboard recommendations, the nForce3 chipset, the remaining life for EIDE drives, upgrading a Pentium 4 machine, and more.

Quick Start - A look at a few pocket sized PCs including one by oqo that includes a 1 GHz Transmetta Crusoe CPU and 256 MB of RAM, a look at some new games including Madden 2004, Knights of the Old Republic, and Deus Ex, and more.

Head2Head - Comparing online music services iTunes, MusicMatch, Rhapsody, and Napster.

WatchDog - Poor OS X performance on G3s, Belkin router spam, and more.

_{Table of Contents from the January 2004 issue of Maximum PC}

Reviews

HyperSonic Sonic Boom desktop PC - This PC features a yellow case, 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition overclocked to 3.37 GHz, 1GB of DDR400, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT), two Western Digital WD360 10,000rpm SATA drives, and more for $3,384.

Hewlett-Packard Pavilion ZD7000 laptop - This laptop features a Pentium 4C @ 3.2GHz, 1GB DDR333 dual channel RAM, nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 video, 40GB hard drive and more for $2700.

ATI 4600 64Bit desktop PC - This PC features a Chieftec case, 430 watt power supply, an AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 CPU @ 2.2GHz, 1GB registered DDR333 RAM, 256MB nVidia GeForce FX 5900 Ultra video card, two 36GB Western Digital Raptor drives, and more for $3650.

PNY Verto GeForce FX 5950 Ultra video card - nVidia's new top of the line card gets a positive review here.

Serial ATA Drives - Several Serial ATA hard drives are reviewed including the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 250GB, Western Digital Caviar SE WD250JD, Hitachi Desktar 7K250 (the highest scoring in this review round-up), Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, and Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 16 300GB (the largest drive in this review round-up).

_{Table of Contents from the January 2004 issue of Maximum PC (continued)}

Features

Hardcore Hardware - A look at hardware and technologies that will appear in PCs in 2004. These include Serial ATA 2.0, Intel's Prescott Pentium 4 CPU, AMD's Newcastle, DDR2 memory, BTX, dual layer DVD burners, 802.11n, nVidia NV40 based video cards, ATI R420 based video cards, and more.

Meet the Mach L - An overdesigned PC featuring an 3.2 GHz Pentium 4, 2GB of PC4200 RAM, Raid 0 array of four 18GB 15,000rpm SCSHI drives, Radeon 9800 XT video card, Asetek's Vapochill Case, and more.

The Softies - Maximum PC's 2nd annual software awards featuring the 10 best applications and utilities of 2003. These include Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP, DVD X Copy Platinum, Cakewalk Project 5 Soft Synth Workstation, JBuilder, Adobe InDesign 2.0, POPFile, Spybot Search and Destroy, iTunes, Trillian Pro 2.0, and Mozilla Firebird.

_{Back cover of the January 2004 issue of Maximum PC}

Check out my other Social Media haunts (though most content is links to stuff I posted on Hive or reposts of stuff originally posted on Hive):

Wordpress: https://www.megalextoria.com/wordpress
Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/darth-azrael
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Darth_Azrael
Blogger: https://megalextoria.blogspot.com/
Odyssee: https://odysee.com/@Megalextoria:b
Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/c-2385054
Daily Motion: https://www.dailymotion.com/Megalextoria

Books I am reading or have recently read:

Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg
Tom Clancy's Op-Center: God of War by Jeff Rovin
Red Sails Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

Maximum PC (January 2004)

Regulars

Reviews

Features