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Spotlight Reviews (What's this?) Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers. 17 of 18 people found the following review helpful: A magazine for the true PC enthusiast, April 8, 2002 Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer from Oakland, CA USA This is without a doubt my favorite computer-related magazine. While many of the well-known players in this field (especially the ones with "PC" in their name) have dedicated increasing portions of their magazines to business-related topics, Maximum PC has stayed true to the cause of helping the individual home enthusiast or expert get the most from his machine. If you want to read about B2B apps, corporate firewalls, or XML, look elsewhere, but if you want comprehensive reviews of the latest hardware and software written for people who don't need a tutorial to rename a file on their PC or insert a chart into an Excel file, look no further. If you're the sort of person who builds his own machine or is thinking of doing so, Maximum PC will likely prove itself useful to you. Likewise for those planning to do their own hardware upgrades. And if you're like me and just like to stay aware of and knowledgeable about current products and technologies then this is still an excellent and informative read. To be fair, there are a few features that may be displeasing to some readers. The writing is occasionally glib with a tendency towards sophomoric humor. There's also a fair amount of focus on gaming, particularly 3D gaming technology. And the overriding theme of much of the magazine is maximizing the speed, power, and coolness of your machine. To me these aren't negative qualities, but this may not be of interest to some users. All in all this is still my favorite magazine and the one I most look forward to receiving each month. I have no plans to end my subscription. Was this review helpful to you? 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful: Best Mag for PC Enthusiasts, November 11, 2002 Reviewer: Alfredo Gomez (see more about me) from Los Angeles, CA I've been reading this magazine for about 2 years (front-to-back) and it is absolutely the best pc magazine out there. The reviews are so well done that I often refer to old issues; something I can't say about competing magazines. The articles are useful and succinct, usually covering issues well ahead of other publications. It is well organized and allows you to glance through it with their summarizing "Verdict" boxes on each review. The editors are very good about keeping with their readers, effectively relating to them. A flagship occurance, as many other readers will tell you, that sets this magazine apart is that you might find a review telling you how horrible the product is on one page and on the next see an advertisement for that same product. I build many computers and I rarely disagree with their reviews. Another useful item is the benchmark, which lets you compare system and laptop performance to others they have reviewed as well as to your own. For hardcore users, the magazine provides dependable, in-depth reviews. For beginners, it might be very intimidating, but after a couple issues, you should catch on to the style and humor enough to know more than the average person. A con not mentioned in other reviews is that their web-site isn't all that spectacular. However, they finally hired someone to work on it, so it should improve. Was this review helpful to you? All Customer Reviews Avg. Customer Review: Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers. The Magazine For True Computer User, July 1, 2003 Reviewer: Terrill T Hillman (see more about me) from Irwinton ,Ga This magazine keep me inform with the new technologies that are in the works, and give me secrets on product that alright out now. This magazine has so much information that it can be use as resource in some cases. Overclocking,Recommendation for best computer parts(such as video cards,soundcard,memory)I recommend this magazine to anybody who plans to be computer professional or not. Was this review helpful to you? Short but Sweet, June 18, 2003 Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer from Oakland, CA United States This magazine is unfortunately very slim and I am able to finish reading it much quicker than I wish. Forunately, though, the content that is included is some of the most trusted PC review content I have ever encountered. Other PC magazines just feel like thick advertisements. I rarely trust the reviews found in other magazines because they seem suspiciously biased towards particular manufacturers. Not so with this magazine. When this magazine says a particular product is good, I pay attention. As proof of the magazines impartiality, I have seen more than once a case where a product prominently advertised in the magazine actually receives a poor review within the content of the magazine. That kind of credibility is worth its weight in gold and is the reason I continue to get this magazine. I don't necessarily buy the products they talk about, but I use this magazine to at least keep my finger on the pulse of the cutting edge in PC computer hardware. There are a lot of ads, but they are mostly gathered together at the end of the magazine. They are actually the only PC ads I pay attention to. You will find a wide assortment of products listed for sale and in a way it is like looking at a catalog of products. When I am done reading the magazine, I always spend a good amount of time browsing through the ads getting ideas on new hardware purchases to consider. Was this review helpful to you?