history http://www.maximumpc.com/taxonomy/term/3226/ en 20 Key Stages in the Evolution of the Internet http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/20_key_stages_evolution_internet <!--paging_filter--><p><img src="/files/u134761/internet_history_228_0.jpg" width="228" height="171" style="float: right;" />The Internet’s 43 years old this year—that’s the same age as The RZA and Patton Oswalt—putting 1969 in the running for Best Year Ever. But for all we know about the Wu-Tang Clan and KFC Famous Bowls, the mass majority of users surfing the interwebz know next to nothing about its history. To get you up to speed we’ve put together a pictorial timeline of 20 of the most significant events in the history of the Internet, from its inception right up to the meme, kitteh and rickrolling phenomenon it is today.</p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/20_key_stages_evolution_internet#comments ARPA cern email Google history Hotmail Internet Mosaic TCP/IP Worldwide Web Features Web Exclusive Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:12:11 +0000 Seamus Bellamy 22257 at http://www.maximumpc.com Future Tense: Music Depreciation http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/future_tense_music_depreciation <!--paging_filter--><p>Recently, a correspondent with more attitude than common sense excoriated me for having no taste. He could be right, but I doubt it.</p> <p>I had mentioned in passing that I have thousands of CDs in my music collection, enough to fill a 3-terabyte hard drive. This particular adversary’s argument was that because taste is the product of a thousand distastes, obviously I had none because I had failed to winnow my collection. It doesn’t take a lot of smarts to realize that this is an inaccurate application of Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is crud.”) The inaccuracy arises from the assumption that little or no taste was applied in the original purchases. (The assumption that 5,000 CDs is too many, that there isn’t enough quality music in the world to fill 5,000 CDs is even more horrifying.)</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-cds.jpg" width="480" height="257" /></p> <p>But in one sense, the adversary was right that I have thousands of songs that I haven’t listened to in years. My Uncle Morrie was also right back in the 70s when he looked at my collection of vinyl disks and remarked that I had more music than I could listen to. Ironically, Uncle Morrie was his own kind of pack rat. Among other things, he collected jeans. After he died, we found more than 100 pairs in his closets, more jeans than any one person could wear. Right. I’d rather collect music.</p> <p>Let’s assume I have at least 6,000 hours of music on the shelves. If I were to listen to ten hours of music a day, it would take 500 days to play every track. But nobody listens to their music collection that way. We pick and choose based on our changing moods. We have collections because we want to have choices.</p> <p>A completist has to have every item in the set, regardless of the quality (or lack of) in any individual item—but a collector gathers items of value that he selects for specific qualities. With music (as with books, comics, movies, and TV shows) the collector wants to have a purposely selected repertoire of entertainment choices.</p> <p>I should be grateful to the adversary because he reminded me I wanted to write about the history of music recording. Humanity’s relationship with music has fundamentally changed over the last hundred years. Music has become a much greater part of our lives—but at the same time, that convenience has reduced much of its impact and importance.</p> <p>Before electricity, all music was live. We either created it ourselves or listened to someone else create it. The only distribution system was sheet music. Knowing how to play a piano, a guitar, a violin, was an important skill. A marching band was a delicious treat. A music hall was a cultural center. If you wanted to experience an epic performance of an opera, or hear a major symphony, you had to go to a concert hall. Music was an event. It was a performance. It was ephemeral, it existed only in the moment, and then it disappeared forever.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-egyptianbard.jpg" width="400" height="243" /></p> <p>We have no recordings of any music prior to 1877, when Edison invented the phonograph. We have little idea what the music of ancient Greece or Rome actually sounded like. We have some hints of traditional Inca and African and Native American music. A great deal of the Chinese and Japanese musical traditions have survived over the centuries and we have European musical texts dating back almost a thousand years. But even the best recreations are still only recreations—filtered through contemporary experience and sensibilities. They are interpretations of what we think the original experiences might have been.</p> <p>Electricity made it possible to record, store, and distribute music accurately and widely. The early days of records made it possible for a performer or an orchestra to reach people all over the world, a larger audience than a lifetime of live performances could reach. Records created a whole new kind of fame for performers.</p> <p>When radio broadcasting began in the early '20s, it created a new kind of national identity. People everywhere could experience the same events in synchrony. The radio brought news and entertainment into homes everywhere, connecting even the most distant dwellers to their big-city neighbors. Music, both live and recorded, reached whole new audiences. People who might never have heard an opera or a symphony or even a simple song could now be a part of the developing urban culture.</p> <p>Prior to the invention of radio, mother might read aloud to the family, usually a chapter of a book. On special occasions, someone in the family would play an instrument or sing. After the radio arrived in the parlor, the personal creation of entertainment declined. After dinner, the family would gather in the living room to listen to the evening’s news and entertainment, rescheduling itself to the various weekly programs. And as the radio became the focus of the family, the family identity gradually became homogenized to that role-models portrayed in the nightly dramas.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-radio.jpg" width="300" height="291" /></p> <p>And radios were big in those days! They were cabinet-sized behemoths that filled a corner of the room, with huge tubes that doubled as space-heaters filling the top half, and a 12-inch speaker in a large enclosure on the bottom. The sound quality could be fairly impressive.</p> <p>On Sundays, the network radio stations would play serious music—symphonies or operas, noteworthy pieces of classical importance. Listeners who had never had the chance before, now became familiar with the works of Beethoven and Mozart, Tchaikovsky and others. Additionally, classical music pieces were often used as themes for movies and radio programs. Franz Lizst’s Les Preludes was the theme for the Flash Gordon serials, Rossini’s William Tell Overture is practically synonymous with The Lone Ranger, and who doesn’t sing “kill the wabbit!” while listening to Wagner?</p> <p>In the '40s, table radios (eventually clock radios) became commonplace. They could never match the big speakers for volume or impact, but they took up less room and could fit in kitchens and bedrooms for personal listening. In the '50s, television stole radio’s nighttime audiences, so radio had to reinvent itself. FM and FM stereo provided significantly better sound quality than AM—true high-fidelity—so it became the new home of classical music. Car radios became a standard feature on all new cars, no longer a pricey add-on, so drivers could listen to news and ball games on their AM stations. The invention of the transistor radio made AM an even more portable medium. The baby boomers took to it like puppies to kibble.</p> <p>By the end of the '50s and the beginning of the '60s, teenage boomers were listening to rock and roll everywhere. Every major city had at least one, sometimes several competing, rock and roll stations. The DJs were the helmsmen of the burgeoning rock culture—elevating Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, the Beach Boys, and eventually that band from Liverpool into icons. On weekends, teens went to a dance concert to hear a live band or to a teen club where a DJ spun records, but even on school days, teens gathered to listen to 45rpm singles in their bedrooms. The portability of music was first a delicious novelty, a luxury, and finally a convenience—but that convenience changed everyone’s relationship with our music.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-boombox.jpg" width="450" height="294" /></p> <p>As the '60s turned into the '70s, car stereos and cassette players and boom boxes made music even more portable. The result was that as consumers became more and more accustomed to that convenience and portability, music stopped being an event. It became a kind of auditory wallpaper. Soon it was everywhere and often inescapable. Weird stuff dripped out of elevators and kitschy coffee shops, something called “easy listening.” That meant you didn’t have to pay attention to it.</p> <p>The unintended consequence of all this convenience was that music began to lose much of its emotional impact. Part of it was that recording technology couldn’t handle the wide dynamic range of most music, so the music had to be compressed—the high peaks of drumbeats were audibly limited. The playback technology was even worse. Music played over most radios was small and tinny. Speaker systems were cheap, often dreadful, and almost always sonically mismatched for their environment.</p> <p>There were some exceptions. One was the movie theater, where images were wedded to sound. Magnetic sound tracks provided significantly better quality, and theater owners had to invest in decent loudspeakers and amplifiers anyway. Turning up the volume often hides the lack of dynamic range, but if you listen to any MGM soundtrack from that era (Dr. Zhivago, for example) you can hear how compressed the sound really was.</p> <p>Another exception was the enthusiasm of hi-fi hobbyists. In their near-fanatic pursuit of great sound they turned high end stereo gear into an industry. High-fidelity stereo freaks were dedicated to restoring both the physical and emotional impact to recorded music. The stereo magazines of that era often discussed how the home experience was different than the live experience and whether or not a recording should be judged by how well it recreated the live experience or whether the home experience should be weighed on its own merits.</p> <p>Sony’s cassette-playing Walkman made music a personal experience. The sound quality of a properly calibrated set of earbuds or headphones could be remarkable and the sight of someone walking down a city street plugged into some unshared reverie became commonplace. In the glory days of cassettes, enthusiasts ripped their own music tapes from vinyl records. With a knapsack full of cassettes and extra batteries, you could be set for the day. But the Walkman was a mechanical device with a couple of miniature motors that had to withstand the rigors of portability. The lifespan of even the most rugged player was often less than a year.</p> <p>The emergence of the MP3 player—the iPod and all the wannabes—is the current evolutionary phase of portable music. The first ones had hard drives, but now the music player is solid-state, nearly unbreakable, and with enough capacity that you can carry a whole library of listening in your pocket. (Not quite an entire collection of 5,000 CDs, but certainly your favorites.) Add video and maybe a few games and you have a complete personal entertainment device. <br />Where do we go from here?</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/futuretense-musicdep-ipod.jpg" width="300" height="376" /></p> <p>We’re already seeing smartphones and tablets doubling as music and video players, and Amazon now lets you stream selections from your library direct to almost any device you own. It may be that portable music will disappear as a product and become instead a fungible (look it up) service.</p> <p>What all of this history proves is that human beings have an enormous hunger for music. Recording and playback technology has evolved to meet that hunger. We seek out music everywhere, we bring it home, we take it with us, we tailor it, we use it and even abuse it. (Spike Jones, P.D.Q. Bach, Weird Al Yankovich.) But the continuing evolution of technology has also produced a profound shift in our personal relationship with music.</p> <p>For many (most?) consumers, music has now become a completely individual experience. You design your listening to suit your own moods and tastes, you create a unique soundtrack for your life. Your relationship with music no longer depends on availability of performers or broadcasts. You no longer have to share your music with others. Your music is a personal event that you summon at will.</p> <p>Depending on what you want it to be, music can be wallpaper, soundtrack, anthem, or epiphany. Depending on how you listen to it, music can be background or immersive. Our technology not only gives us a choice in what we listen to, but also how we listen to it. Music is now a mutable resource.</p> <p>On the one hand, it can be argued that having music be so casually available produces a context of disrespect for all music. Because it’s so easily obtained, it’s no longer a special event. We can regard it as disposable, replaceable, even irrelevant.</p> <p>But on the other hand, it is just as easy to argue that having access to so much music as a regular part of life makes it possible for all of us to enrich our lives with even more musical discoveries than ever before. It’s an opportunity to widen our menu of choices and expand our personal repertoires.</p> <p>What do you think? What’s your experience?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>—————</p> <p><em>David Gerrold is a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author. He has written more than 50 books, including "The Man Who Folded Himself" and "When HARLIE Was One," as well as hundreds of short stories and articles. His autobiographical story "The Martian Child" was the basis of the 2007 movie starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. He has also written for television, including episodes of Star Trek, Babylon 5, Twilight Zone, and Land Of The Lost. He is best known for creating tribbles, sleestaks, and Chtorrans. In his spare time, he redesigns his website,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.gerrold.com/" target="_blank">www.gerrold.com</a></em></p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/future_tense_music_depreciation#comments CDs history mp3s music Radio records Walkman Future Tense Columns Features Wed, 21 Dec 2011 21:58:24 +0000 David Gerrold 21853 at http://www.maximumpc.com 13 Stages In The Evolution of the Mouse http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/13_stages_evolution_mouse <!--paging_filter--><p>Mice—they’re something we PC enthusiasts tend to take for granted. After all, once you’ve specced out your new rig with a blazing fast processor and a video card the size of a VCR, what’s it really matter what we use to move the pointer around?</p> <p>They’re easy to forget, because the baseline options we have today are exponentially better than what we had just a decade ago. To refresh your memory, we’ve put together a list of 13 mice that introduced major new features and blew open new markets. Read on for a lesson in the history of the mouse!</p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/13_stages_evolution_mouse#comments gallery gaming mice history mice mouse Features Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:30:26 +0000 Alex Castle 19278 at http://www.maximumpc.com Where It All Began: The 10 Original Software Companies http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/where_it_all_began_10_original_software_companies <!--paging_filter--><p>In compiling a list of the world's oldest software companies, one comes face to face with an inevitable question. Namely, what is it? What the heck is this thing we call "software?"</p> <p>We searched the darkest corners of our brains and perused the online dictionaries for quickie text bytes and never really could come up with a single, all-purpose answer. Is it the overtly simplistic "Anything that is not hardware but is used with hardware" or the seemingly too limiting "The programs used to direct the operations of a computer?" How about this metaphysical beauty: "Unlike hardware, software can't be touched." Ouch. That makes our heads hurt.</p> <p>While it's easy to say that Windows or Office or even the wanton dismemberment of Dead Space 2 are obvious examples of software, where does one draw the line? Did software, for instance, exist before the advent of computers? In our minds, it did. Though the concept of altering the performance of mechanisms by feeding them independent sets of instructions has clearly become rampant in the computer age, it in fact started long before that – the early 18th century, to be exact. And that is precisely where we'll start our journey.</p> <p>Please remember as you read that software – and for that matter, computers – were with us long before the desktop PCs that so radically changed everything. Moreover, just because Joe Blow in some dungeon in Joe Blow Land cranked out a few lines of code before one of the key players, we've elected for the purposes of this article to ignore Joe and highlight instead those companies that history will see as having made a serious impact. Ergo, our countdown may seem a bit scattered. It isn't. It's perfect.</p> <h3>Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR)</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/ctr_logo.jpg" width="333" height="415" /></p> <p>To accurately discuss one of the most important companies in the development of early computing, one needs to discuss its most important contribution, the punch card. And to accurately discuss the punch card, one must transport oneself all the way back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.</p> <p>As any history buff will tell you, the invention of the textile loom in the early 17th century – which permitted the mass-manufacture of clothing – was a critical moment in the history of modern man. So when two French dudes, Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon, added perforated paper rolls to the equation, thus allowing one person to output a variety of goods without enlisting assistants, it was a Very Big Deal that is today considered by many to be the birth of software.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/ctr-herman-hollerith.jpg" width="223" height="322" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="/files/u139222/ctr-herman-hollerith-tabulating-machine.jpg" width="380" height="322" /></p> <p>In time, the punch card concept was used with a variety of machines. But it was a fellow by the name of Herman Hollerith (above, left) who pioneered the idea of recording data on a punch card that would then be read by a machine. The US government liked the idea enough to use it in its 1890 census, the first-ever census to be machine tabulated.</p> <p>In 1911, Hollerith's burgeoning enterprise, Tabulating Machine Company, was one of four businesses that merged to form Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation (CTR). Though the new company's reign under the CTR moniker was brief – just 13 years – it was eminently notable not just for its punch cards but also for the fact that in 1924 it was renamed into something just slightly more familiar – IBM.</p> <h3>IBM</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/ibmlogosoverview.jpg" width="499" height="279" /></p> <p>Think IBM and you may think hardware and mainframes. And rightfully so. But you need only look at its birth to see it flaunted a not insignificant software component right from the start.</p> <p>As we documented earlier, it was a merger between four companies that formed Computer Tabulating Recording Company (CTR), the predecessor of IBM, exactly one hundred years ago. Of these four concerns, two were of the software ilk. Granted, we're talking <em>primitive</em> software, but software nonetheless.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/ibmstreetoffice.jpg" width="360" height="335" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/ibmprintad-full.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/ibmprintad-480.jpg" width="243" height="480" /></a></p> <p>First, and as we've already discussed, there was Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company. But we can't forget International Time Recording Company, a business founded in 1888 on the principle that a tardy employee was a bad employee. ITRC pioneered the notion of the employee time clock – and of course the associated "time cards" – a concept that would ultimately be a mainstay throughout industry for much of the following century.</p> <p>IBM's done a ton of stuff since then and had its fingers in virtually any pies it could find as it built itself into one of the world's premier corporate goliaths. Yet software has always played a role.</p> <p>Developed in the 1950s, FORTRAN has been at the FORefront of high-level programming languages ever since. COBOL, also developed in the rock and roll 50s, remains a standard language for business apps. And of course there's Lotus Development Corporation and its Lotus Software, acquired by IBM in a hostile takeover in the mid-90s. IBM. Big Blue. Big software.</p> <h3>Computer Usage Company</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/computer-usage-company-logo.jpg" width="250" height="183" /></p> <p>Back in the day ("the day" meaning pre-Beatles, when the number of computers worldwide was just a few thousand) the term "software" wasn't even on the radar and the coding that ran the beastly machines was developed either by the company that built the computer – which at the time were each about the size of a school bus – or by the users themselves.</p> <p>Two ex-IBM workers, Elmer Kubie and John Sheldon, had a plan to change all that. Veterans of the IBM Technical Computing Bureau in New York, Kubie and Sheldon saw a need for independent software providers and in 1955 formed a business they would call, inventively enough, Computer Usage Company (CUC).</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/cuc-50smainframe.jpg" width="500" height="403" /></p> <p>In time, CUC would build programs that simulated the flow of oil (for the California Research Corporation) and tracked election results (for the CBS television network). It "had business" with the US Navy, and developed a compiler – a program that translates source code into object code – for the Federal Aviation Administration.</p> <p>In 1967, as Hendrix performed at Monterey and two years before man walked on the moon, CUC sported a staff of 700 and revenues in excess of $13 million. Twenty years later, in the midst of a rapidly changing industry - and likely because of it - the company was Chapter 7. But not before staking claim to being the first independent computer software developer. Ever.</p> <h3>Computer Sciences Corporation</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/computer-sciences-corporation_logo.jpg" width="500" height="288" /></p> <p>Any company that's survived more than 50 years must be doing something right.</p> <p>In 1959, a bright young IBM programmer by the name of Roy Nutt (below, left), a key player in the development of IBM's groundbreaking FORTRAN programming language, banded together with marketing specialist Fletcher Jones (below, right) to found Computer Sciences Corporation. Legend says the total investment of both men was a mere $100.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/csc_-_roy_nutt.jpg" width="200" height="295" /> &nbsp; &nbsp;<img src="/files/u139222/csc_-_fletcher_jones.jpg" width="200" height="295" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/csc_people_in_the_early_years.jpg" width="535" height="216" /></p> <p>Today, Nutt and Fletcher have sadly gone to the great mainframe in the sky, yet CSC annual revenues regularly hit the $15 billion mark and the company employs more than 91,000 people in 90 countries. In between, CSC pioneered early software development, defeated rival CUC (see above) at its own game, became the largest software concern in the United States in 1963, and has counted among its customers such trifling outfits as NASA, the federal government, and AT&amp;T.</p> <p>All of this from a business most people may not even know, and one that certainly hasn't produced any software at any time that's become a household name. Which proves you don't need to be a household name to do a good job and make one heck of a lot of money.</p> <h3>MSC Software</h3> <p>In May of 1962, President John F Kennedy predicted America would by the end of the decade place a man on the moon. Just a year and a half later, the world had lost one of its great leaders. Yet there was no shortage of folks ready to keep Kennedy's grand dream alive over the course of the next six years.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/jfk_faceup.jpg" width="160" height="204" />&nbsp; <img src="/files/u139222/mscsoftware.jpg" width="450" height="338" /></p> <p>Certainly MSC Software was in there doing its share. Debuting in 1963 as MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation, the company specialized from the start in structural analysis, developing software for pre-PC computers that simulated the functionality of complex engineering designs. Its first product, SADSAM (Structural Analysis by Digital Simulation of Analog Methods), was designed specifically for the aerospace industry, and by 1965, MSC was involved heavily with NASA.</p> <p>Today, MSC Software employs 1200 people over 23 countries and says it can count virtually every OEM manufacturer in the world as an MSC customer.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <hr /> <p>&nbsp;</p> <h3>Applied Data Systems Inc.</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/adsi_modernlogo.jpg" width="363" height="319" /></p> <p>The early 1960s - 1963 in particular - was an instrumental time in the up-and-coming software world. We've already referenced several other companies that either began life or began to flourish during this era, decades before the concept of home computing had even been concocted, and we can now add another. Founded in San Francisco in 1963 and incorporated one year later, it was called Applied Data Systems Inc. (ADSI) and it lays claim to being "one of the oldest established, independent software companies in the world."</p> <p>By 1967, ADSI was big news. Big enough that on June 21st of that year, it was featured on the front page of what would eventually become an industry media staple – Computerworld. There, in bold headlines, we see, "COBOL, RPG Bested By New Language?"</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/adpac_peterharris.jpg" width="140" height="185" /></p> <p>What the heck were they talking about? Well, it seems ADSI, under the leadership of one Peter Harris – who himself had turned down an earlier offer from fellow ex-IBM buddy Peter Nutt over at the newly formed Computer Sciences Corporation – had been slaving on a new programming language dubbed ADPAC. ADPAC, claimed ADSI, was far superior to IBM's much ballyhooed COBOL language (according to Harris, "The world thought COBOL was just terrible") and ADSI was out to prove it.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/adpac_compworld.jpg" width="600" height="349" /></p> <p>ADPAC was ultimately successful but not as successful as Harris felt it should have been – a situation he blames on IBM scooping all the juicy government contracts. Today, ADSI, now renamed ADPAC after its original programming language, continues to deliver mainframe solutions to those who need them.</p> <h3>Cincom Systems</h3> <p>Today, Cincom Systems proudly proclaims on its very own website that "The history of the software industry really follows the history of Cincom." And you know, they're not that far off the mark.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/cincom-logo.jpg" width="350" height="118" /></p> <p>Founded in 1968, the same year we saw the television debuts of Hawaii 5-O and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Cincom was at the outset unique from the rest of our Top Ten. You see, it did not make software. Nevertheless, we feature it here. Why? Because Cincom recognized, long before the vast majority of people both inside and outside the industry, that software would one day be an entirely separate entity. Ultimately, its contribution was arguably just as key to the maturation of the industry.</p> <p>Selling software in 1968? At a time when the mere suggestion of computers was enough to make most of us shake our heads and verbally question the sanity of anyone even thinking such weirdness? Why, yes, that's exactly what Cincom did.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/cincomcardtable.jpg" width="250" height="236" /></p> <p>Granted, the road wasn't easy. With a $600 investment and an office that consisted of a card table in the home of co-founder Thomas Nies, Cincom ran rather lean at the start, promoting the soon to be trendy idea of database management and selling one such system, named "TOTAL." But the years were kind to Cincom and less than a decade later its offices were found in such faraway spots as Japan, Belgium, and Australia.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/cincom_tomnies1968.jpg" width="300" height="450" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="/files/u139222/cincom_tomnies2011.jpg" width="300" height="450" /><br /><strong>The only constant in the computer industry is, apparently, Tom Nies' facial expression.</strong></p> <p>Today, with Nies still running the ship, Cincom is a multinational giant. That its point man is featured in the Smithsonian Institute's Computer History Collection is the icing on the cake.</p> <h3>Nintendo</h3> <p>By strict chronological definition not one of the world's first software developers, Nintendo Company is nevertheless a positively ancient entity by any standards – beginning life as Japanese playing card manufacturer Nintendo Koppai way back in 1887 – and is certainly one of the first businesses to jump aboard and drive the arcade and home video gaming bandwagon.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/nintendoplaque.jpg" width="615" height="480" /></p> <p>Now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 billion dollars (what's a few billion between friends?), owner of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners, and creator of such classic – some might say irritating – video gaming icons such as Mario and Donkey Kong, Nintendo was far less affluent and far less prestigious when it made the switch in the mid-70s from toys and other less successful ventures to electronic games.</p> <p>Even then Nintendo's primary interest seemed to lie in entire game systems, and soon it had become the Japanese distributor of one of the very first home gaming consoles, the Magnavox Odyssey. The "Color TV Game" series of consoles followed soon thereafter, but by the early 80s Nintendo had begun to carve a historical niche by shipping all-time software favorites such as the aforementioned Kong and Mario on both home-brewed and third-party systems.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/donkeykongfull.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/donkeykong420.jpg" width="294" height="420" /></a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/nintendofunclubfull.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/nintendofunclub420.jpg" width="319" height="420" /></a></p> <p>It can be argued that Nintendo's biggest claims to fame are its full-on systems, but the company also delivered plenty of software to go along with the hardware. In the end, Nintendo's two-pronged attack helped shape the home gaming industry.</p> <h3>Microsoft</h3> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/micro_soft_first_logo.jpg" width="427" height="280" /></p> <p>Microsoft is by no means one of the world's first software companies. But we simply can't keep harping on about programming languages, mainframes, and punch cards when most people consider software to be the programs we as end users load on our personal computers. Thusly, we're compelled to discuss the Redmond, Washington giant simply because its founders, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, are generally acknowledged as being not just the first people to accurately forecast that software as opposed to hardware was the way of the future, but to also successfully act on it.</p> <p>And act on it they did. Though there was no shortage of entrepreneurs who seemingly saw the writing on the wall and entered the PC software game in its formative stages (such as Digital Research's Gary Kildall, the creator of the wrongly short-lived CP/M operating system), Gates and company finagled and stepped on a few shoes (most notably Kindall's) and took it to the max, writing a programming language for the primitive yet seminal Altair 8000 in 1975, developing first the Xenix and then the MS-DOS operating systems, and then pumping out the WYSIWYG Microsoft Word in 1983 and of course the graphical extension of MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 1.0, in 1985.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/ms_gatesallen1.jpg" width="318" height="258" />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="/files/u139222/ms_gatesallen2.jpg" width="287" height="258" /></p> <p>By 1990, Microsoft had cut its earlier ties with IBM, released the Microsoft Works office suite, and slammed the market with a Windows version that had staying power – Windows 3.0. The rest, as they say, is history – except for one thing. Say what you will about Gates' business practices – and many have – but dude is one heck of a<a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/interview_new_bill_gates_and_how_he%E2%80%99s_still_teaching_us_be_better_geeks" target="_blank"> philanthropist</a>.</p> <h3>Apple</h3> <p>Like Microsoft, Steve Jobs' and Steve Wozniak's Apple Computer may have been a late arrival to the computer party. But it wasn't late where it counted – the PC revolution.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/appleearlynewtonlogo.jpg" width="329" height="480" /></p> <p>Indeed, Apple's first computer, 1976's Apple I, was notable not just because it was handmade by a teenaged Jobs in his bedroom, which it was, but also for its compatibility with – gasp! – keyboards and monitors. Scoff if you want, but this was a time when competing PCs, of which there were precious few, relied on toggle switches and blinking lights. Can you say "Star Trek?"</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/apple-jobs-and-wozniak.jpg" width="306" height="204" /></p> <p>But back to the software. Though the Apple I didn't actually feature software inasmuch as firmware, all that would change as new units rolled out. By 1978 and as an upgrade to the Apple II, Jobs and Wozniak released both a disk drive and Apple's first operating system, Apple DOS. By 1980 and the business-oriented Apple III, we had Apple SOS (Sophisticated Operating System), which would then morph into Apple ProDOS three years later.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/apple-lisa.jpg" width="306" height="400" /></p> <p>But it was the Apple "Lisa," foisted upon an unsuspecting public just one year prior to the first Mac and priced at a groan-inducing $9995, that heralded Apple's first foray into full-blown graphical operating systems. In it, we found file browsers, document icons, spreadsheets, drawing tools, and much, much more. Apple's graphical OS thusly predated Microsoft's by two years and that alone was one giant leap for mankind.</p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/where_it_all_began_10_original_software_companies#comments apple corporate corporations history ibm mainframes microsoft nintendo Features Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:47:14 +0000 Gord Goble 19216 at http://www.maximumpc.com 18 Key Stages in Desktop Storage http://www.maximumpc.com/article/18_key_stages_desktop_storage <!--paging_filter--><p>Ah, hard drives, how far you've come. It's incredible to think that only 30 years ago, the top end hard drive you could get stored 5MB of data and ran with a separate controller entirely! But, that's technology for ya'. Technology doesn't grow gradually, it grows exponentially, and watching that growth is one of our favorite things to do. In the spirit of this, we present to you the evolution of desktop storage, in image form. Enjoy!&nbsp;</p> <p>Other Popular Image Galleries:&nbsp;</p> <p><a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/25_most_important_pcs_history">The 25 Most Important PCs in History&nbsp;</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/33_key_stages_evolution_virtual_mankind">33 Key Stages in the Evolution of (Virtual) Mankind&nbsp;</a></p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/18_key_stages_desktop_storage#comments gallery Hardware history storage Hard Drives Features Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:39:22 +0000 The Maximum PC Staff 17759 at http://www.maximumpc.com Cool Site of the Week: Small Town Noir http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/cool_site_week_small_town_noir <!--paging_filter--><p><img src="/files/u134761/smalltownnoir228.jpg" width="228" height="171" style="float: right;" />The world of tech journalism has a wicked case of tunnel vision. We’re often so busy hunting for the next piece of hardware hotness or slick new start-up that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that while technology is often thought of as a gateway to the future, it can also serve as a vibrant doorway to the past. For this edition of Cool Site of the Week, we take a visit to the seedy end of memory lane with <a href="http://smalltownnoir.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Small Town Noir</a>.</p> <p>Designed and maintained by Dairmid Mogg, Small Town Noir plays the part of time capsule for the lives of the residence of New Castle, Pennsylvania as seen through the lenses of a mug shot camera. Built upon the backbone of discarded police photographs from between 1930 and 1959, the website offers a rare glimpse into the lives of every day Americans from all walks of life who all share one thing in common: They were arrested for doing something stupid or illegal.</p> <p>Thanks to Mogg’s meticulous research, the story behind each of the mug shots is brought to life. Women fighting with razor blades, public intoxication, car thieves and bank robbery: New Castle had it all. These are early 20th century stories so colorful that you won’t even noticed that the whole darn site is in black and white.</p> <p>When you're finished walking the backstreets of New Castle, be sure to pay us a visit next Friday for the next edition of Cool Site of the Week.</p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/cool_site_week_small_town_noir#comments Americana history Internet Max Tech photos Site of the Week wordpress Columns Web Exclusive Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:54:18 +0000 Seamus Bellamy 17598 at http://www.maximumpc.com Firefox Addon of the Week: Weave Browser Sync http://www.maximumpc.com/article/web_exclusive/firefox_addon_week_weave_browser_sync <!--paging_filter--><p>For the longest time, Xmarks has been my Firefox bookmark synchronization tool of choice.  I've been using it forever, and I can't recall the last time it's presented me with any kind of problem--that's because it never has.  Simply put, Xmarks is an amazing tool for keeping your bookmarks in check across multiple installations of the Firefox browser.</p> <p>But this post isn't about Xmarks.  Mozilla itself has released its own synchronization tool dubbed &quot;<a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10868">Weave Browser Sync</a>,&quot; and it offers up even more possibilities than the trusty ol' Xmarks add-on.  So why am I not fawning over this extension outright and declaring it to be the greatest browser synchronization tool since the sliced bread, er, synchronization utility?  Well, a few stability issues reported by other Firefox users have left me a bit cautious to suggest that Weave is the answer to all of your dreams.  It's certainly worth trying out, just don't put all your eggs in your woven basket should it not ultimately work on your browser--or worse, accidentally nuke your bookmarks.</p> <p>Here's the deal.  I haven't had any problems with Weave's synchronization features myself.  In a few cross-platform tests, the browser add-on was able to correctly sync over my bookmarks, history, preferences, tabs, and saved passwords.  That's a pretty hefty list compared to Xmarks, which only really synchronizes passwords and bookmarks.  Weave's tabs synchronization is an especially killer feature--you'll feel like you're browsing with one, unified session no matter what system you're accessing Firefox from.  Couple this up with <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/67651">BarTab</a>, and you have a super-powerful setup for tabbed browsing.</p> <p>As I mentioned, a number of users have had a bit of trouble getting Weave to work.  The add-on offers enough to make it worth the recommendation.  However, I'd be remiss in my abilities as a reviewer if I didn't mention this fact--be sure to back up your bookmarks prior to installing Weave in case the add-on doesn't work out as well as you would have preferred.</p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u16580/firefox_weave.jpg" width="415" height="381" /></div> <p><span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000" class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial,sans-serif" class="Apple-style-span"><strong><em>Maximum PC picks one new Firefox add-on as its favorite of the week each... week. Have a nifty extension that you can't live without? Twitter<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.twitter.com/acererak">David Murphy @acererak</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>with your latest suggestions.</em></strong></span></span></p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/web_exclusive/firefox_addon_week_weave_browser_sync#comments Bookmark firefox addon of the week history Organize Password Sync synchronize tabs Web Exclusive Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:02:51 +0000 David Murphy 11311 at http://www.maximumpc.com Future Tense: A Brief History of 3D Film http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/future_tense_brief_history_3d_film <!--paging_filter--><p>The first stereoptic movies were shown in theaters in 1922 and used red and blue (anaglyph) glasses.  The first public demonstration of the Polaroid projection of 3D movies was at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York in a <a href="http://www.absolutemichigan.com/dig/michigan/chrysler-3d-at-the-1939-worlds-fair/">promotional film for Chrysler</a>. </p> <p>In 1946, 90 million people a week went to the movies.  Only a few years later, television had cut those attendance numbers almost in half.  The studios were looking for ways to compete with this upstart industry.  (Sound familiar?)  </p> <p>The first thing the studios did was to increase the number of Technicolor productions, because television was only black-and-white.  They also began experimenting with various big screen processes.  Cinerama had a wraparound screen and needed three cameras and three projectors.  VistaVision used 70mm film at 30fps.  Cinemascope used 35mm film projected through an anamorphic lens that stretched it sideways to fill a wide curved screen.  </p> <p>But in 1952 an independent producer named Arch Oboler brought Bwana Devil to the theaters.  It was a pretty dreadful movie, telling the story of two lions that killed 130 people during the construction of an African railroad, but the novelty of 3D drew large audiences to the theaters and the major studios were quick to leap aboard.  3D films could be made with existing cameras and lenses and did not require a major refit of the theater, like Cinerama and Cinemascope did.</p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u57670/Bwanadevil3.jpg" width="441" height="590" /></div> <p>The very best of the 3D films of the 50s was Warner Bros’ House of Wax, starring Vincent Price.  Warner Brothers also released Murders In The Rue Morgue, starring Karl Malden.  The classic giant ant film Them! was also scheduled for 3D/color production, but the day before shooting was to start, Jack Warner cut it back to flat b/w.  “Who’s going to want to see a movie about giant ants?”  As it happened Them! was still the studio’s highest grossing film in 1954.    </p> <p>Universal Studios also produced several legendary films in 3D, including The Creature From The Black Lagoon, and It Came From Outer Space. But so many terrible movies were released in 3D that within a year, audiences started staying away from 3D movies as if they were poisonous.  That’s why Kiss Me Kate and Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder were released flat, although filmed in 3D.  </p> <p>In subsequent years, there were occasional efforts to bring 3D back to movie theaters.  In 1966 Arch Oboler made another 3D film, The Bubble.  It was a science fiction film, only marginally better than Bwana Devil.  </p> <p>But the notable thing about The Bubble was that it used a much simpler 3-D projection process—the horribly named ‘Space-Vision 4D.’  (More commonly known as the “over and under” process.)  The standard 35mm frame was divided horizontally.  A single beam-splitter in front of the camera stacked the two separate eye images one above the other.  Another beam-splitter, this one an even simpler prism device, was mounted in front of the projector and it overlapped the two images onto the silver screen.  </p> <p>Space-Vision’s singular strength was that it was an easy system for theater-owners to implement.  Once you mounted and adjusted the beam-splitting prism in front of the projector, everything else was standard operating procedure.  Pass out glasses to the customers and charge them an extra quarter.  But although Space-Vision provided a stable widescreen 3D image with perfect synchronization, each eye was receiving only half the light, filtered through a Polaroid lens, so any film shown in this system felt dark.  </p> <p>In the 80’s, there was another brief revival of 3D movies, also using an over-and-under projection system, this time called ‘SuperVision’ and ‘WonderVision.’  These films were mostly second-rate efforts, like Comin’ At Ya and Treasure Of The Four Crowns, but audiences also had a chance to see a very young Molly Ringwald in Spacehunter, Adventures In The Forbidden Zone.    </p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u57670/Spacehunter_movie_poster.jpg" width="338" height="520" /></div> <p>For the completists, I will also mention Amityville 3D, Jaws 3D, Friday The Thirteenth III-D and Nightmare On Elm Street, Freddy’s Dead which had the last ten minutes in anaglyph 3D.  (That was the mention.)</p> <p>In 1986, the Canadian exhibit at the Vancouver World’s Fair (Expo ‘86) included the first public showing of an IMAX film in 3D using Polaroid glasses.  The IMAX HD system projected the extra-wide film at 48fps, the 3D system required two cameras and two projectors, so it was a major investment in a new technology.  Also very expensive.  </p> <p>The film itself was a 40-minute history of the exploration and settlement of Canada.  Because a standard IMAX screen is 8 stories tall it fills your entire field of vision, so there’s no ‘window’ effect.  The water in the river looks like it’s lapping at your feet.  The tree branches feel like they’re right overhead.  Pretty impressive.  An enhanced system was shown at Seville ‘92 World’s Fair in Seville, Spain.  </p> <p>IMAX 3D started showing up in various venues throughout the 90’s, mostly for travelogues and science documentaries—and one horrible survey of 3D history called Adventures in 3D, inexplicably hosted by Elvira.  </p> <p>Nevertheless, despite some dreadfully silly missteps suitable only for amusement park venues, by the end of the decade, IMAX 3D was fairly well established as an ‘event’ venue, presenting a number of excellent semi-documentary adventures.  One of the first and best was about the early days of commercial mail flights in South America.  Other films took us down to the ocean floor, or on a visit to a fictional space station of the future, and even a James Cameron return to the grave of the Titanic, Ghosts Of The Abyss.  My favorite, however, was Walking On The Moon, a remarkable adventure produced by Tom Hanks.  The IMAX 3D experience created a genuine sense of being on the surface of the moon.  It was as near to a first-hand experience of the cold beauty of Luna’s desolate airless terrain as most of us will ever know.  </p> <p>The first feature film produced in IMAX 3D was The Polar Express, released in November of 2004.  Despite some initially lukewarm reviews, The Polar Express filled IMAX 3D theaters everywhere and came back for a second run in 3D the following year.  </p> <p>Meanwhile, on another front, the major studios were pushing theater owners to switch to digital projection, and not just because it guaranteed a superior image.  A print of a 35mm film can cost upwards of $2000 per print.  Multiply that by the number of theaters you release the film to, usually 1200 to 1600 screens, and your movie has to earn several million dollars just to pay for the physical act of distribution.  Plus film prints wear out, get scratched, break, get dirty, and fade.  They also jitter, especially as the sprocket holes get stretched.  After a few dozen trips through the projector, a film print visibly degrades—but a digital copy remains pristine forever.  So switching to digital projection saves the cost of a print, guarantees bright stable images and a consistent viewing experience for audiences, and also reduces the opportunity for pirates to steal a print and make bootleg DVDs.  </p> <p>Because most current digital projectors are inherently 3D-capable, a modern digitally equipped theater is also 3D-ready.  3D films have shown up in popular venues all over the country, sometimes with improved Polaroid glasses (circular polarization), occasionally with shutter glasses, but more recently with Dolby 3D.  </p> <p>The advantage of Dolby 3D is that it does not use polarized light, so it does not require a silver screen to preserve image polarization, nor does it use shutter-glasses that require batteries and recharging.  The Dolby 3D process uses different wavelengths of red, blue, and green for the left and right eye images.  The digital projectors can be precisely tuned to project only the specific wavelengths for each eye-image.  The eye can’t tell the difference and the viewer does not perceive any color differences between the left-eye and right-eye images.  </p> <p>(And this leads me to wonder if the same system would work on home TVs and monitors.  Can they be tuned as precisely?  I don’t see why not.  But personally, I find the Dolby 3D glasses much less comfortable than the lighter weight polarized glasses.)  </p> <p>Most of the 3D movies of the past decade have been CGI animated films.  The Polar Express, Chicken Little, Beowulf, Meet The Robinsons, Monster House, Monsters V. Aliens, Bolt, Ice Age 3D, Up, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, A Christmas Carol, and the reissues of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. </p> <p>In principle, CGI films are relatively easy to produce in 3D, you just render the source material twice, once for each eye.  (Actually, my friends who work in 3D tell me that nothing is as easy as it is ‘in principle.’  There are issues in CGI that don’t occur in live action photography.)    </p> <p>The good news is that almost all of the 3D films released in the past ten years have been successful at the box office.  Although the number of theaters equipped to show 3D is still limited, audiences actively seek out the 3D venues, preferring them to the 2D screenings.  As much as 40% of a film’s earnings come from the theaters showing the film in 3D.  There’s no question that 3D is a hit with the audience.  </p> <p>There are two reasons for this.  First, modern digital 3D is a mature technology.  The images are bright, stable, and perfectly synchronized, so the opportunities for eyestrain and headaches are much less than in the past.  Second, the studios are not rushing to flood the market with cheap gimmicky films.  They are (mostly) reserving the 3D process for event films like Avatar.  </p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u57670/Avatar-Teaser-Poster.jpg" width="298" height="442" /></div> <p>Part of this is that shooting in 3D can add as much as 25% to the budget of a live-action film, even more if the film is heavy on digital special effects—which most films are these days.  Digital 3D cameras are expensive to rent and trained crews are in high demand.  This is bleeding edge technology again.  So we aren’t likely to see a quicky remake of Robot Monster (1953), the worst 3D movie ever made.  (Imagine a guy in a gorilla suit wearing a diving helmet, pretending to be an alien Ro-Man with a Calcinator death ray—in 3D.  Right up there with Plan Nine From Outer Space on the list of films so bad they’re legendary.)</p> <p>At the time of this writing, there are a lot of new films scheduled for production in 3D, over a billion dollar’s worth, with more in the planning stages.  Most of them are intended as summer blockbusters.  This very heavy investment in 3D production is being matched by the investment of theater owners in 3D-capable digital projection systems.</p> <p>So it’s very likely that this iteration of 3D movies will not be the same kind of short-lived fad that we have seen in the past, but is in fact the next step toward ever more immersive theatrical experiences.  </p> <p>The big question for the consumer electronics industry is whether or not the 3D experience can migrate successfully from the movie theater to the living room.  </p> <p>I’ll get into that next time.  </p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/future_tense_brief_history_3d_film#comments 3D david gerrold future tense history Future Tense Columns Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:02:58 +0000 David Gerrold 11101 at http://www.maximumpc.com Mozilla Finds Some Users Won't Upgrade to Firefox 3 Because of Porn Habits http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/mozilla_finds_some_users_wont_upgrade_firefox_3_because_porn_habits <!--paging_filter--><div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u58308/Firefox-ChestShot.jpg" width="405" height="274" /></div> <p>According to a <a href="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/08/26/porn-collection-put-people-off-upgrading-to-firefox-3/">recent study</a> by Mozilla, the number one reason for users not upgrading from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 was the new location bar, and the fact that it went deep into people’s bookmarks to suggest sites as they typed. More than 25 percent cited this as their reason for keeping the last generation of Firefox as their browser of choice.</p> <p> “When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn’t really want to have displayed,” said Firefox’s principal designer, Alex Faaborg. “In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you.”</p> <p> On a related note, Mozilla has introduced a private browsing mode in Firefox 3.5. So, you know, if this is the sort of thing you need to have – it’s safe to upgrade now.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="font-size: xx-small">Image Credit: <a href="http://tutorial-net.blogspot.com/2008/03/firefox-browser-tips.html">PC-Tutorials.co.cc </a></span></p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/mozilla_finds_some_users_wont_upgrade_firefox_3_because_porn_habits#comments Bookmark Browsing firefox funny history Mozilla porn Private News Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:11:27 +0000 Andy Salisbury 7590 at http://www.maximumpc.com Surfing Since 1991: The Evolution of Web Browsers http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/surfing_1991_evolution_web_browsers <!--paging_filter--><table border="0" align="right"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <script type="text/javascript"> digg_url = 'http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/web_browsers'; </script><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>In order to surf the web, you need a web browser, and today there are several different ones to choose from. If you're looking for a lean, no-nonsense browser, Chrome is the one for you. Internet Explorer still stands as the odds on favorite when you want to make sure pages load correctly (not because of superior standards support, but because its majority market share have driven developers to code their webpages to look best on IE). Firefox has found more than a niche market by giving users near endless customization, and Apple's Safari purports to run circles around everyone else (it doesn't). And then there's the cornucopia of alternative browsers and browser shells, like Flock (Firefox-based) and Avant (IE-based).</p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Browser_Feature1.png" width="405" height="150" /></div> <p>No matter which browser you choose to surf the web with, the features you take for granted today are the result of nearly two decades of browser design. On the following pages, we'll take you through a visual tour, in chronological order, of every major PC-based (read: not Mac) web browser that ever was, starting with the very first one: WorldWideWeb. We'll tell you what made each one unique and, when applicable, what it contributed to modern browser development. </p> <h2>WorldWideWeb </h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1991 </strong></p> <p>By most accounts, WorldWideWeb is regarded as the first web browser. The groundwork that would eventually lead to WorldWideWeb began in the late 1980s, the same decade MTV was launched and the Commodore 64 was still going strong. Officially introduced in 1991, WorldWideWeb could display basic style sheets and was the only way to see the web. The navigation menu contained &quot;back,&quot; &quot;next,&quot; and &quot;previous&quot; buttons, but the browser also served as an editor. WorldWideWeb would later be renamed to Nexus &quot;in order to save confusion between the program and the abstract information space,&quot; writes Tim Berners-Lee, the browser's developer.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/WorldWideWeb.png" width="405" height="301" /></p> <p>Image Credit: Tim Berners-Lee (w3.org)</p> <h2>Erwise</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1992 </strong></p> <p>Some online literature regards Mosaic as the world's first graphical point-and-click browser, but that distinction actually belongs to Erwise. Developed by four Finnish students at the Helsinki University of Technology, Erwise was designed for Unix computers running the X Windows System.</p> <p>Advanced for its time, Erwise had the ability to search for words on webpages. If it didn't find the word it was looking for, it would scour the internet, up to 12 pages at a time, to try to find it. Erwise could also load multiple pages at the same time, but despite all the innovation and promise, it was never commercialized, the result of a &quot;horrible recession&quot; in Finland at the time. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Erwise.png" width="405" height="347" /></p> <p>Image Credit: xconomy.com</p> <h2>ViolaWWW <br /></h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1992</strong></p> <p>Before the Web entered into the mainstream, a limited audience would see the introduction of the ViolaWWW browser. One of the earliest browsers, ViolaWWW was launched in May 1992. It was written by Pei-Yuan Wei, a University of California student, and like Erwise, was built for Unix and the X Windowing System. This gave the browser a limited audience.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/ViolaWWW.png" width="405" height="358" /></p> <p>Image Credit: xcf.berkley.edu</p> <p>Notable features include the ability to use multifont text, functioning within a single windows operation and the ability to clone a copy of a document in other windows, inclusion of a History window, &quot;Home&quot;, &quot;Back&quot;, and &quot;Forward&quot; buttons, online help buttons, and even bookmarks.</p> <h2>MidasWWW</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1992 </strong></p> <p>Another X browser, MidasWWW was released in November of 1992. It was developed by Tony Johnson at SLAC, who named it Midas for 'Motif Interactive Data Analysis Shell.' </p> <p>A popular browser among fellow physicists, Johnson had little interest in further developing MidasWWW. However, a colleague would translate it to run on VAX computers, making MidasWWW the first of only a small number of dedicated browsers for VAXes.</p> <p>One of the few innovations of MidasWWW was that hyperlinks changed color after you clicked on them. It was also the first browser to make use of plug-ins.</p> <h2>Lynx</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1992 </strong></p> <p>Although Erwise had already broken ground with a graphical interface, Lynx, also released in 1992, was a text-only browser originally developed by the University of Kansas to distribute campus information. It would later find an audience with the visually impaired because of its text-to-speech interface.</p> <p>In 1993, a student named Lou Montulli added an Internet interface to the application and released it as Lynx 2.0. This became popular for character mode terminals that didn't rely on graphics, although Lynx does possess the ability to launch external applications to handle images and videos.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Lynx_2.png" width="405" height="340" /></p> <p>You can still use Lynx today - above is a screenie we grabbed while running Lynx 2.8.5rel.1 on top of Vista 64-bit (<a href="http://csant.info/lynx.htm">download</a>). </p> <hr /> <h2>Mosaic 1.0</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1993</strong></p> <p>Erwise may be credited as the first graphical point-and-click browser, but Mosaic earns its spot in history as the first <em>popular</em> graphical browser, which helped push the world wide web into the mainstream.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Mosaic_1.png" width="405" height="405" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: wired.com</p> <p>Developed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), Mosaic was yet another browser for X-Windows on Unix computers. The browser spread initially through newsgroups, which one of the developers would continually monitor and offer support where necessary. </p> <p>Because the HTML 2.0 specification didn't exist at the time Mosaic 1.0 was released, the browser was lacking many capabilities that would later be part of the specification. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Mosaic_2.png" width="405" height="304" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: smartcomputing.com</p> <p>Development began on the second major version of Mosaic in January 1994, almost two years before a final version would be released in October 1995. Mosaic 2.x became the first major browser to support HTML forms, HTML 3 tables, and several HTML 3 Character style elements. It also added support for Internet Explorer's BGSound element. But compared to other browsers, Mosaic was <a href="http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/2net/2net51c/2net51c.asp&amp;guid=">knocked </a>for being &quot;inexcusably slow.&quot; </p> <p>Another version of Mosaic would later be released, but only for the Mac platform. </p> <h2>Arena</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1993</strong> </p> <p>Dave Raggett, whose involvement in the Web began by developing experimental web browsers and servers in 1992, designed the Arena browser a year later to demonstrate the ideas in the HTML+ specification. Arena was the first browser to support background images, tables, text flow around images, and inline mathematical expressions, according to Raggett, and it was very powerful (for its time) at doing so. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Arena.png" width="405" height="327" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: w3.org</p> <p>Arena would serve as a standards testbed by the W3C for HTML 3 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) up until the organization later switched to Amaya. </p> <h2>Cello</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1994 </strong></p> <p>Intended to be a multi-purpose browser, Cello brought native support for the WorldWideWeb, Gopher, FTP, CSO/ph/qi, and Usenet News retrieval, as well as a bunch of other protocols. It was developed by Thomas R. Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, who recognized that most lawyers were running Microsoft Windows while the majority of browsers had been written for Unix or DOS. As such, Cello goes down in history as the first web browser for Windows.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Cello.png" width="405" height="355" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: agocg.ac.uk</p> <h2>IBM WebExplorer<br /></h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1994</strong></p> <p>In 1987, IBM introduced its OS/2 operating system for PCs. Seven years later, IBM would serve up its own web browser, WebExplorer, a no- charge download for users of OS/2 Warp 3. In April 1995, IBM would begin bundling WebExplorer in the OS/2 Bonus Pack, a collection of applications stuffed onto a CD and included with Warp.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IBM_WebExplorer.png" width="405" height="291" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: pages.prodigy.net</p> <p>In addition to support for HTML 3, WebExplorer also implemented mail and news integration, and users could view their browsing history through an option called WebMap. A &quot;Links&quot; menu would display all of the links on a viewed webpage and organize them in a pull-down menu, which was used in conjunction with IBM's VoiceType voice navigation.</p> <hr /> <h2>Netscape Navigator</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1994</strong></p> <p>Everyone's heard of Netscape Navigator, the last standalone browser to ever claim a larger market share than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (Netscape Navigator seized a near 90 percent market share during its heyday). Netscape orginally said it would offer its browser for free for non-commercial use, but the free ride was over by version 1.1 for all but academic and non-profit organizations.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Netscape_1.png" width="405" height="271" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: macx.dk</p> <p>Version 1.x would offer up support for basic HTML 2 elements and some HTML 3 functionality, and as development continued, Netscape Navigator would later add table support to the mix. Version 1.2 also updated the user interface for Windows 95.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Netscape_2.png" width="405" height="283" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: Wikipedia</p> <p>Visually, not a whole lot changed with version 2.x over 1.x, but underneath the hood was a different story. The second major release of Netscape Navigator injected more HTML 3 elements into the engine, and for the first time, the browser could handle JavaScript code.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Netscape_3.png" width="405" height="304" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: webbasedprogramming.com</p> <p>In 1996, Netscape served up its third Navigator browser version. Still visually similar to earlier versions, the third major release added a bunch of new plug-ins, support for background colors in tables, and other odds and ends. A Gold version, which would later be changed to Netscape Communicator, integrated email, a news reader, and a WYSIWYG editor. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Netscape_4.png" width="405" height="326" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: 5star-shareware.com</p> <p>The fourth major release would be Netscape's last stand-alone Navigator and the last release for 16-bit Windows. Netscape Communicator would take over from version 4.5 up to version 4.8, and after that, the browser would simply be called Netscape. </p> <p>This would also be Netscape's first browser to take on a modern look, but it still trailed in appearance to the current version of Internet Explorer. Moreover, Netscape Communicator 4.x ran comparatively slow. However, Netscape announced in early 1998 that future versions would be given away for free, the first of which was Netscape Communicator 4.5 in October 1998. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Netscape_6.png" width="405" height="307" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: pcworld.com</p> <p>In November 1998, AOL acquired Netscape and almost immediately scrapped development of Netscape 5.0. Instead, AOL wanted to build a version from the ground up, which ultimately delayed the release of Netscape 6. When it was released in late 2000, Netscape 6, based on early Mozilla code, proved both slow and unstable, prone to frequent crashing. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Netscape_7.png" width="405" height="304" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: codescene.com</p> <p>Released in 2002, Netscape 7 addressed the stability and performance problems that plagued Netscape 6. By version 7.2, Netscape would include an address book, HTML editor, IRC client, AOL Instant Messenger, and an online radio player (Radio@Netscape).</p> <h2>Slipknot</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1994 </strong></p> <p>While Mosaic popularized graphical web browsing, such a luxury was unattainable for anyone without a SLIP or other TCP/IP connection. Thus Slipknot was born, a browser designed for UNIX dial-up users or direct connect shell accounts. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Slipknot.png" width="405" height="321" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: tidbits.com</p> <p>Slipknot allowed users to switch between the program's web browser and its UNIX terminal window so long as documents weren't being retrieved. It could save entire documents, along with embedded pictures, and could display up to 10 documents on the screen. it also offered anonymous FTP access, Gopher, and the ability to send outgoing mail with the &quot;mailto&quot; HTML tag. </p> <h2>Minuet</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1994</strong></p> <p>Short for Minnesota Internet users Essential Tool, Minuet, as you might have guessed, was developed at the University of Minnesota. It was a DOS-based browser with low system requirements that gave college students email, newsgroup, FTP, and of course web browsing functionality. To display pages with GIF or JPEG images, Minuet required the assistance of a videocard.</p> <div align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Minuet.png" width="405" height="304" /></div> <p>Image Credit: Wikipedia</p> <hr /> <h2>Internet Explorer</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1995 </strong></p> <p>Currently the market share leader, Microsoft's Internet Explorer was far less popular when it first debuted in 1995. To create what would eventually become the most used browser on the planet, Microsoft licensed Mosaic source code from Spyglass and quickly began tweaking its own browser. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE1.png" width="405" height="305" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: Microsoft</p> <p>IE1 wasn't included with Windows 95 when the OS officially launched on August 24, 1995, and instead Microsoft bundled the browser as part of the Windows 95 Plus! Pack. It was just over 1MB in size and about as basic as a browser gets.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE2.png" width="405" height="304" /></p> <p>Image Credit: Microsoft</p> <p>Later that same year, Microsoft would release Internet Explorer 2. According to Microsoft, this was the first cross-platform browser to support both Windows and Mac. IE2 also jumped on the JavaScript bandwagon, and while it was still a fairly basic browser, it did support Secure Socket Layer (SSL), cookies, and twelve languages including English.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE3.png" width="405" height="301" /></p> <p>Image Credit: globallink.net</p> <p>Included with Windows 95OSR2, IE3 was one of the first major browsers to support CSS, at least partially. IE3 shed Microsoft's Spyglass source code roots and brought support for ActiveX controls, Java applets, and Internet Mail. It could display GIFS and JPEGs and play MIDI sound files. And finally, IE3 was the first browser to be identified by the now infamous blue 'E' logo. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE4.png" width="405" height="274" /></p> <p>Image Credit: sunsite.uakom.sk</p> <p>Released in 1997, IE4 shipped as part of the Windows 98 operating system. New features included Active Desktop, Channels, Frontpage Express, Netshow, Web Publishing Wizard, Microsoft Chat 2.0, and other multimedia functionality. This was also the first version of IE to support DHTML.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE5.png" width="405" height="273" /></p> <p>Image Credit: donmouth.co.uk</p> <p>Whereas IE4 shipped with Windows 98, IE5 came bundled with Win98SE (version 5.5 shipped with Windows ME). It offered bi-directional text support, improvements to its CSS support, and introduced Compatibility Mode. Starting with IE5, users could also save web pages with embedded components.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE6.png" width="405" height="281" /></p> <p>Image Credit: Wikipedia</p> <p>Microsoft released IE6 just before Windows XP and included the updated browser in the new OS. According the Microsoft, the major focus was on security and privacy, but the software maker also injected &quot;fun stuff&quot; like the Images Toolbar, Auto Image Resize, Print Preview, and Media Bar. When SP2 was released for XP, a pop-up blocker would also be added.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE7.png" width="405" height="224" /></p> <p>Image Credit: Microsoft</p> <p>With Netscape no longer a threat and IE6 dominating the market share, Microsoft appeared to grow complacent with browser development. Other browsers -- most notably Mozilla's open-source Firefox -- had been gaining ground with innovative features, and in October 2006, Microsoft finally responded with IE7. This newest browser didn't initially come integrated with an OS (it would later be packaged with Vista), and at first it required compliance with Windows Geniunie Advantage. The interface was markedly different than previous versions of IE, and tabbed browsing finally made an appearance.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/IE8.png" width="405" height="339" /></p> <p>The most recent version of Internet Explorer is IE8. For better or worse, IE8 retains the same overall appearance of IE7, but adds a few goodies such as tab grouping, Accelerators, WebSlices, InPrivate browsing, and a SmartScreen phishing filter. It's also the most standards-compliant version of IE to date, though it doesn't pass the stringent Acid3 test.</p> <p>Like just about every modern browser, heavy focus was put into tweaking JavaScript performance, and as a result, IE8 feels much faster than any previous version of IE. </p> <hr /> <h2>Opera</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1996</strong></p> <p>Pat yourself on the back if you knew that before there was Opera, there was MultiTorg Opera. It wasn't until version 2.0 that Opera would lose its MultiTorg tag and be available to the general public as shareware.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_2.png" width="405" height="308" /></p> <p>Image Credit: cybernetnews.com</p> <p>Written from scratch, Opera 2.0 was completely independent from Mosaic, IE, or Netscape. And from the beginning, Opera purported to be a highly standards compliant, light-weight browser. Opera 2.0 supported HTML 3.0, it could zoom with proportional full page scaling from 20 percent to 1000 percent, it could save, open, insert, and restore sessions, and it offered multiple image and video support. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_3.png" width="405" height="327" /></p> <p>Image Credit: w3.org</p> <p>Released in 1997, Opera 3 became the first version of Opera to support JavaScript. As development on 3.x continued, the alternative browser added file uploading, an integrated file download/transfer manager, pop-up blocking, plug- in support, and CSS support.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_4.png" width="405" height="304" /></p> <p>Image Credit: XML.com</p> <p>One month after Opera 3.62 was released, Opera 4.0 hit the scene in June of 2000. The updated browser brought tabbed browsing into the fray, while also adding a handful of other features, such as an integrated news and email client, SSL 2, 3, CSS1, CSS2, XML, and HTML 4.0 support, print preview functionality, and a Kiosk mode.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_5.png" width="405" height="349" /></p> <p>Image Credit: open-mag.com</p> <p>With the release of version 5, Opera changed its business model from by making Opera ad-sponsored rather than a trial download. But arguably the most influential addition was the introduction of mouse gestures, which is now supported by just about every browser on the planet either natively or through extensions. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_6.png" width="405" height="379" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: howtocreate.co.uk </p> <p>Opera 6 included PNG alpha transparency, better pop-up blocking controls, skin choices, and the Unicode character standard. Opera users also found themselves unable to connect to MSN.com after Microsoft blocked access to anyone not using Internet Explorer. Although Opera wasn't the only third-party browser denied access, the company took particular exception to Microsoft's short-lived ban. In a press release, Opera Software said:</p> <p> &quot;Opera is internationally acclaimed and renowned for its strict compliance with all international Internet standards. Maybe Microsoft should take a look at its lack of respect for the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) international Internet standards before bad-mouthing others.&quot; </p> <p>The full, no-holds barred press release can be found <a href="http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2001/10/26/">here</a>. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_7.png" width="405" height="345" /></p> <p>Image Credit: monkeygumbo.com</p> <p>Still scorned over the MSN.com fiasco, Opera released a special &quot;Bork&quot; version of Opera 7 for Windows. When visiting MSN.com using the special Bork version, the page would be <a href="http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2003/02/14/">transformed </a>into the language spoken by the Swedish Chef from the Muppets (&quot;Bork, Bork, Bork!&quot;). </p> <p>Corporate politics aside, Opera 7 introduced the Presto layout engine, resulting in a faster browsing experience. Standards support also received a boost.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_8.png" width="405" height="289" /></p> <p>Image Credit: myopera.com</p> <p>Built around the same rendering engine as version 7, Opera 8 added full voice capability and navigation, the ability to fit window to width, notifications of blocked pop-ups, and automated weekly update checks. In September of 2005, version 8.5 permanently removed the ad banner, making it completely free for all users from then on.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Opera_9.png" width="405" height="301" /></p> <p>Image Credit: tothetech.com</p> <p>Opera 9 was released back in 2006 and remains the current version today (Opera 9.64). Throughout its development cycle, version 9.x would upgrade its Presto 2.0 layout engine to Presto 2.1.1. </p> <p>Version 9 became one of the first browsers to pass the Acid2 web standards test. Widgets were also introduced in version 9.</p> <hr /> <h2>Grail</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1995</strong></p> <p>According to its creator -- Guido von Rossum, best known for developing the Python programming language -- one of the goals in creating Grail was to make a &quot;hackable&quot; browser for researchers, noting it was a pain to have to hack the Mosaic C sources. Because Python code is smaller than C code, Rossum argued it would be far easier to tweak Grail's code.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Grail.png" width="405" height="331" /></p> <p>Image Credit: cnri.net</p> <p>Grail offers full support for HTML 2 and partial HTML 3.2, it can save and print documents, perform searches, it supports bookmarks and history, and more. </p> <h2>Arachne</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1996</strong></p> <p>If your computing roots date back to DOS, you might remember surfing the web with Aracne, a graphical browser that could be used with MS-DOS, OpenDOS, and Dr. DOS. The freeware browser was small enough to fit on a single 1.44MB floppy disk, but contained a surprising amount of features for such a teensy package.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Arachne.png" width="405" height="311" /></p> <p>Image Credit: mashable.com</p> <p>Aranchne could render frames, tables, and animations and offered support for HTML 4.0 . It also came with a simple HTML editor, FTP support, and even a basic WAV player. This in addition to supporting POP3, SMTP, and other protocols. And did we mentioned in fit on a floppy?</p> <h2>Amaya</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1996</strong></p> <p>More of a web editor than a web browser, the W3C created Amaya in 1996 &quot;to showcase Web technologies in a fully-featured Web client.&quot; The goal was to develop a testbed that would adhere to more standards than any other browser available. Amaya is still being developed today, where it continues to be used as a testbed for new technologies. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Amaya.png" width="405" height="314" /></p> <p>Image Credit: w3c.org </p> <h2>Oracle PowerBrowser </h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1996</strong></p> <p>Built from the ground up, Oracle's PowerBrowser client combined a built-in personal web server, support for tables and images, Internet search features, built-in basic Java and Basic scripting capabilities, and support for third-party applications called Network Loadable Objects (NLO) all into a single package. It was initially available for Windows, but would later add support for Macs and UNIX. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Oracle.png" width="405" height="285" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: dba-oracle.com</p> <h2>Mozilla / Seamonkey</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1998 </strong></p> <p>You know Mozilla as the developers behind the popular Firefox browser, but before there was Firefox, there was the Mozilla Application Suite. Now known as Seamonkey, the cross-platform suite was based on the source code for Netscape Communicator. It consisted of a web browser (Navigator), Mail and Newsgroup app (Communicator), a web page developer (Mozilla Composer), and an IRC client (ChatZilla).</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Mozilla.png" width="405" height="307" /></p> <p>Image Credit: theinquirer.net</p> <p>Mozilla represents an important part of the company's history, as it introduced extensions, without which Firefox would not be nearly as popular as it is today.</p> <hr /> <h2>Konqueror</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 1996</strong></p> <p>Another multi-purpose client, Konqueror combines a file manager, KDE technology, open-source browser, and a universal viewing application all in one. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Konqueror.png" width="405" height="374" /></p> <p>Image Credit: konqueror.org</p> <p>As a browser, Konqueror boasts support for JavaScript, Java applets, CSS, SSL, and other standards. It can run on just about any UNIX-like OS, and can also run under Windows as part of the KDE on Windows project. The HTML rendering engine Konqueror uses -- KHTML -- is the same one employed by Apple's Safari browser. </p> <h2>K-Meleon</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 2000 (version 0.1) </strong></p> <p>If you've ever tried K-Meleon and thought it felt a lot like Firefox, there's good reason. Both browsers are built around the Gecko rendering engine. So what's the difference? K-Meleon is much more light-weight, trading in extensive plug-ins, options, and various goodies for an ultra lean design that's lighter on resources. Some have referred to K-Meleon as <a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/04/29/k-melon-its-like-firefox-without-the-bloat/">Firefox without the bloat</a>. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/K-Meleon.png" width="405" height="319" /></p> <p>Image Credit: Filehippo</p> <p>But it's not completely bare-bones. K-Meleon allows users to change skins and themes, and it supports tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, pop-up blocking, and macros. It's also a Windows-only browser.</p> <h2>Galeon</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 2001</strong></p> <p>Like K-Meleon, Galeon is based on the same Gecko layout engines as Firefox, only Galeon is written for GNOME. And also like K-Melon, Galeon's goal is to provide a light-weight and efficient browser without sacrificing standards compliance. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Galeon.png" width="405" height="358" /></p> <p>Image Credit: softpedia.com</p> <p>There was some debate over whether Galeon should be a simple browser or whether it should cater to the power user crowd with advanced options and functionality. This ultimately led to the undoing of the Galeon's original development team. </p> <h2>Safari</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 2003</strong></p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Safari_3.png" width="405" height="326" /></p> <p>Apple first introduced the Safari web browser in 2003, but it wasn't until 2007 that a version (Safari 3) would be compatible with Window. Safari 3's UI did nothing to hide its Mac heritage, but looking beyond the aesthetics, the browser boasted the ability to resize text boxes that are embedded in web pages, fairly fast rendering, and pretty good standards compliance.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Safari_4.png" width="405" height="320" /></p> <p>When Apple released Safari 4 earlier this year, Jobs and Co. called it the world's fastest browser. That's debatable, although our own testing did find the revamped browser to offer notable speed improvements, particularly when it comes to JavaScript performance.</p> <p>Safari 4 also shed its Mac OS digs for a more Windows-like appearance, along with a simplified navigation layout similar to Google's Chrome browser, both of which are built around the WebKit platform. The addition of Cover Flow meant iTunes users would feel right at home browsing through bookmarks and site history. </p> <hr /> <h2>Firefox</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 2004</strong> </p> <p>The second most used browser on the planet and a favorite here at Maximum PC, Firefox's roots trace back to the Mozilla Application Suite. The creators -- Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross -- sought to offer a capable browser without the heavy backage being lugged around by a full-blown multi-purpose suite, and so Firefox was born. Or more accurately, Phoenix was born, as the browser was initially called but was later changed to avoid stepping on any trademark toes with the same-named BIOS manufacturer.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Firefox_1.png" width="405" height="310" /></p> <p>Image Credit: piercedotzler.com</p> <p>Firefox was well received from the beginning, earning accolades in the media for its feature-set. Released in 2004, Firefox 1.0 came with a customizable search bar built into the menu bar. It also came with a pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, a built-in RSS reader, central download manager, and was considered more secure than Internet Explorer, in part because it didn't support VBScript or ActiveX. And of course it supported extensions, which would ultimately provide the foundation for Firefox's continued success. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Firefox_1_5.png" width="405" height="284" /></p> <p>Image Credit: worthinstalling.com</p> <p>By the time Firefox 1.5 was released in 2005, Mozilla's open-source browser had managed to grab 10 percent of the Windows-based browser market share. In addition to security and bug fixes, the half-version update let users reorder browser tabs, it ran faster, it offered the option to clear private data through the user menu, and it introduced automated updating. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Firefox_2.png" width="405" height="310" /></p> <p>Image Credit: winsupersite.com</p> <p>While many of the changes to Firefox 2.0 were subtle, it did offer some notable improvements over previous versions. Namely, Firefox 2.0 slapped together built-in phishing protection, inline spell checking, improved search through search term suggestions, client-side session and persistent storage, and a Session Restore feature.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Firefox_3.png" width="405" height="321" /></p> <p>Image Credit: brothersoft.com</p> <p>Released in June 2008, Firefox 3's biggest change was the move to the Gecko 1.9 layout engine, which had been in development for 34 months. According to Mozilla, the new layout engine supercharged the browser with more than 15,000 changes to improve performance, stability, webpage rendering, and simplified code.</p> <p>On the feature front, Firefox users could now add bookmarks simply by clicking on the start button in the URL bar. Other additions included the Smart Location Bar, new graphics and font handling, better memory management, a new download manager, and more. Anticipation was so high for the release of Firefox 3 that it ended up setting a Guinness World Record for most downloads in a 24-hour period.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Firefox_3_5.png" width="405" height="355" /></p> <p>Mozilla originally intended to label its next browser version Firefox 3.1, but after assessing the number of changes being made under the hood, the browser maker ended up labeling it Firefox 3.5.</p> <p>Firefox 3.5 upgraded the Gecko engine from 1.9.0 to 1.9.1, bringing with it better compliance with web standards, support for border images, a private browsing mode, and enhancements to the AwesomeBar. The latest version also puts a lot of focus on JavaScript performance courtesy of the new TraceMoneky JavaScript engine. </p> <h2>Chrome</h2> <p><strong>First Released: 2008</strong></p> <p>Google surprised a lot of people when it released its Chrome browser in 2008, but even more surprising was that it wouldn't remain in beta for very long, at least for a Google product. Built around the same WebKit platform as Apple's Safari browser, Chrome took a barebones approach to its layout. It also claimed improved security and reliability over every other browser on the market thanks to its abiltiy to treat each browser tab as a separate process.</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Chrome_1.png" width="405" height="328" /></p> <p>Another notable feature is Chrome's Incognito mode, a private browsing mode that can be run at the same time a regular Chrome window is open. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Chrome_2.png" width="405" height="291" /> </p> <p>Image Credit: dvice.com</p> <p>Not a whole lot changed visually with the release of Chrome 2, but as far as performance goes, Google claimed a whopping 30 percent increase over the already speedy browser. Performance claims aside, users could now quickly remove sites from the &quot;most visited&quot; section, it offered a true full-screen mode, and an autofill function that remembered what you typed into web forms. </p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/webbrowsers/Chrome_3.png" width="405" height="348" /></p> <p>Still similar in appearance to previous versions, and still without extensions support, Chrome 3 brought to the table a New Tab page, basic theming capabilities, support for advanced HTML5 capabilities, and more performance tweaks. </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Have a favorite browser of all time or know of one we missed? Be sure to tell us all about it in the comments section below! </p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/surfing_1991_evolution_web_browsers#comments chrome features firefox history Internet Internet Explorer Mozilla Netscape Software web browsers Features Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:30:00 +0000 Paul Lilly 7442 at http://www.maximumpc.com Can Windows 7 Fix Vista’s Tarnished Image in the History Books? http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/can_windows_7_fix_vista%E2%80%99s_tarnished_image_history_books <!--paging_filter--><p class="MsoNormal"><img src="/files/u46173/vista-bsod.png" alt="Vista Blue Screen" title="Vista Blue Screen" width="415" height="280" /> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Windows 7 still isn’t officially released to the general public yet, but I’m willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that it will be a universal hit. Users making the jump from Windows XP have a lot of advances to look forward to, and for the most part we can thank Vista. The similarities between the two OS’s are shocking, so much so that many have simply dubbed Windows 7 as “Vista done right”. <span> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Nobody will argue that Windows 7 isn’t a huge leap forward in terms of performance, but even a $600 PC purchased today has more than enough muscle to deliver an excellent experience in Vista. The simple fact that Windows 7 will be born into a mature world full of drivers written for it’s predecessor will almost singlehandedly ensure a successful rollout. Lack of drivers if you recall, was the single largest complaint against Vista’s at launch and Microsoft even alleges that it was a huge factor in reports of it’s early instability.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&quot;I think people will look back on Vista after the Windows 7 release and realize that there were actually a bunch of good things there&quot; said Steve Guggenheimer, vice president of the OEM division at Microsoft, in a <a href="http://www.crn.com/software/218600247;jsessionid=EIIHADYLN4ZUMQSNDLPSKHSCJUNN2JVN">ChannelWeb story</a>. &quot;So it'll actually be interesting to see in two years what the perception is of Vista.&quot;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So with the Windows 7 launch day less than three months away, are you ready to forgive Vista?</p> <!--EndFragment--><!--EndFragment--> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/can_windows_7_fix_vista%E2%80%99s_tarnished_image_history_books#comments history microsoft Software Software News Windows windows 7 Windows Vista News Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:07:23 +0000 Justin Kerr 7185 at http://www.maximumpc.com Privacy Shmrivacy, Web2.0collage.com Knows Where You've Been http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/privacy_shmrivacy_web20collagecom_knows_where_youve_been <!--paging_filter--><p>Think your browsing history is secure from prying eyes so long as you never leave your PC unattended? Think again. A new site, <a href="http://web2.0collage.com/digg.html">Web2.0collage.com</a>, digs through your browser's history and then constructs a collage of the web2.0 websites that you've visited.</p> <p>&quot;Web2.0collage.com mixes art and technology to raise privacy concerns,&quot; the site states on its homepage. &quot;Many of us consider our browser history to be private, but that is no longer the case. Any website you visit can determine your browser history by exploiting the very features designed to enhance your Internet experience, a fact many people are not aware of.&quot; </p> <p>Web2.0collage.com works its artistic magic by using JavaScript and them assembling the pieces together in a collage of thumbnails. What you do with it is up to you -- the site links to Zazzle.com to give you some ideas -- but if you're concerned about who's snooping your browser history, you should probably start by clearing your cache. </p> <p align="center"><img src="/files/u69/Web20_Collage.png" width="405" height="289" /> </p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/privacy_shmrivacy_web20collagecom_knows_where_youve_been#comments browser history Internet JavaScript Privacy Security News Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:21:00 +0000 Paul Lilly 7122 at http://www.maximumpc.com Imagine Connecting to the Internet with a 300 Baud Modem http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/imagine_connecting_internet_300_baud_modem <!--paging_filter--><p><img src="/files/u46173/300baudmodem.jpg" alt="300 Baud Modem" width="415" height="252" /> </p> <p>An enterprising antique hardware collector known only as “Phreakmonkey” on You Tube has recorded and posted a video showcasing what the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9dpXHnJXaE">internet would have looked like in 1964</a>. After detailing his lovingly preserved Livemore Data Systems “Model A” Acousitc Coupler 300 Baud Modem, he then proceeds to demonstrate how he uses it to establish a connection to the net. <span> </span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Oddly enough, my 10 Mbps cable modem choked on the streaming video a bit, but my faith in my ISP was quickly restored when I compared it to the 300 characters per second this speed demon maxed out at.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This modem is about as (un)maximum as it gets around here, but it certainly is an interesting watch for nostalgic types who enjoy taking a look back at the history of digital communication. </p> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/X9dpXHnJXaE&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="menu" value="false" /><param name="wmode" value="" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/X9dpXHnJXaE&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" wmode="" quality="high" menu="false" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/imagine_connecting_internet_300_baud_modem#comments dialup Hardware history modem youtube News Sun, 31 May 2009 21:00:57 +0000 Justin Kerr 6465 at http://www.maximumpc.com Ever Wonder Where "@" Comes From? http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/ever_wonder_where_comes_from <!--paging_filter--><div style="text-align: center"><img src="/files/u58308/TheATBook_FirstAtSign.jpg" width="415" height="200" /></div> <p>To many of us, the @ symbol is second nature. Used for email addresses and tweets alike, we’ve grown so accustomed to it that its nature isn’t generally of interest – unless you work for The New York Times.</p> <p> <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/internet-star-least-473-years-old/#more-12167">According</a> to the Times, the “at sign” (or, a “snail” if you’re Italian and a “monkey” if you’re a southern Slav) is a fairly recent invention, dating back 473 years. Reports state that a Florentine merchant that went by the name Francesco Lapi used the @ symbol in a letter he wrote on May 4, 1536. Back then it was used to indicate a measure of weight or volume, known as an amphora. The letter read, “There [is] an amphora of wine, which is one thirtieth of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats.”</p> <p> The reason that it became commonplace for keyboards in today’s world, is because it was shorthand for “at the price of” in the records of English merchants. And, in 1971, engineer Ray Tomlinson used it “to indicate that the users was ‘at’ some other host rather than being local” for the very first emails ever sent. </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><span style="font-size: xx-small">Image Credit: <a href="http://www.ascii64.org/">The @ Book </a></span></p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/ever_wonder_where_comes_from#comments @ email history News Tue, 05 May 2009 22:32:14 +0000 Andy Salisbury 6212 at http://www.maximumpc.com The 50 Most Important PC Components of the Modern Computing Era http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/the_50_most_important_pc_components_modern_computing_era <!--paging_filter--><table border="0" align="right"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <script type="text/javascript"> digg_url = 'http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/the_50_most_important_pc_components_modern_computing_era?page=0%2C0'; </script><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p>The personal computer has a storied history, stretching all the way back to the days of the Commodore 64 and IBM PC. But for us, the most interesting PC hardware developments really started about 15 years ago. Along with the eminent arrival of Windows 95, this was when Moore's law would really kick into high gear and bring us amazingly fast PC components like Intel's front side bus-multiplying Pentium, AMD's gigahertz-breaking Athlon, and yes, the wonderful world of 3D graphics accelerators.</p> <p>We take an in-depth look back at the 50 most important pieces of PC hardware in the modern computing area. From CPUs to videocards and even monitors, these components were the envy of every PC enthusiast, whether you could afford them or not. They might not have been the fastest parts at the time, but they sure were the most notable. And before you ask, many of these entries were used of our Dream Machines. Join us as we journey with the ghost of PC past, and share your own favorite PC parts in the comments section!</p> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware_teaser.jpg" width="415" height="331" /> </p> <h2>Intel Pentium 90</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1044_sm.jpg" width="415" height="354" /> </p> <p><strong> Circa: 1994</strong></p> <p>Intel's Pentium processor brought the x86 architecture to new heights, as well as brought along a new naming scheme. Unable to patent numbers, Intel avoiding dubbing its newest chip the 586. The Pentium introduced several improvements designed to address the performance bottlenecks of previous processors. Chief among them was a 64-bit wide date bus, two execution units, a much improved floating point unit (FPU), and faster clockspeeds. Intel's Pentium processor launched at 60MHz, but it didn't take long for faster chips to follow before it eventually topped out a 233MHz. The 90MHz version was the first Intel CPU to use a FSB multiplier – the FSB was clocked at 60MHz, multiplied by 1.5 to achieve the 90MHz Clock speed. From this point forward, Intel virtually dominated the CPU market until AMD’s Athlon debuted five years later. </p> <h2>AMD DX4-100 486</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1045_sm.jpg" width="401" height="400" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1995</strong></p> <p>The last clone in the true Clone Wars, AMD's Am486 arrived almost a full four years after Intel's 486 came out, and one month after the Pentium. To compete with the existing 486 chip, AMD undercut the competition by selling its version for less, while clocking it higher than Intel's 486. The DX4-100 cost less than Intel’s 486DX2-66, but its 8K write-back cache provided a speed advantage of up to 50%.</p> <h2>Quantum Fireball ST3.2A</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1002_sm.jpg" width="415" height="290" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1996</strong></p> <p>The Quantum Fireball ST3.2A was the first good drive to use the UltraATA/33 interface, theoretically capable of reaching transfer speeds of a whopping 33 MB/s. It was available in capacities up to 6.4 GB, which—since it was significantly higher than the 2 GB ceiling for FAT16 partitions—ushered in the superior FAT32, which is of course one of the file systems still with us today.</p> <h2>Diamond Monster Sound</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1003_sm.jpg" width="415" height="311" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: July 1997</strong></p> <p>The Diamond Monster Sound was the first card to fully support the then-burgeoning DirectSound 3D API, offering convincing directional sound effects through a pair of headphones or a 2.1 speaker setup. Even though it was fantastic for playing games that made use of the new 3D sound technology, it was a hard sell at the time, because of its poor performance with older, DOS-based games. In fact, this weakness was enough that we (and this is back while we were still Boot) originally gave the first Diamond Monster Sound card a review score of 7, saying “Assuming that game support for DirectSound 3D materializes, the Monster should become a coveted part of the ultimate gaming system.” It did, and it was.</p> <h2>Canopus Pure3d</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1004_sm.png" width="404" height="267" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1997</strong></p> <p>Until the Voodoo Graphics, gamers were trapped in a 2D world. Sure, there were a handful of so-called 3D accelerators from S3 and ATI that were nothing more than old 2D videocards equipped with hardware to accelerate texture filtering. The original Voodoo graphics added much more horsepower, which wasn't fully tapped until GLQuake. </p> <p>When paired with GLQuake, the OpenGL-accelerated version of Quake, the first-person shooter came alive. The difference in graphics was astounding, instead of fighting to get 15fps, a Voodoo-equipped system could hammer a solid 30fps, at a higher resolution, no less. While many vendors sold Voodoo Graphics cards, the Canopus Pure3D was the Cadillac of the bunch. With double the texture memory of other Voodoo cards, the Pure3D let you crank the texture settings in all your games, for maximum visual quality.</p> <h2>Pentium II 400Mhz</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1039_sm.jpg" width="415" height="357" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1997 </strong></p> <p>The Deschutes version of the high-performing Pentium II marked Intel’s big jump into the triple-digit front-side bus. Klamath (the original PII), topped out at 266MHz with a 66MHz FSB, while the PII 400 (with a 100MHz FSB) was the sweet spot for high-end system builders – it performed at almost twice as fast as older Klamath parts. </p> <h2>Obsidian X24 </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1005_sm.jpg" width="415" height="192" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: February 1998</strong></p> <p>While the original 3DFX Voodoo card was the first consumer-level 3D accelerator, it's successor the Voodoo 2 showed the first hint of the potential for overkill lurking within the nascent market. You see, the Voodoo 2 allowed users to slave two cards together using SLI (Scan Line Interleave) to nearly double performance. The Obsidian X24 packed two complete Voodoo 2 chipsets on a single board, and paired them with a then-massive 24MB framebuffer. This was the only Voodoo 2 board that supported resolutions up to 1024x768, and was actually used in many 3D arcade cabinets (Cruisin' USA, anyone?)  </p> <h2>Intel 440BX Chipset </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1006_sm.jpg" width="415" height="347" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: April 1998</strong></p> <p>When old farts talk about the “good old days” of chipsets, they’re talking about Intel’s 440BX. With its 2x AGP that actually worked and a massive 1GB(!) of SDRAM support, the 440BX’s reign was literally years.  Even better, plebians could buy 233MHz or 266MHz Pentium II’s running on the 66MHz front side bus and overclock them to 100MHz or higher. The 440BX was so successful, that it eclipsed its intended replacement from Intel: the ill-fated RDRAM-only 820 chipset.</p> <hr /> <h2>AMD K6-2 series</h2> <p align="center"> <img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1047_sm.jpg" width="415" height="374" /></p> <p> <strong>Circa: May 1998</strong></p> <p> Continuing the success of the K6, AMD's K6-2, released in 1998, brought another MMX unit to the table as well as a new SIMD instruction set famously known as 3DNow! This gave AMD a slight head start in tearing through 3D applications before Intel fired back with its SSE instruction set. The K6-2 held appeal as a cost-conscious upgrade for Super Socket 7 motherboard owners. Later on, AMD would follow suit with the K6-2+, which added 128KB of L2 cache and a smaller manufacturing process (180nm versus 250nm). </p> <h2>ASUS P2B </h2> <p>&nbsp;</p> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1007_sm.jpg" width="400" height="265" /></div> <p> </p><p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Circa: May 1998</strong></p> <p>Built on Intel’s 440BX chipset, the legendary Asus P2B board helped build up the company’s reputation as a performance motherboard maker. Boasting three ISA slots, four 32-bit PCI slots and an AGP 2x slot, this Slot 1 Pentium II had such long legs, that some variations that were able to run Slot 1 were able to run Slot 1 Pentium III CPUs too. Sure, it didn’t have the sexy soft FSB of the also popular Abit BX6, but the jumper configuration actually supported a wider frequency range than the BX6. The P2B also had the advantage of being a rock-solid board, with many likely still seeing duty today – more than 10 years after it was introduced. </p> <h2>ATI Rage Pro - All-in-Wonder </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1008_sm.jpg" width="415" height="216" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1998</strong></p> <p>While it lacked the raw 3D power of the 3DFX Voodoo 2, ATI's All-in-Wonder had a different trick up its sleeve--it came equipped with a TV tuner. The Rage Pro was a mid-rate 3D accelerator, and in lieu of the PVR software that we all expect with our TV tuner cards today it included ATI's Digital VCR software, which let you record TV shows on your PC. It even worked with WebTV for Windows 98. Pretty fancy, eh?</p> <h2>Intel Celeron 300A</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1040_sm.jpg" width="399" height="400" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: August 1998</strong></p> <p>The difference of just one letter can sometimes be amazing. Intel’s Celeron 300A was a 300MHz part that became infamous for its overclockability. Based on the 2nd generation Mendocino design, the 300A featured 128k of on-die cache running at a full clock rate. Even at the same clock speed of the Covington Celeron 300, the 300A performed twice as fast as the cache-less counterpart, and that was without any overclocking. Coupled with a decent motherboard, you could bump the 300A to 450MHz by tweaking the FSB from 66MHz to 100MHz, making the 300A the fastest available x86 processor.  </p> <h2>Creative Sound Blaster Live!</h2> <p align="center"> <img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1009_sm.jpg" width="415" height="311" /></p> <p><strong>Circa: August 1998</strong></p> <p>The Sound Blaster Live! Was the card that first brought Creative Labs’ EAX API to bear against (and eventually doomed) the dominant A3D API.  What gave the Sound Blaster and EAX an edge was the ability to apply real-time effects like reverb and echo to music and in-game sound effects. Though the effects were sometimes not as subtle as they could have been, they added a whole new layer of realism to sound in 3D games, capturing the dramatic acoustic differences between—for instance—a basketball court and a dank cave.</p> <h2>AMD Athlon Slot A 1GHz</h2> <p align="center"> <img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1046_sm.jpg" width="415" height="260" /></p> <p> <strong>Circa: June 1999 </strong></p> <p> Arguably the most significant series in AMD's CPU history, and certainly the most important in the company's recent history, AMD's Athlon line hit Intel square between the eyes and was such a success, even the Intel faithful found themselves building an AMD system for the first time. Dirk Meyer, who would later rise in rank as AMD's CEO, led the design team that developed Athlon, at first a cartridge-based processor with 512KB of L2 cache. Debuting at 500MHz, AMD beat Intel to the 1GHz mark with its Athlon processor, an important (and much anticipated) milestone at the time.</p> <h2>56k Modem v.92</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1010_sm.jpg" width="415" height="300" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: August 1999</strong></p> <p>Ah, the 56k modem. Like the little engine that could, the 56k modem got us onto the internet slowly but surely. And hey, at the time, 56k seemed pretty zippy, really, even if 56k modems could never actually reach speeds of 56 kilobits per second (the FCC mandated that no dial-up modem could achieve speeds of greater than 53.3 Kbps). It was also a relief that the v.92 and v.90 standards ended the standards war between K56flex and X2. Vendor competition is usually a good thing for consumers, but having to buy a new modem when you switched ISPs is something we don’t miss a bit.</p> <hr /> <h2>ABIT BP-6 </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1011_sm.jpg" width="415" height="311" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: September 1999</strong></p> <p>Sure, overclockers may think they’re outlaws by thumbing their nose at Intel’s authority but that was like shoplifting from the candy store. Running ABIT’s BP-6 was like pulling an armed robbery and then leading the LAPD on a high-speed chase for three hours. The BP-6 was, after all, the first board to allow you to run two Socket 370 Celeron’s in SMP mode. At the time, Intel had made it strictly verboten to run Celerons in dual processor mode but the company obviously didn’t do enough with the Celery to limit its 2P functionality. That made anyone who ran the BP-6 the ultimate bad ass because he or she not only flipped the bird at Intel, but he or she also had to run a “real” OS like Windows NT, 2K or Linux to get dual processor support.</p> <h2>Plextor Plexwriter 8/20 SCSI<br /></h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1012_sm.jpg" width="415" height="232" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1999</strong></p> <p>In 1999, anti-buffer underrun technologies like Sanyo’s BurnProof weren’t yet available, so SCSI drives like the Plextor PlexWriter 8/20—with their immense 4MB cache allotments – were de rigueur for coaster avoidance. In fact, in our May 1999 issue, we called the 8/20 “the flat-out best CD recorder that’s ever passed through our lab.” And we followed up that declaration with the qualifier that the drive created a 650MB data disc in an astonishing 11:14 minutes. Of course, today’s best burners churn out full 8GB dual-layer discs in under that time. But we still have a soft spot in our hearts for the Sexy Plexy.  </p> <h2>Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro<br /></h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1013_sm.jpg" width="415" height="227" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1999</strong></p> <p>Here was a keyboard that we would’ve happily taken with us to the grave. We adored the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro so much that we used it until our handprints were firmly imprinted onto its once-white surface – it was really that comfortable. The Natural Keyboard Pro was Microsoft’s second mass-market ergonomically-split keyboard, but one-upped the Elite model with its two USB ports, programmable shortcut keys, and familiar “inverted T” arrow key configuration (the Elite used a non-standard cross-like arrow key arrangement). We can do without modern “swiss-army” keyboards with full-color LCD screens and dozens of programmable macros keys – this Carpal Tunnel buster is all we need. </p> <h2>3Com 3c905 Network Interface Card</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1014_sm.jpg" width="415" height="331" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 1999</strong></p> <p>For us, the 3Com 3c905 Network Interface Card is the piece of hardware that symbolizes the dawn of the broadband era. Sure, it wasn’t the first NIC to connect your computer to a high speed network, but it was the first card that was fast, reliable and worked with nearly any OS you could throw at it. Combined with early DSL or cable internet, this was the card that, for many people, opened up the door to the internet.</p> <h2>FIC SD11 </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1015_sm.jpg" width="415" height="343" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa:  January 2000</strong></p> <p>Plagued by voltage issues and generally a buggy board, we note FIC’s SD11 not for being stable, well designed or even being great. But it was the first four-layer board that supported AMD’s new Athlon CPU. And FIC was, arguably, the first one to actually push an Athlon motherboard. Most board vendors, we were told, feared the wrath of Intel for supporting the K7. The support of FIC (and others such as MSI Gigabyte) helped legitimize the award winning Athlon chip. The fear of Intel may have all been imagination, but we still believe that without the support of the SD11 and other early Slot A boards, the Athlon and its offspring would not be here.</p> <h2>Klipsch v.2-400</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1016_sm.jpg" width="400" height="400" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: Jan 2000</strong></p> <p>The release of the Klipsch v.2-400 was a turning point for computer speakers. Before that, “multimedia speaker” was a sort of euphemism for “crappy little plastic box,” and anyone looking for high fidelity sound from their computer was left without any options beyond plugging it into their stereo. With the Klipsch v2.400, all that changed. Suddenly, for $250, you could get a setup that combined high-quality satellites with a top-notch sub, providing sound quality that was simply unheard of. It’s no surprise that the Klipsch v.2-400 graced our Dream Machine in 2000, and its successors the Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 and 2.1 powered all <em>three</em> of our Dream Machines in 2001.</p> <h2>Cooler Master ATC-100</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1017_sm.jpg" width="331" height="400" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2000</strong></p> <p>Remember the days of ugly plastic PC cases that came in an off-white eggshell color? We do, but not fondly. Cooler Master changed the PC chassis industry with its all-aluminum case that paid as much attention to look as to functionality, and started the trend in fashionable enclosures with this aluminum beauty. Countless imitators and successors have improved on the original ATC-100 design, but we laud Cooler Master as the first to prove that cases need not be boring. Would people really shell out more than $200 for a box that merely stores their PC’s innards? Two ATC-series equipped Dream Machines prove that the answer is yes. </p> <hr /> <h2>Sony F520 21” CRT</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1018_sm.jpg" width="400" height="400" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2000</strong></p> <p>We wouldn’t be caught dead using a CRT monitor today, but back in 2000, this 21” Sony Trinitron was one of the most coveted pieces of hardware in our lab. By the early 2000’s CRT development had basically peaked; the F520 actually sat at the top of the CRT ladder for four years, making its way into four different Dream Machine configurations. Here’s why: the F520’s .22mm grille-pitch spec had yet to be challenged by the NEC-Mitsubishi competition. The upshot is that the F520 offered the finest image detail around – games and images looked better on this than any other display. </p> <h2>M-Systems DiskOnKey</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1019_sm.jpg" width="400" height="250" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: December 2000</strong></p> <p>It’s amazing to think that USB thumb drives have been with us for less than a decade now. In that time they’ve become a ubiquitous nerd commodity, made floppy disks obsolete, and took most of the wind out of the sails of writable optical media. And why wouldn’t they? They’re available with capacities that trump any competing media, miniscule form factors, and highly rugged construction.</p> <p>But it all started with the humble IBM DiskOnKey, manufactured by Isreali company M-Systems. Released with just 8mb of storage, the DiskOnKey’s capacity left something to be desired, but it nevertheless heralded the advent of truly portable data.</p> <h2>Visiontek GeForce 3 Ultra</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1020_sm.jpg" width="415" height="268" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2001</strong></p> <p>As the first card to support DirectX 8, the GeForce 3 marked the opening move of 3D accelerator technology away from the old fixed-function pixel processing pipe toward the more general,  programmable hardware we use today. A later update to the original GeForce 3 series introduced the tiered pricing model to the GPU market, using the same core in multiple models. Cheaper cards featured slower or less capable GPUs as well as less memory. </p> <h2>Nvidia nForce 2 chipset </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1021_sm.jpg" width="415" height="344" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa:  July 2002</strong></p> <p>It’s been said that Nvidia chipsets are like Star Trek movies – only the even ones are worth a damn. </p> <p>And we heartily agree as that would make nForce 2 the Star Trek II: The Wraith of Kahn (without the great Ricardo Montalban). Equipped with a high performance dual-channel memory controller, dual Ethernet ports and hardware-based real-time Dolby Digital encoding, the nForce 2 shook up the chipset world by shoving VIA to the side and cementing AMD’s Athlon XP as the chip to have in performance computing. </p> <h2>Radeon 9700 Pro</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1022_sm.jpg" width="415" height="285" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: December 2002</strong></p> <p>As the first DirectX 9 3D accelerator, the Radeon 9700 Pro introduced programmability into parts of the 3D pipeline that had previously offered a limited number of fixed functions. The series of GPUs that followed were all variants of the original R300 design, and managed to hold the graphics performance crown through an entire generation of Nvidia graphics cards. From the launch of the Radeon 9700 in August 2002 until the GeForce 6800-series launched in April 2004. RV300-based designs dominated the GeForce 5000 series GPUs in legacy DirectX 8 apps and the demanding new DirectX 9 games. </p> <p>The Radeon 9700 series is also notable because it delivered sufficient memory bandwidth that gamers could run most games with antialiasing and anisotropic filtering enabled without dropping below playable framerates. </p> <h2>Intel 875P chipset </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1023_sm.jpg" width="415" height="342" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: April 2003</strong></p> <p>You may not know it now, but at one time, Intel was firmly against using DDR memory and instead tried to push the entire PC industry to adopt Direct RDRAM, an incredibly fast, serialized RAM technology. Unfortunately, it also came with a price tag for RAM makers who were already faced with keeping the factories running so as not to lose even more money. The battle raged for years and only after the RAM makers rallied behind AMD and its DDR-using Athlon did Intel relent. What does this have to do with the 875P? As Intel’s first performance chipset in the post-RDRAM days, it helped allay fears that Intel would try to intentionally sandbag DDR to make RDRAM seem like it was the right direction. Instead, the 875P was a winning chipset. With AGP 8x, dual-channel DDR400 and a dedicated port in the northbridge for Gigabit Ethernet communications, the 875P went a long way toward patching things up with enthusiasts.</p> <h2>Western Digital 360GD Raptor</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1024_sm.jpg" width="415" height="350" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: May 2003</strong></p> <p>In 2003 Western Digital released the 360GD Raptor, the first ATA drive to operate at 10,000rpm platter speeds. Sure, it cost as much as drives with 5 times the capacity, but it was still the first real chance for power users to get enterprise-class hard drives for their desktop machines, and they ate it up. Capacity was low, (only 32 GB on the first Raptor) but if you had one in your computer, you were pretty much guaranteed to be the first player on any server to load a map, and that felt <em>good</em>.</p> <hr /> <h2>Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0<br /></h2> <p align="center"><img src="/files/u17625/intellimouse3.jpg" width="300" height="300" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2003</strong></p> <p>While it certainly wasn’t the first optical mouse to hit the market – not by a long shot – Microsoft’s IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 was the critter that put the nail in the ball mouse’s coffin. The third iteration of the IntelliMouse Explorer brand upgraded its sensor to capture images at 6000 times per second, curing the legendary skipping problem that first-person shooter gamers suffered from with most other optical mice. Perfect button placement, an ergonomic &quot;hump&quot; design, and blissful responsiveness made this mouse superior to a ball mouse in every way. Gamers revolted when Microsoft pulled the 3.0 from shelves to push other models, and the 2006 comeback just didn’t have the same impact.  </p> <h2>Sony DRU-710A<br /></h2> <p align="center"> <img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1026_sm.jpg" width="415" height="200" /></p> <p><strong>Circa: 2004</strong></p> <p>Sony was first to the market with a dual-layer DVD burning solution with their DRU-700A burner, but that model was marred by well-publicized compatibility problems stemming from the budding nature of the DVD+R DL format. It wasn’t until its successor, the DRU-710A, was released late in 2004 that enthusiasts could take advantage of practical dual-layer burning. The drive also boasted the fastest 16X burning speeds at the time, completing 4.5GB burns in less time than it takes for some of us to run a mile. Later firmware updates added support for more media formats, keeping the 710A relevant and our favorite DVD drive for quite some time.</p> <h2>AMD Athlon 64 FX-55</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1041_sm.jpg" width="415" height="311" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: June 2004</strong></p> <p>When AMD held the CPU crown with the FX-53, they had seemingly no place to go after that: the 130nm process had hit its limit. It was a surprise, then, when they released an Athlon 64 4000+ with pretty much the same specifications as the 2.4GHz FX-53, complete with 1MB of cache. The FX line needed a new flagship chip, which came in the form of the FX-55. What made this chip special was AMD’s “strained silicon” process on the parts of the die that limited frequency growth, allowing the FX-55 to achieve 2.6GHz. Performance-wise, this top AMD part bested its rival Pentium 4 Extreme Edition in most benchmarks, making it the preferred chip for anyone with a grand to spend on their CPU. </p> <h2>Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1027_sm.jpg" width="415" height="347" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: January 2005</strong></p> <p>Oh enthusiast computing. It’s a little wonky sometimes but it’s never boring. That can be said of Asus’ AMD Athlon 64 Socket 939, A8N-SLI Deluxe board. Built on Nvidia’s nForce 4 SLI chipset, the A8N-SLI Deluxe was perhaps the first board that we saw that supported SLI (that is if you forget about the Intel Xeon-based board that Nvidia developed SLI on and then promptly pretended never existed). At the time, naysayers (some of us included) never thought multi-GPUism would succeed. And why not? To even get it to work optimally, you had to use a whacky-ass card to reconfigure the PCI-E 1.0 slots from x16 and x1 to dual x8s. Surprisingly, enthusiasts were willing to do it and multi-GPU functionality is a must have on any enthusiast motherboard today.</p> <h2>AMD Athlon X2 4800+ </h2> <div style="text-align: center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1050_sm.jpg" width="415" height="276" /></div> <p> <strong>Circa: 2005</strong></p> <p>The age of mainstream dual-core computing was cemented by AMD’s Athlon 64 X2, led by the 4800+ chip. AMD's Athlon 64 X2 series consisted of two CPU cores on a single die sharing a crossbar that connects them to the integrated memory controller. These internal data links paid huge performance dividends compared to Intel's dual-core configuration, which had each core pushing communication through a shared frontside bus. SSE3 instructions were added to the X2 series, but most importantly, AMD managed to keep the new chip on Socket 939. While not all boards were compatible, many 939 mobos could handle an X2 upgrade with nothing more than a BIOS update, which meant AMD could tap into an existing install based for its new processors. True multi-tasking (meaning playing Half-Life 2 while running background apps) was finally possible!</p> <h2>Cooler Master Aquagate Mini<br /></h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1028_sm.jpg" width="415" height="314" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2005</strong></p> <p>Cooler Master’s self-contained watercooling system was a cut above the crowd with its integrated waterblock and pump. The Aquagate Mini R120 was the first water-cooling system we saw targeted for entry-level users who wanted the advantages of liquid cooling without the mess and hassle that usually accompanied those configurations. The radiator, pump, block, and reservoir were all integrated into one pre-assembled two-piece unit – even the coolant came pre-filled! All you had to do was latch the block to the CPU and attach the radiator to the side of your case. No tangling with long tubes or messy distilled water was necessary. The Aquagate wasn’t necessarily the best performer when compared to other cooling solutions, but its all-in-one design was undeniably innovative. </p> <h2>PNY Verto GeForce 6800 GS</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1001_sm.jpg" width="400" height="206" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2005</strong></p> <p>The introduction of the PCI-Express bus in 2004 removed the one videocard per system limitation imposed by AGP. It didn't take long for Nvidia to resurrect the SLI acronym--although this time it stood for Scalable Link Interface. By pairing two GeForce 6800-series cards, such as this PNY Verto GeForce 6800 GS, you could nearly double your performance in most games. Having the fastest videocard in your rig was no longer enough, now you needed a pair of the fastest videocards. Shortly thereafter, ATI announced Crossfire and the videocard arms race between ATI and Nvidia continued.</p> <hr /> <h2>Dell Ultrasharp 2405FPW<br /></h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1029_sm.jpg" width="400" height="364" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2005</strong></p> <p>We were perfectly content with computing on 20” 1600x1200 CRTs until this game-changer came along. Dell’s reasonably priced 2405FPW brought 1900x1200 gaming to the masses and made wide-screen a must for enthusiasts. Not only did this panel deliver excellent image quality (with minimal ghosting and color banding), the 24” 2405FPW sported an array of alternate video inputs so you could plug PC, consoles, and DVD player into one monitor. Not to mention that it was several hundred dollars cheaper than the [slightly smaller] Apple Cinema HD display, and included USB and memory card slots to boot.  </p> <h2>Intel Core 2 (Conroe)</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1043_sm.jpg" width="415" height="263" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2006</strong></p> <p>Waking out of its Netburst slumber, Intel took the CPU world by storm with its Core 2 architecture. Instead of remaining fixated on higher clockspeeds, Intel refocused its attention on being more efficient with its pipeline. This meant a return to lower clockspeeds, however it also meant a return to prominence as the performance king. After Prescott failed to live up to its hype, the media remained cautiously optimistic that Core 2 could live up to Intel's promised performance gains, but much to the chagrin of AMD, Core 2 lived up to its billing, and then some.</p> <p>The first Core 2 Conroes burst out of the gates with 167 million transistors, a 65nm manufacturing process, 2MB of L2 cache, and a 1,066MHz frontside bus. Despite debuting at just 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz (E6300 and E6400, respectively), Core 2's performance made it instantly attractive, and Intel's aggressive pricing sealed the deal. </p> <h2>Nvidia nForce 680i </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1030_sm.jpg" width="415" height="341" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa:  November 2006</strong></p> <p>Once it solidified its lead over ATI in graphics cards, Nvidia made its move on Intel’s performance chipsets – and for the most part succeeded. With its emphasis on overclocking, advanced southbridge features and its SLI support, the 680i SLI was the chipset to have if you wanted to build an enthusiast PC. </p> <p>Sure, there were teething pains, but for most enthusiasts it was worth the sacrifice. Besides, what was the alternative? Running two Radeon X1950 cards? Feh. The 680i SLI continued to be popular until a lack of compatibility with Intel’s new 45nm quad-cores and lack of PCI-E 2.0 pushed it aside.</p> <h2>Intel Core 2 Duo X6800</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1042_sm.jpg" width="350" height="350" /> </p> <p><strong> Circa: 2006</strong></p> <p>Featured in our 2006 Dream Machine, the shockingly fast Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU marked Intel’s return to the “brainiac” design that emphasized performance per clock rather than insanely high clock speeds (as characterized by the Pentium 4). In a nutshell, the X6800 was wider, faster, and cooler. It’s wider because its microarchitecture was designed to process four instructions per cycle. Faster describes the Core CPU’s ability to process a 128-bit SSE instruction in a single cycle instead of the two cycles its contemporaries require. And it was designed to run cooler than its smoking-hot processors. Pit against the Athlon 64 FX-62, the X6800 took every CPU-intensive benchmark by a huge margin.  </p> <h2>Asus EN8800 GTX</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1031_sm.jpg" width="415" height="311" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: January 2007</strong></p> <p>Billed as one of the first DirectX 10-capable 3D accelerators, the GeForce 8800 series of GPUs are nearly as memorable because they represented a quantum leap in performance for DirectX 9 games. Graphics cards like this overclocked ASUS EN8800 GTX first went on sale in early 2007, but there weren't any DirectX 10 titles to play. There was, however, a glut of incredibly system-intensive DirectX 9 games. Games like Oblivion and Company of Heroes crushed the mightiest of DirectX 9-era 3D accelerators; but the 8800 GTX provided enough GPU juice to run every DirectX 9 title at the highest resolutions. And, later that year when the first true DirectX 10 titles shipped, that same GPU also gave us the first taste of fully programmable graphics, although likely at a pretty low resolution.</p> <h2>Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000<br /></h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1032_sm.jpg" width="415" height="341" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: May 2007</strong></p> <p>The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 was the first SATA hard drive to break the 1 TB barrier. Sure, a terabyte isn’t really that much bigger than 750 gigabytes, but there’s definitely something to be said for the psychological impact of moving up into a whole new unit of measurement. Also, the 1 TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 was the drive that really demonstrated the capabilities of the new perpendicular magnetic recording technique, the technology that allowed for the higher-density platters needed for a 1TB drive, and birthed a series of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xPvD0Z9kz8">delightfully trippy flash cartoons</a>.</p> <h2>Gateway XHD3000</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1033_sm.jpg" width="415" height="394" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2007</strong></p> <p>When consumer-targeted 30-inch desktop LCD monitors emerged in 2007, we were supremely disappointed that these monstrous widescreens lacked an internal scaler. Convention monitor-scaling technology wasn’t powerful enough to drive the 30” panels’ 2560x1600 resolution, so they were all restricted to dual-link DVI interfaces with no on-screen display options. Gateway surprised us by being the first company to release a 30” panel with a built-in scaler, in this case a Silion Optix HQV Teranex Realta processing chipset. In layman’s terms, that meant this chip allowed the XHD3000 to support numerous interface options, an onscreen calibration controls, and even picture-in-picture functionality. HDCP support let us play high-def video in its intended resolution, and gaming on this monster was a pleasure. And at launch, the XHD3000 was actually cheaper than alternatives from Apple and Dell. </p> <hr /> <h2>Zalman CNPS 9700 LED</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1034_sm.jpg" width="415" height="346" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: 2007</strong></p> <p>This blooming, copper-finned successor to the already awesome CNPS 9500 added more than enough performance to justify its 200 point model number change. Not only was this air cooler easy to install (by 2007 standards) and looked slick, its adjustable 2800rpm 110mm fan provided plenty of cooling to let us overclock our Athlon FX-60 testbed. On a full CPU load, the 9700 was 14 degrees cooler than a stock cooler, earning it a coveted 10-Kick Ass score in our February 2007 issue. Zalman’s current flagship cooler, the 9900NT, inherits most of the features of the 9700, and remains one of our favorite coolers. </p> <h2>Intel D5400XS “Skulltrail” </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1035_sm.jpg" width="415" height="246" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: February 2008</strong></p> <p>“Who you tryin’ to get crazy with ese? Don’t you know I’m loco?” Well, actually, we didn’t. We never actually thought that when Intel said it was loco, that it really was loco. But the company showed just how insane in the membrane it could be with enthusiast Skulltrail platform. The D5400XS mobo continues possibly one of the most over the top boards ever made. Featuring two sockets for LGA771 Xeon’s (rebranded as Core 2 Extreme QX9775) chips, this Extended ATX board had four x16 PCI-E slots, supported up to 16GB of FB-DIMM RAM and even let you overclock those Xeons, err, Core 2 Extremes. The ultimate insane stunt Intel pulled, though, was swallowing its pride and integrating not one, but two nForce 100 bridge chips on it. That made the Skulltrail the only retail board capable of running CrossFire and SLI until the arrival of the X58.</p> <h2>Intel X-25M</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1037_sm.jpg" width="415" height="308" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa: September 2008</strong></p> <p>Like a lot of the items on this list, Intel’s X-25M SSD is notable for being the first piece of hardware to really deliver on the promise of a new technology. There had been a lot of buzz about SSDs right from the get-go—transfer rates that would blow your mind, they said—but when the X-25M was released, there still hadn’t been a single piece of affordable hardware that lived up to the hype. Intel ‘s SSD made believers out of us, though, landing benchmarks that blew our go-to performance drive, the WD VelociRaptor, out of the water.</p> <h2>Sapphire Radeon 4800 HD X2</h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1036_sm.jpg" width="415" height="372" /> </p> <p><strong>Released: October 2008</strong></p> <p>Putting two GPUs on a single PCB, in a single PCI-Express slot wasn't anything new when ATI released the Radeon 4870 X2. The problems we'd had with similar boards from both ATI and Nvidia left us wary. But, after careful examination, we found that the X2 board came with no gotchas. It worked with multiple monitors, had moderate power requirements, made an acceptable amount of noise, and was fast as hell. Best of all, you could drop a pair of them in most any motherboard and get four GPUs worth of performance for the price of two. </p> <h2>Intel X58 </h2> <p align="center"><img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1038_sm.jpg" width="415" height="277" /> </p> <p><strong>Circa:  November 2008</strong></p> <p>Paired as the launch chipset with Intel’s rocket Core i7 CPUs, the X58 is, in many ways, far less of a chipset than previous Intel chipsets. With the memory controller moved into the CPU you wouldn’t think that the X58 would get into the history books, but the X58 marked a major sea change for performance computing: the reunification of multi-GPU graphics. With no Core i7 chipset offering, Nvidia decided to license motherboard makers to run SLI, rather than have everyone build new enthusiast boxes with ATI’s reenergized Radeon HD lineup. </p> <h2>Intel Core i7</h2> <p align="center"> <img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1048_sm.jpg" width="415" height="325" /></p> <p><strong>Circa: November 2008</strong></p> <p>Why is this CPU more significant than the 8088, Pentium, or Pentium M? As the second new chip produced after a series of embarrassing losses to archrival AMD, the Core i7 will answer for the world whether Intel is prepared to ride the momentum of its Core 2 launch with another winning chip or if it’s content to rest on its laurels, as it did with the Pentium 4. Core i7 also represents a major new direction for Intel, which has stubbornly clung to the ancient front-side-bus architecture and discrete memory controller for years. Indeed, with its triple-channel integrated DDR3 memory controller and chip-to-chip interconnect, the block map of a Core i7 looks more like an Athlon 64 than a Core 2 chip.</p> <h2>Intel Atom N270</h2> <p align="center"> <img src="http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/top50hardware/top50hardware1049_sm.jpg" width="415" height="276" /></p> <p> <strong>Circa: 2008<br /></strong></p> <p>Why is the Atom processor important? Because despite a global economic downturn, worldwide PC sales have remained on an uptick thanks in large part to the explosive growth of netbooks, the vast majority of which sport an Intel Atom processor inside. On the hardware front, these low-power chips only boast 47 million transistors, 512KB of L2 cache, and a top clockspeed of 1.86GHz. A dual-core variant exists for the desktop, but so far not for mobile PCs. Even though most power users would consider the Atom N270 underpowered for many computing tasks, 15 million Atom-based netbooks shipped in 2008 alone counts for something. </p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong> Think we missed something? Comment below or send us a <a href="http://twitter.com/willsmith">Twitter</a>!</strong></p> http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/the_50_most_important_pc_components_modern_computing_era#comments features Hardware history list Features Tue, 05 May 2009 16:30:00 +0000 The Maximum PC Staff 6199 at http://www.maximumpc.com