|  |  |  | | | | | Maximum PC - All Articles | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Recent games haven't exactly been at a lack for assassins. Even so, for every Ezio silently skewering organs or throwaway baddie pegged with that ominous title, there's been a small (thankfully non-hidden-blade-shaped) hole in our hearts. Fortunately, after quite the absence (and a short-lived movie career), Agent 47 finally has the gaming world in his sights again. So, uh, you probably ought to take cover.
Titled Hitman Absolution (or HITMAN ABSOLUTION, according to the very loud press release), the game sees everyone's favorite tastefully tattooed assassin taking on "his most dangerous contract to date." Which is a relief, as it'd be a bit harder to get excited about "a contract of middling danger" or "tea with a somewhat grouchy family member." Beyond that, this is pretty much all IO Interactive is saying for now: "Betrayed by those he once trusted — and now hunted by the police — he suddenly finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy and must embark on a personal journey through a corrupt and twisted world." Pretty vague, right? We're still not ruling out the possibility of tea. The game's also running a brand new engine, which you can not-see in action in this CG teaser trailer. But look, a glove! And a snake with a gun! Perhaps that's the "dangerous contract"? We can think of few foes more formidable. At any rate, the game's shooting for a 2012 release date, which is sort of like opening a present only to find another box. Oh well. Better late than never. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The comScore numbers for April will likely have Microsoft employees cheering, but softly so as not to disturb the Ballmer. The data shows that Microsoft's Bing search engine continues to slowly gain market share as Google and the competition remain flat.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though. Google is still top dog by leaps and bounds. El Goog is sitting up at 65.4% for the month of April, down just slightly from March's 65.7% share. Yahoo is next with 15.9% in April. Bing is currently at 14.1%, up from 13.9% in March. When you take Yahoo and Bing together (since Yahoo uses Bing search), the combo is at 30% market share. If anything, this data shows how stable the search market is. Even with the massive ad campaigns Microsoft has undertaken, they are still only gaining slivers of the search share each month. It is also worth noting that comScore is tracking only desktop searches. Mobile searches are dominated by Google in a big way. Do you think Bing is here to stay, or will its share decline if the ads stop? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Google IO enters its second day, with Google pushing more into business laptops… and desktops. Angry Birds is coming to a web browser near you. I just wanted to get that little tidbit out of the way, because that was probably the least important news to come out of Google IO 2011's second day. The most significant thing about Angry Birds coming to Google Chrome, other than oversaturation, is that it's built with WebGL. There will be a fallback to HTML Canvas for browsers that don't support WebGL (we're looking at you, Microsoft!) The big buzz is about hardware. Google announced support for new hardware with its Chrome OS, which will be called "Chromebooks" (for the laptops) and something called "Chrome Box" for the desktop. Of the two classes of units, Chromebooks were actually launched at Google IO. You'll be able to plunk down your credit card for one at Best Buy this summer ($499 for the Samsung unit with 12.1-inch display, $349 for the Acer version with smaller $11.6 inch panel.) 
But that's not important in the bigger scheme of things – which is to say, the three-way deathmatch between Microsoft, Google and Apple. In the fight against Microsoft for corporate hearts and minds, Google is weighing in with updated laptops running a newly refined version of Chrome OS. Last year's Chromebook, known as the CR-48, is now history. As noted above, Samsung and Acer are jumping into the fray. Interestingly, both use Intel dual core Atom CPUs, rather than the ARM-based processors common in some of the Android tablets. These units are always connected to the Internet, either via 3G or Wi-Fi. Unlike last year's CR-48, you'll be able to access files locally – one of the big enhancements to Chrome OS is an actual file manager, with user-accessible file system. But the hardware and OS is only a tiny piece of the picture. Google sees business and education as the major markets, more so than consumers. Businesses customers would pay $28 per month per seat, while educational institutions pay $20 per month. There may be additional costs involved for more cloud storage and additional services, but the base price is incredibly attractive. At first blush, you'd think a dual core Atom system is pretty anemic when it comes to raw performance – but most apps will actually running through a browser in the cloud. In fact, Google showed off an HTML 5 version of Citrix Receiver, which allows you to run your Windows app from a server through the cloud in your browser. So for many mobile users, Chromebooks might be perfectly adequate. Throw in the lower cost of support, and Google may have a winner. Migrating to new hardware is easy, since nothing except some data is locally stored. Security is less of a problem, since the software is sandboxed and lives in the browser. IT departments looking for relief from the high cost of support may like what they see. The only thing that might give them pause is the transition costs of moving to new hardware and training users. Okay, so we've seen how Google is taking on Microsoft. But the company has its eyes on Apple, and is aiming right at Apple's revenue stream. Google announced two key pieces of functionality: in-app purchases, which social gaming app makers will love, and a better royalty stream. Adding in-app purchases is the culmination of Google's buyout of Jambool last year. Once you've established an account in any Google store, (Android store, Youtube, Google Checkout), you'll be able to use in-app purchasing. So if you're playing a free-to-play game, it will be that much easier to get that piece of horse armor for your in-game steed. In-app payments add a key ingredient that was missing from Android when compared to Apple's iOS infrastructure. Taking aim at Apple even more directly, Google announced the pricing model for in-app payments would be a flat 5% -- whether the app developer distributes via the Chrome Web Store or if they do their own distribution. That gives developers a much higher cut of the pie – 5% versus Apple's 30% cut – and more flexibility. Can Google successfully wage a two-front war against both Apple and Microsoft? Will Microsoft also make moves on the Windows Phone front to challenge them? The next few years will feature a tense, three-way battle for the hearts and minds of businesses, developers and mobile consumers. Time to grab some popcorn and watch the fireworks. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft has been making some big strides in the quality of Windows's native search. For regular, targeted searches (finding a file in your downloads folder, for instance), it does a great job of giving you near-real-time results. Unfortunately, that's not always good enough. Sometimes you know you've got a file, but you just can't remember where you put it. That means you've got to resort to the dreaded Search Local Disk (C:), or even worse, Search Computer. It doesn't take as long as it used to, but it can still take quite a while to find what you're looking for. If you find yourself in this situation regularly, you need true instant search. You need Everything. 1. Install Everything No, you don't have to install everything on the whole Internet—just one program, which is confusingly named Everything. Everything is an indexed search app, which quickly creates an index of every file on your computer, and then allows you to search through all of them by name, instantly. You can download Everything from the Void Tools homepage at www.voidtools.com. Just pick up the Windows installer executable and run it. During the installation you'll be asked which components you want to install. The default options will work for most people, but if you're the type to worry about context menu clutter, you might consider unchecking that option. 
When you finish the installer, Everything will launch. You're given another chance to review the options, but for now just click OK. At first, Everything will be blank, except for a search bar up top and the words "Scanning Drive C:" below. Give Everything a moment to index all the files in your system, and in a (surprisingly) short while, you'll see a list of every single file on your whole PC (above). Go ahead, take a minute to try searching for something. We'll give you some time to collect your jaw off the floor. 2. Search Hopefully by now you've recovered from the initial shock of completely instant search. Here are some tips for searching in Everything. Use logical operators. The default if you type "foo bar" is to search for foo and bar. To search for foo or bar, use the pipe character (|). To search for foo and not bar, use the exclamation mark. Use wildcards. You can use the asterisk or question mark character as a wildcard character. 
Search in a single folder. To search for files in a folder, click Search in the navigation bar, and enable the Match Path option (above). Now, searches will also apply to the file path, in addition to the name. 3. Search Remotely If you'd like to remotely search the contents of your home PC using Everything, that's also simple. Just open the options menu and browse to the ETP/FTP tab, and set a username and a password (below). Also, note the ETP/FTP server port. If you only want to search, and not download files, you can uncheck the box that says "Allow FTP file download." 
If your home computer doesn't have a static IP address, you'll have to obtain one by using a free service like DynDNS.org and telling your router to reserve a subnet IP for your computer. Now, on the remote computer, just start up Everything and click Tools > Connect to ETP server and enter the same information as before, including your IP address. Now you should be able to use Everything just as you normally would, to search through your home computer's files. If you didn't uncheck the box, Everything will also act as an FTP server, so you can download any files you need. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  One of the four FCC commissioners that approved the Comcast-NBC deal has announced that she will be leaving the FCC at the end of her term in June. You'll never guess where she's going to work. Yep, Comcast. Meredith Attwell Baker will be Comcast's new SVP of government affairs.
Ms. Baker is one of two Republicans on the five-member commission. She was nominated for the post by President Obama in 2009. By taking the position, Ms. Baker agreed to a ethics pledge barring her from lobbying or contacting FCC or executive branch official until the end of the current administration. As expected, critics of the Comcast-NBC deal have been quick to lash out at Baker. In a statement, Craig Aaron of Free Press called the move, "Just the latest, though perhaps most blatant, example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating." Harsh, but is the criticism well-deserved? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  One thing today's batch of nettop and netbook Atom processors all have in common is that they use Intel graphics technology. That won't be the case with Cedarview, Intel's next generation of "full fat" Atom chips, with the Santa Clara chip maker instead choosing to tap into PowerVR's IP. That means the Atom processors of tomorrow will sport PowerVR's SGX545 graphics core.
According to VR-Zone, Intel extended its licensing agreement with PowerVR and plans to move away from using its own graphics. Assuming this doesn't affect the price of upcoming netbooks and nettops, this will actually be a good thing for consumers, who can expect better graphics performance out of PowerVR's SGX545 GPU. SGX545, which is similar in power to Intel's GMA 500 and 600 graphics, introduces new features as well, including DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0 support. You can also expect hardware accelerated video decoding for MPEG-2, MPEG-4 part 2, VC1, WMV9, and H.264 codecs, VR-Zone says. Mobile Cedarview parts will have the graphics core clocked at 400MHz, while the desktop variant will race along at 640MHz. That's at least twice as fast as PowerVR originally intended its SGX545 to be clocked at. Image Credit: Imagination Technologies | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | I am going to bet that you know what the application "Outlook on the Desktop" does without me even having to describe a single byte of it. Congratulations; You win. Good day sir, ma'am. You might be able to guess the app's overall purpose, but I think you'll be even more interested once you actually get the nitty-gritty of what it does. Let's hit the big question first, though. Why would you even want to slap a widget-like implementation of Microsoft Outlook on your desktop to begin with? 
Here's my answer. I love Outlook on the Desktop for two main reasons: I like staring at my desktop as much as possible (especially during that half-hour in the morning when coffee is beginning to work its magical effects on my tired brain), and I like being able to quickly glance at my calendar while I'm in the process of doing other things. You just don't get that kind of functionality in Outlook as-is: If you want the calendar, you're going to have to pull up the program and go to it. End of story. Now, consider the features offered by Outlook on the Desktop which, I should add, can run at the exact same time you're using your normal Outlook application. Not only does Outlook on the Desktop give you the on-the-fly ability to resize your Outlook-desktop window to any width and height you want, but you can also adjust its transparency to fit your need to read information versus your desire to stare at your pretty wallpaper. For those of you lucky enough to sport a multi-monitor setup, Outlook on your Desktop works perfectly on either display. The app is like having a perfectly customizable widget that's an exact replication of Outlook's essential screens. About that: I should note that you can Configure Outlook on the Desktop to display almost anything the program offers. This includes your Inbox, your Calendar, your Tasks, your Notes, et cetera. If you're a compulsive Outlook user, switching between each view is but a few mouse-clicks away. And yes, you can edit every screen as if you were doing it within Outlook itself. Your changes will show up in your primary Outlook instance immediately. According to the developer, Outlook on your Desktop works on any version of Outlook 2000 SP3 or higher. So what are you waiting for? Clean up some desktop real estate, find an awesome piece of wallpaper, and get to it! Sorry, Thunderbird users. 
(blur intentional)
Download Outlook on the Desktop here! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Earlier today we said Google was getting ready to announce a student package for its Chrome notebook, and rather than keep us in suspense, the search giant just a short while ago officially unveiled its first Chromebooks. Google has partnered up with Samsung and Acer to deliver the first models, which are slated to ship on June 15.
"These are not typical notebooks," Google said in a blog post. "With a Chromebook you won't wait minutes for your computer to boot and browser to start. you'll be reading your email in seconds. Thanks to automatic updates the software on your Chromebook will get faster over time. Your apps, games, photos, music, movies, and documents will be accessible wherever you are and you won't need to worry about losing your computer or forgetting to back up files." Other notables include: - Chromebooks will last a full day on a single charge
- 3G connectivity is optional
- Chromebooks will have many layers of security built in and supposedly not require any anti-virus software
As for the student program we discussed earlier today, this will be one of two monthly subscription options as part of Google's Chromebooks for Business and Education. "This service from Google includes Chromebooks and a cloud management console to remotely administer and manage users, devices, applications, and policies," Google explains. "Also included is enterprise-level support, device warranties, and replacements as well as regular hardware refreshes. Monthly subscriptions will start at $28/user for businesses and $20/user for schools." For individuals, Samsung is building a version that weighs a little over 3 pounds with a 12.1-inch display, Intel Atom dual-core processor, built-in Wi-Fi and 3G, HD webcam, 4-in-1 memory card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, full-size keyboard, and oversized trackpad. According to CNet, this will run $429 for the Wi-Fi model, and $499 for the 3G model. Acer, meanwhile, will sell a Wi-Fi model for $349 that includes an 11.6-inch display. Chromebook Specs Image Credit: Google | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  If you're not rocking a solid state drive in your system, it's probably because of price, are we right? And specifically, the cost per gigabyte can be hard to swallow when mechanical hard drives offer such a superior value, at least in terms of what you're paying. SSDs have a long way to go before they catch up to HDDs, but maybe they don't have to. Maybe SSDs just need to offer a better value before the mainstream market dives in en masse.
That's what a new report from market research firm Gartner seems to suggest, PCWorld reports. According to Gartner, SSDs are primed to have a banner year in 2012 as prices trickle down into the $1 per gigabyte territory, at which point mainstream buyers will start to come around. Also helping the matter is the emerging tablet market. Most tablets use NAND flash memory for storage chores, and this has caused a rise in demand for NAND chip. Manufacturers are responding by adding capacity to fill this demand, which Gartner says will eventually push prices down. If Gartner's research is right, the price of NAND flash memory chips will fall 30 percent this year, and another 36 percent in 2012. For the sake of comparison, some of today's SSDs range in price from around $1.50 per gigabyte for low capacity boot drives, to having to sign over your first born for high-performance, large capacity drives. At what price (per gigabyte) do SSDs need to reach before you would consider ditching HDDs altogether? Image Credit: OCZ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  As power users, we rarely, if ever, follow the same path as mainstream users do. We build our PCs from scratch, we know what technology to invest in and which ones to avoid, and rather than wait for our rigs to require a complete overhaul, we keep things running smooth with well timed upgrades. But even so, every once in awhile we reach the end our ropes where it makes more sense to start from scratch than to plug in more parts to an aging system. According to a new study, that time typically comes around every four and a half years.
Crucial commissioned a survey of 3,000 computer users living in th U.S., U.K., and France in January 2011 and found that, on average, PC users get the four-year itch when it comes to replacing their existing systems. Other findings from the study: - Most PC owners think their computers should last "much longer" than 3 years
- Almost half of the respondents have no clue how much RAM is in their system
- The No. 1 irritant PC users have with their computers is "slow speed"
As you know, Crucial makes RAM, and the self-serving study is being used to convince people that a RAM upgrade can inject new life into an aging machine. And while that's true, we're more interested in learning what your upgrade habits are. Specifically, how often do you overhaul your system? Do you plan strategic upgrades along the way? Let us know in the comments section below! Image Credit: Crucial | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The best thing about Google is that its employees have all the time in the world—or at least, a Google-bestowed chunk of hours—to devote to various side projects. You might recognize some of these. Like, say, Gmail. Other Google side projects might fly under your radar for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that these services are stuck in the Google Laboratory. This self-proclaimed "testing ground" is where useful add-ons to existing Google products boil and bubble. But here's the problem: There are a ton of ingredients in Google's soup. How will you know which of the more than 50 Gmail add-ons are best without first installing them? Easy: You'll read this guide. We're counting down the 20 most useful Gmail Labs features that you can apply to your account with the mere click of a button. As a bonus, check out the end of the list for our 5 picks for worst Google Labs. Former Maximum PC Editor David Murphy publicly apologizes to Magali Ferare for forcing her to appear in screenshots for the articles he writes. She's a champ. Don't miss these other great Maximum PC galleries: Firefox 4 Power User's Guide: 15 Tips, Tricks, and Features The 10 Best New Features In Internet Explorer 9 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Garish or glam? We report, you decide We don't much care what our routers look like, because they're usually hidden inside a closet (unless we're benchmarking them). But Asus's engineers lavished as much attention on the RT-N56U's skin as they did its guts: This dual-band router is a looker, and it's also pretty damned fast. The RT-N56U is nicknamed "Black Diamond" for its embossed, shiny black plastic housing. In addition to speed, it delivers excellent range and a good collection of features. It's missing one very important feature, however: It doesn't provide a guest network on either its 2.4GHz or 5GHz radios. It does offer two USB ports (to support both a printer and an attached storage device) and support for WDS bridging (you can turn off its router function and use it as a wireless bridge). Alternatively, you can configure the router as a wireless access point. The Black Diamond's graphical user interface renders any setup easy. 
If you're looking for a router to support your entertainment system, Asus's RT-N56U features a DLNA-compliant media server. When we plug a USB hard drive into all too many routers, we find that the port doesn't deliver enough juice to spin up the drive's platters. Our long-time favorite, Netgear's WNDR3700, proved guilty of this when we connected a Verbatim Clon drive (which is based on a 2.5-inch 500GB Samsung mechanism). The RT-N56U has no such problem; it can deliver up to 30 watts of power through its USB ports. The paper-thin router comes with a stand that puts it in a vertical orientation, with its Gigabit modem port and four Gigabit Ethernet ports facing right (that's how we tested it), but it can just as easily lie flat as a pancake on a shelf or your desk with its ports facing the wall. We've changed our benchmarking procedures so that the JPerf app running on the server produces four simultaneous wireless TCP streams to simulate four wireless clients. It's not a perfect simulation, because one wireless adapter is juggling all four streams, but it does a much better job of revealing the router's throughput limits than our previous single-stream test did. As you can see from our benchmark chart, Netgear's WNDR3700 2.4GHz radio spanked the RT-N56U in our Bedroom and Kitchen tests, where the client is closest to the router (10 and 20 feet from the router, respectively). The Asus returned the favor in our Patio, Bedroom 2, and Outdoor tests, crushing the Netgear when the client is much further from the router (38, 60, and 85 feet, respectively). Both routers delivered roughly the same performance on the 2.4GHz band with the client in our difficult-to-penetrate home theater. The Netgear was faster on the less-crowded 5GHz band, and significantly faster on this band in the home theater. The client wasn't able to connect to either router's 5GHz radio when the client was at its furthest outdoor location.
The RT-N56U is a strong performer—its 2.4GHz radio delivered fabulous throughput at range—and it has some great features. Whether you think it's pretty or pretty ugly, there's no question that it would be a better value if at least one of its radios supported a guest network. $130 (street price), www.asus.com | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  According to reports, Google is getting ready to announce a new "Student Package" for its Chrome notebook that will cost users $20/month. The announcement could come as early as today, and if it does, it might usher in a new era of netbook computing. The Chrome notebook, as you know, is all about computing in the cloud with very little emphasis placed on the actual hardware.
Who better to test this concept product than students? At $20/month, which will include both the hardware and online access, college kids can set aside a portion of their grant money or parents' funding that would have been used to buy a much more expensive notebook and necessary software. And as Forbes rightfully points out, these kids will eventually enter the workforce and have not only the experience of living in the cloud, but the expectation that you should work in one. "Small and medium-sized business are banging on our doors to get something like this," Forbes quotes a senior Google executive as saying. Google's Chrome notebook comes with built-in Wi-Fi and 3G, a 12-inch LCD display, full-size keyboard, oversized touchpad, weighs 3.8 pounds, and runs for over 8 hours (active usage) or a week of standby time. Our own Senior Editor Gordon Mah Ung took a quick look at the Google notebook and Chrome OS back in December 2010, which you can view here. Chrome Notebook Image Credit: Google | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  At a glance, you'd be hard pressed to discern between Panasonic's new Toughbook and the one it's replacing. Both sport a thick, rugged exterior made of magnesium alloy and rated for MIL-STD-810G tests, both offer a spill resistant keyboard, and both just look tough. But the new Toughbook 53 weighs more than a pound less at 5.6 pounds and features a smaller 14-inch HD screen instead a 15.6-inch panel.
Inside the Toughbook 53 is an Intel Core i3 2310M or Core i5 2520M processor, higher hard drive capacities up to 320GB (7200RPM for the i5 model and 5400RPM for the i3 model), optional 128GB reinforced flex-connect SSD, up to 8GB of DDR3-1333 RAM, ExpressCard slot, SD card slot, DVD burner, optional touchscreen panel (i5 model), and an oversized electrostatic touchpad with multi-touch support. The latest Toughbook also now offers 4G LTE service, which has never before been an option on the Toughbook line. If that's too much, Gobi2000 3G is still available as well. Panasonic will start shipping the Toughbook 53 in June starting at $1,899 for the Core i5 model ($2,499 for the touchscreen model), and $1,599 for the Core i3 model starting in August. Toughbook Video Image Credit: Panasonic | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Boutique system builder CyberPower PC rarely wastes any time implementing new technologies into its lineup, and the debut of Intel's Z68 Express chipset is no exception. CyberPower sent us word that they've put together a a series of high-end gaming desktops and graphics workstations based on the new chipset, all without breaking the bank.
Sneaking at at just under $700, you can pick up a budget-based Z68 system with the following: - Thermaltake V3 mid-tower case
- Intel Core i5 2500K
- Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3
- 8GB of DDR3-1333
- GeForce GT 520 graphics card
- 1TB SATA III hard drive
- 500W PSU
- 24X DVD burner
- Keyboard/Mouse
Not a bad foundation, though you'll need to bring your own OS or add Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit for $104. The Z68 chipset also makes an appearance in CyberPower's new line of high performance graphics workstations, the Power Mega series. Pricing for the Power Mega workstation starts at $1,200 and includes many of the same components, with the following changes: - Nvidia Quadro 600 graphics card
- NZXT H2 mid-tower case
- 700W power supply
- 12X Blu-ray player
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Z68 Configurator
Power Mega Image Credit: CyberPower PC | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
