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It's time for an introduction
Wow, has it been nine years already? Happily (or sadly, to some of my critics), this isn't another article bidding Maximum PC readers a fond farewell—we've had too many of those over the past several years. Instead, it's a "thank you" note to those of you who've stuck around to justify my continued presence, a re-introduction for newer readers and anyone else who missed my first one eight years ago this month, a reflection on my time at Maximum PC and technology in general since contributing my first articles to the magazine nine years ago (reviews of the Wolfking Timber Wolf and Ideazon Merc keyboards), and commentary on where I think things are headed.
Let me start things off simply by saying, "Hello!" My name is Paul Lilly and I've been a contributor to this wonderful publication since single-core CPUs and AGP graphics cards were still prevalent. I've been a fan of Maximum PC for even longer, as a subscriber and an active member of the forums, which back then were hosted on Delphi and known online as The Commport (it still exists, by the way). Like many of you reading this, Maximum PC helped fuel my passion for PCs and technology, though interestingly enough, it was another Future brand that dug its hooks in me early on—PC Gamer.
My Journey to Maximum PC
I started reading PC Gamer when it was called PC Entertainment, and while some adults lament having thrown away old baseball cards, my big regret is not holding onto the many issues of PC Entertainment/PC Gamer from the early days, along with rags like Sierra's InterAction. These were my teen years, an era not far removed from the Commodore 64 (my first PC) but firmly entrenched in x86 computing. I was hooked on adventure games and used to cut out pages and posters from game magazines and tape them to my wall. At one point, I even wrote a sequel on notebook paper to Maniac Mansion and enlisted the help of my cousin to draw up sketches with the intent of submitting the finished outline to Lucasfilm (the LucasArts gaming division didn't exist at the time). Ah, the naivety of youth! To be clear, I had no hand in making the eventual sequel, Day of the Tentacle, which was awesome.
My story goes back further and includes time spent on the C64 and Atari 2600, but rather than add more nostalgia to the mix, the point I'm making is I've been a computer geek for a long, long time, and it eventually led me to Maximum PC. There were pit stops along the way, most notably a place called HardwareLogic. Before it was sold to a new owner, I wrote a variety of product reviews for HardwareLogic, everything from RAM and motherboards to media players to funky-looking cases like the Lian Li PC777-B Anniversary Edition, and helped manage the website.
Having also been a longtime reader of Maximum PC and active forum member at the time, I saw that former Editor-in-Chief Will Smith and company were looking to hire an editor. I fluffed up my resume, collected some links of reviews I had written, and rolled the dice, figuring it was a long shot at best. And it was. Residing in Michigan, my application was set aside while Maximum PC searched locally for a candidate. And then it happened—I flew out to San Francisco for an interview, met the staff and toured the new facility, saw some of the local sights, and caught a red-eye back home.
Not many know it, but I was offered and accepted a position as a Technical Editor. Unfortunately, it ended up being a short stint, as I resigned for personal reasons, but it was a stint all the same. More importantly, it was my foot in the door, and I've been contributing to Maximum PC as a freelance writer ever since.
A Look at the News
My contributions to Maximum PC went from sporadic to frequent to daily in just a short time. With the relaunch of Maximum PC's website in 2007, the old regime introduced Community Blogs, which later morphed into daily news postings. Some of you may remember the Daily News Briefs that I used to post—single articles with short blurbs and links to multiple news items. Those are gone, replaced by more in-depth articles on what's happening in technology, and under the leadership of current Editor-in-Chief Tuan Nguyen, we're again tweaking the content. More on that in a minute.
First, I want to reflect a bit on what I've seen from covering the news over the years. If you listened to Gordon Mah Ung's farewell podcast, you might recall that a recurring theme he's heard time and again is the death of the PC. He never bought into it, and neither have I, though I have reported on the multiple market firm reports and analysts predicting the same thing over and over. Yet here we are, still writing about PCs and still as passionate as ever. Some of the form factors have changed in popularity—small form factor and micro PCs are gaining steam, and we've yet to see what impact true Steam Machines will have on the market—but we haven't traded in our desktops and gaming laptops for tablets, and we're not using our smartphones for CAD work or encoding videos.
I've also seen a lot of untapped potential, which excites me for the future. Hardly anyone uses a single-core processor anymore, and now dual-core and quad-core chips are common. Six-core and eight-core processors will be the norm before long, yet developers aren't taking full advantage of the hardware at their disposal. Part of the reason is because they're coding for the lowest common denominator. And perhaps others have yet to let go of the MHz/GHz mentality that drove the market before Intel gave up on its Netburst architecture. Regardless of the reason(s), we've yet to see the widespread benefits of owning a mulit-core CPU, which means the best is yet to come.
By far, though, the biggest thing I've seen is change. Bill Gates is mostly retired from Microsoft, and so is Steve Ballmer. Steve Jobs and many other pioneers passed away, AMD purchased ATI Technologies, Toshiba acquired OCZ's memory and storage businesses, form factors and technologies like BTX and RAMBUS have come into the limelight and been pushed back into the dark, PC games have transitioned from physical media to digital downloads, the floppy disk finally died (for most of us), and cloud computing has become a major focus of many organizations, including Microsoft. And that's just the tip of a very big iceberg.
Maximum PC and the Future
As longtime readers know, Maximum PC hasn't been immune to change, either. Jon Phillips, Will Smith, Katherine Stevenson, Gordon Mah Ung, Michael Brown, Josh Norem, Norman Chan, George Jones, David Murphy, Nathan Edwards, Alex Castle, and others have all moved on, either entirely or mostly, some of them still contributing freelance articles on occasion. And speaking of freelancers, former news contributors like Ryan Whitwam, Brad Chacos, and Justin Kerr deserve acknowledgement for helping to shape Maximum PC after the relaunch. Perhaps I'm a little biased, but freelancers often don't get the credit they deserve, and I've had the privilege of working with some wonderful contributors through the years.
I'll admit, it's been tough to see so many talented individuals move on and out. At the same time, we're lucky to have a newer cast that understands the brand, its storied history, and what it will take to keep Maximum PC ticking. I don't know Alex Campbell real well (yet), but I trust Tuan Nguyen's judgement, who's shared with me his specific vision for the future and some of the exciting things that are in store. And Jimmy Thang, whom I've had the most communication with, is exactly the kind of blood this magazine needs.
Put another way, and for what it's worth from someone who's been here one year short of a decade, the current cast has my stamp of approval. If you're not fans already, I think you will be once all the changes take effect and the dust settles.
Going forward, I plan to continue to cover the news, but as you've probably noticed, there's been a reduction in stories. That's so we can collectively focus on content that's more interesting and relevant, and more narrowly focused. There will be some growing pains, but in the end I think you'll see more of what you like and less of what you might be inclined to skip over.
Final Words (For Now)
Coming around full circle, it's been one helluva ride these past nine years. I've made friends in the forums with people like Satchboy, Chumly, Jipstyle, and Hitman (to name just a few), and look forward to what you, the readers, have to say in the comments section of posts. I don't always agree, but I appreciate the insight from folks like LatiosXT, jgottberg, praetor_alpha, and others.
So, thank you—for reading, for engaging, and being a part of this community. And if you ever feel like it, don't hesitate to drop me (or any of the writers) a line. I'll be happy to discuss technology, answer questions, offer advice, or shoot the shit about outside hobbies, like sports (go Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, and Bruins!) and motorcycles (I ride a 2013 Yamaha Raider S).
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
More...
Wow, has it been nine years already? Happily (or sadly, to some of my critics), this isn't another article bidding Maximum PC readers a fond farewell—we've had too many of those over the past several years. Instead, it's a "thank you" note to those of you who've stuck around to justify my continued presence, a re-introduction for newer readers and anyone else who missed my first one eight years ago this month, a reflection on my time at Maximum PC and technology in general since contributing my first articles to the magazine nine years ago (reviews of the Wolfking Timber Wolf and Ideazon Merc keyboards), and commentary on where I think things are headed.
Let me start things off simply by saying, "Hello!" My name is Paul Lilly and I've been a contributor to this wonderful publication since single-core CPUs and AGP graphics cards were still prevalent. I've been a fan of Maximum PC for even longer, as a subscriber and an active member of the forums, which back then were hosted on Delphi and known online as The Commport (it still exists, by the way). Like many of you reading this, Maximum PC helped fuel my passion for PCs and technology, though interestingly enough, it was another Future brand that dug its hooks in me early on—PC Gamer.
My Journey to Maximum PC
My story goes back further and includes time spent on the C64 and Atari 2600, but rather than add more nostalgia to the mix, the point I'm making is I've been a computer geek for a long, long time, and it eventually led me to Maximum PC. There were pit stops along the way, most notably a place called HardwareLogic. Before it was sold to a new owner, I wrote a variety of product reviews for HardwareLogic, everything from RAM and motherboards to media players to funky-looking cases like the Lian Li PC777-B Anniversary Edition, and helped manage the website.
Not many know it, but I was offered and accepted a position as a Technical Editor. Unfortunately, it ended up being a short stint, as I resigned for personal reasons, but it was a stint all the same. More importantly, it was my foot in the door, and I've been contributing to Maximum PC as a freelance writer ever since.
A Look at the News
First, I want to reflect a bit on what I've seen from covering the news over the years. If you listened to Gordon Mah Ung's farewell podcast, you might recall that a recurring theme he's heard time and again is the death of the PC. He never bought into it, and neither have I, though I have reported on the multiple market firm reports and analysts predicting the same thing over and over. Yet here we are, still writing about PCs and still as passionate as ever. Some of the form factors have changed in popularity—small form factor and micro PCs are gaining steam, and we've yet to see what impact true Steam Machines will have on the market—but we haven't traded in our desktops and gaming laptops for tablets, and we're not using our smartphones for CAD work or encoding videos.
I've also seen a lot of untapped potential, which excites me for the future. Hardly anyone uses a single-core processor anymore, and now dual-core and quad-core chips are common. Six-core and eight-core processors will be the norm before long, yet developers aren't taking full advantage of the hardware at their disposal. Part of the reason is because they're coding for the lowest common denominator. And perhaps others have yet to let go of the MHz/GHz mentality that drove the market before Intel gave up on its Netburst architecture. Regardless of the reason(s), we've yet to see the widespread benefits of owning a mulit-core CPU, which means the best is yet to come.
By far, though, the biggest thing I've seen is change. Bill Gates is mostly retired from Microsoft, and so is Steve Ballmer. Steve Jobs and many other pioneers passed away, AMD purchased ATI Technologies, Toshiba acquired OCZ's memory and storage businesses, form factors and technologies like BTX and RAMBUS have come into the limelight and been pushed back into the dark, PC games have transitioned from physical media to digital downloads, the floppy disk finally died (for most of us), and cloud computing has become a major focus of many organizations, including Microsoft. And that's just the tip of a very big iceberg.
Maximum PC and the Future
I'll admit, it's been tough to see so many talented individuals move on and out. At the same time, we're lucky to have a newer cast that understands the brand, its storied history, and what it will take to keep Maximum PC ticking. I don't know Alex Campbell real well (yet), but I trust Tuan Nguyen's judgement, who's shared with me his specific vision for the future and some of the exciting things that are in store. And Jimmy Thang, whom I've had the most communication with, is exactly the kind of blood this magazine needs.
Put another way, and for what it's worth from someone who's been here one year short of a decade, the current cast has my stamp of approval. If you're not fans already, I think you will be once all the changes take effect and the dust settles.
Going forward, I plan to continue to cover the news, but as you've probably noticed, there's been a reduction in stories. That's so we can collectively focus on content that's more interesting and relevant, and more narrowly focused. There will be some growing pains, but in the end I think you'll see more of what you like and less of what you might be inclined to skip over.
Final Words (For Now)
So, thank you—for reading, for engaging, and being a part of this community. And if you ever feel like it, don't hesitate to drop me (or any of the writers) a line. I'll be happy to discuss technology, answer questions, offer advice, or shoot the shit about outside hobbies, like sports (go Celtics, Patriots, Red Sox, and Bruins!) and motorcycles (I ride a 2013 Yamaha Raider S).
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
More...