In the rarefied air that is Formula One racing, Team McLaren is about as big as it gets. Second only to Scuderia Ferrari in terms of total championships won, race wins, and points accumulated, McLaren is obviously one of the most accomplished teams and constructors in the history of Grand Prix racing.

McLaren's history is filled with far more high points than lows. They first started building their own Grand Prix cars in 1966; 1968 saw the team's first Grand Prix victory. 1974...

txtmstrjoe

Until very recently, I had never used an Apple computer. Sure, I'd fiddled with units on display at the local BestBuy or Fry's Electronics store, but moving that one-button mouse about and marveling at the beautiful GUI hardly counts as "using" a machine, in my opinion. To actually "use" a machine, you literally have to do something with it and work with it.

Last Saturday, I had my first "bite" of an Apple. My younger sister had recently bought an...

txtmstrjoe

I don't know about you, but anytime I look at a PC game's packaging, I make sure to check out the "Minimum System Requirements" recommendation that the game manufacturer/publisher prints. While I'm confident my dedicated gaming rig (which is no longer the top-of-the-line, by the way) and LCD monitor combination can handle most games reasonably well, it's always interesting to see how taxing a game can be on one's PC.

Perhaps logically, the newest games are all optimized...

txtmstrjoe

First off, something to satisfy Intel die-hards (also known as stating the very obvious facts that are true as of today): Conroe is one hell of a hammer punch that hit AMD right in the solar plexus. Intel's only significant rival in the consumer CPU marketplace has lost its wind and is gasping because of the power of the blow.

This is undeniable, even after the much-ballyhooed Phenom Quad-Core line stumbled out of the gate. In all fairness, Phenom isn't the Conroe killer that AMD's...

txtmstrjoe

So there I was, sleeping after being on the phone with my girlfriend Jaime, when I was roused from my slumber by a loud clicking noise emanating from one of the two live rigs mere feet away from my bed. I have four rigs in my bedroom, and a maximum of two can be online at any one time.

My first thought was, "Dang, one of these likely has a fan failing on it." So I rose from the bed and reached for Darth Bludgeon, presently deployed as a dedicated OCing/benchmarking rig....

txtmstrjoe