On the most recent episode of ATP, John Siracusa referenced once of his early Mac OS X reviews. This prompted me to revisit his review of the Mac OS X public beta, as the evolution of computer interfaces is something that I find fascinating.
In one of his screenshots, he shows the Ars Technica home page. At the top of the page is a banner informing readers that Ars is part of the “Maximum PC Network“. I immediately recalled this web site, as it was closely related to many other publications I was into at the time, including .net magazine. So, I decided to see what became of the Maximum PC Network by visiting its site in 2020. I expected to find a domain for sale, or it redirecting to a parent company – but no, to my surprise, maximumpc.co.uk is still online, and is still showing the date of when it was presumably last updated – 26th February 2001. Complete with references to em@il and asking whether Windows XP is worth upgrading to, the site is straight out of 2001, but amazingly – still online. Some server, somewhere in 2020 has been left running sine 2001.
I’d love to know the story of how this has happened – how does someone forget a web site existed, but continue to pay for its hosting – even going as far as renewing the SSL certificate each year? That said, I think it’s great and I wish more web sites could stay online once they are abandoned.
