Windows Vista Ultimate

[compilerbitch]

First impressions:

Utter pile of crap.

Avoid.

It shouldn't take a rocket scientist several hours to consistently fail to even be able to download a file. Yes, you heard it. I've spent several hours attempting to download, er, a file. I'll say one thing for it: it's secure. But then, leaving my machine turned off is secure, too, and equivalently functional.

Buy. A. Mac. Instead.

Really.

Comments

[foibey.livejournal.com]

Tried gimpshop/xara or do you need the proprietary features specifically?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I used Gimp and Xara for a long time before I started using Photoshop a couple of years ago. I couldn't go back now. Gimp is OK for doing relatively simple things, but it isn't really up to the more complex image manipulation I do. It's good, but (like it or not) Photoshop is better. Ditto Illustrator -- I've had problems with EPS export from Xara (and Inkscape for that matter), and neither are *quite* as good as Illustrator in terms of usability. I can't live without solid EPS export because I use Illustrator for putting together illustrations for papers written in LaTeX. Also, Photoshop seems better at dealing with very large image files (1GB or bigger), which is surprisingly easy to hit when you're manipulating images with a native resolution of 8000x6000.

I'm tempted by going for the Creative Suite Premium edition, actually -- you also get Acrobat (which is extremely handy) and Indesign, which I've used to put together a photo book before and I was very impressed with it. I have vague ideas for 2 or 3 more photo books, so it would be nice to get good tools.

[foibey.livejournal.com]

Fair does. Was just suggesting them in case.