By now, most creative professionals in the digital world have heard about Adobe’s latest iteration of the Creative Suite Franchise. CS5 was unveiled last week and is scheduled to ship within the next four weeks.
As with previous releases of the software, purchasing new copies or upgrading old ones comes at a relatively stiff price. Many design studios are currently evaluating the new version to see if and when it is most prudent to make the jump.
Of course, everyone wants to stay at the cutting edge of the latest in technology and software tools. But in today’s difficult economic times, many companies cannot afford to do that. It may not make financial sense for studios and especially individuals to purchase every major upgrade that Adobe releases.
It can be argued that the last version of Adobe CS, version 4, was not a significant enhancement over the one before, version 3. Yes, there some new and interesting features. But was it worth shelling out several hundred or thousand dollars to bring workstations up to CS4 when CS3 was more than adequate?
In our case, at Intrigue, we did something a little different.
When you talk about scripting and/or programming, the average person looks at you with the “deer in the headlights” look. Unless you are a programmer yourself, there is something about this topic that makes most computer users cringe and recoil in horror.
These are people who are very happy to use their Mac or Windows PC as-is to get things done. Even though I’m not a programmer myself, I’ve had enough experience to realize that there are MANY tasks that people do that can be either enhanced, done quicker or done more efficiently through the use of automated scripts.
About a year ago, I posted about an Apple repair where it was not covered by Applecare. We had a relatively new Intel iMac begin to malfunction severely outside of the one year warranty. It was a helpless feeling to know that fixing it would require spending some money and time at an Apple store to remedy the situation.
Well, it was a gamble and in that case it didn’t work out. Recently, I had the opposite experience. My own personal iMac at home began to malfunction in a similar fashion. It was fine one day, and unusable the next. The hard drive decided it was retiring from active service.
The first thing I did – after taking a deep breath – was to check if my iMac was covered by Applecare. I couldn’t remember for sure. I had to scramble to find my paperwork (computer stuff is filed together at home). What a pleasant surprise it was to discover that not only did I get Applecare with the iMac, but I was still covered for it!
When I saw the news item the other day, I was blown away. Is it really 20 years since Adobe Photoshop was introduced to the universe? Unbelievable…
In the computing industry, there are a handful of applications that have had major impacts on the world and how people get their creative work done. Photoshop is one of those programs. The impact it has had is immeasurable and it has forever changed the way we look at images in print and on screen. It has gotten so big that “photoshop” has become a verb, for manipulating images. What is amazing to me is that this ONE, almost magical program has created an industry all its own and many careers and businesses have been built up around it. I include myself in that statement as I have found Photoshop to be an indispensable tool.
As someone who works with both especially large and numerous files on a daily basis, “storage” is a very important issue. Working in a design studio, you quickly see how important it is to have sufficient storage to hold ALL the “live” files AND for adequate backups.
Although we do archive (to DVDs) and delete older projects periodically, it is quite staggering how many gigs of information we currently have in active use. As the company IT guy at Intrigue, it is my responsibility to make sure we have the storage space that we need and that all critical files are backed up on a regular basis. This is no small task as more files are created than deleted on a regular basis. This means that over time, our storage needs will always continue to increase. That requires a plan of action.
Yesterday, I had an interesting experience with an Apple Airport based wireless network. There’s a pre-existing network based on an Airport Extreme base station as well as an Airport Express, functioning as an extension to widen the reach of the network. This particular network was one I had set up a few years ago and it has been functioning just fine for the longest time. It’s had Macs connected via standard wired ethernet as well as using the wireless access.
But yesterday, a Dell laptop came to town. The goal was to get it online using the wireless, password protected, airport network. Sure, it could connect using an empty ethernet port on the network switch, but that’s the easy way out. With all this hi-tech wireless stuff, it should be able to login to the wireless network, right? All I needed was the password key for the network and then, voila! Well, that’s pretty straightforward, except for one problem.
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