On 21 Oct 2008, at 17:26, K. Jerry Smith wrote:

> Changing hardware!? To what, and why?

It's not something I'm planning on doing tomorrow. Or the day after.
But realistically, the principles of hardware I use and the way it's
set up haven't really changed much for a long time.

I've been using multiple monitor systems for at least 15 years, three
for at least a decade.

Part of this is the legacy of my print background:

a] I needed hardware with mucho horsepower to lug around 300MB
Photoshop files pretty much daily. But this kind of thing is now
pretty irrelevant, given I hardly do any print work these days.

The current display set up is 2 23" Cinema Displays and a 19" Sony,
running off a Dual Processor 3GHz Core Duo with 8GB of RAM. (Or
something like that, once upon a time I'd have known exactly, these
days I'm less inclined to remember. Power is adequate, sir).

Original purpose/benefit of this type of setup was work on one screen,
palettes on the other (third for email and the like).

But as Adobe's palettes have become increasingly preposterous, and
their palette/workspace management a bit flakey (in my system at
least) this is less and less relevant.

I seem to recall Lynn Grillo advising me to close all the palettes in
Illustrator 10 when I complained about speed, or the lack thereof.
Mmm. And if you don't actually drive faster than 30mph, you won't have
those braking problems...


You'll have gathered I'm not much of a fan of the current incarnation
of Adobe. Haven't been for some time, and the last upgrade I made was
to the CS3 versions of Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash.

Specifically of interest to me were:

a] Intel native versions

b] copy and paste integration between the three (specifically bringing
Flash into the loop), and

c] er, that's it.

Adobe hasn't added a feature I give a toss about for a long time. In
terms of feature sets, I could probably roll back at least three
versions and miss nothing.

c] oh yes, I continue to live in hope that Adobe will actually fucking
fix things (sorry, but it's an issue I feel strongly about) rather
than keep pasting new features on top. I bought AI CS2 (the only CS2
upgrade I made) on the basis that it couldn't possibly be a bigger
pile of crap than AI CS, which really was a dog.

Rather than the ability to paint windows on skyscrapers, I'd rather
have a common, consistent colour picker across all apps for instance.

I say I live in hope. Make that past tense. I no longer hope or care,
because I can see a point, not as far off as one might think, at which
I'm hardly going to be using their software, and I think it's most
unlikely I'll buy any more in the foreseeable future (by which I mean
several years, not 6 months).


Different software maybe means the possibilities afforded by different
hardware.

If I was buying from scratch in the next few months, I'd be very
strongly tempted to buy a new MacBook Pro and the 30" LED display
which I assume will appear early next year.

None of the primary software I use has hundreds of increasingly
illegibly-labelled tabbed palettes with a life of their own.

Coda works entirely on one screen. So does CSS Edit. There's a new
generation of image and vector editors based on Apple's Core Image
technologies which aren't ready for prime time yet, but they're on the
fast track to getting there.

Sure I'll still use the Adobe apps for some things, but a lot of it
will be keeping things around for 'odd jobs' or updating 'legacy' work.

Unbelievable though it may seem to those who know me of old, I'm even
planning moving away from Flash for most things. (I'm not up to my
armpits in jQuery for nothing...).

Not that it's a particularly brilliant example, but it's early days
yet...

< http://www.notquiteready.co.uk/hoverblockpartial.html>

Look at the code. Bit of jQuery, bit of CSS. That's a LIST. One div,
half a dozen tags. Think how easy it is to swap images, update links.
A 10 year old could do it in TextEdit.

Compare that to the bloated garbage DW typically generates (Hey, I
know, but it really really matters to me...).


And added to my general curmudgeonly demeanour, the idea of a pretty
much completely silent office has a strong appeal. No MacPro whirring
away...

I suspect you're getting the idea. Keep an eye on eBay.



--
regards

Miles A Cruickshank
Flying Solo
<http://www.flyingsolo.co.uk>


Recent projects:

Archid: <http://www.archid.co.uk>
GowanLea Cottage: <http://www.gowanlea-golf.co.uk>
Loretto Training: <http://www.lorettotraining.co.uk>
















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