CS4 VERY NICE!

[jani]

Yeah, I used to be a hard-core PC guy too.  Then came Vista...  I grudgingly made the switch and frankly, now see the Mac light .

Join the crowd.  

I used to be a hard-core PC guy, too.

Then came Windows 95.

That's when I switched to Linux for home use (I'd already been using DEC, SGI, and SUN workstations at the university), and I never really looked back, except when I wanted to play games and have a colour managed workflow in Photoshop.

In December 2005, I got my first Mac - a PowerMac Quad G5 - which I still use as my primary imaging workstation.

Both Windows and MacOS X provide essentially painful GUIs with low usability, especially for those who want an efficient workspace.

Vista actually improves a bit on the situation, since applications don't get to play silly buggers with the GUI too often.

Apple still hasn't learned, and pops the reboot-on-Quicktime-upgrade question to the foreground every friggin' time, resulting in much fun for those of us who actually learned to touch type and work fast.

Oh, I'm ranting, sorry. Nothing to see here, move along.

[dwdallam]

Yeah, I used to be a hard-core PC guy too.  Then came Vista...  I grudgingly made the switch and frankly, now see the Mac light .  Bottom line is PC apps run faster in a Fusion/XP window on my Mac than they ever did on my Dual Xeon 3.6 workstation.  Plus, the case is the best thing going .

I'm not hard core either way, but if you can show me how to get better performance for the he dollar, I'll more to MAC tomorrow. I'm wondering where you got 3.6Ghz Xeons? Intel doesn't have them on their site. Also, Xeons are made for server and database performance. I don't know if that matters, but it is a fact.

Case? dude. Check this out:
http://www.antec.com/uk/productDetails.php?ProdID=15125#
[attachment=10083:0_1425_s...93930_00.jpg]

Will blow your mind.

You guys do realize you can set up Vista or XP pretty much anyway you want using registry includes and other tricks, right? For instance, I use this file browser, not Windows: http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm

This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.

[Jack Flesher]

I'm wondering where you got 3.6Ghz Xeons? Intel doesn't have them on their site. Also, Xeons are made for server and database performance. I don't know if that matters, but it is a fact.

It was a big Dell "workstation" and about 3 years ago.  It was 2 single-core Xeons, may have been 3.4's but I thought they were 3.6's -- I really don't remember. Anyway, it was the highest horsepower PC Dell sold at the time. And it was fast for the time. Obviously it would be ancient technology by today's standards  

My kids would like that case.  Looks like I'd have a hard time stuffing 6 drives in it though.  And of course then there's the dust issue after a few months.

[jjj]

You guys do realize you can set up Vista or XP pretty much anyway you want using registry includes and other tricks, right? For instance, I use this file browser, not Windows: http://zabkat.com/x2lite.htm

In Windows I use Directory Opus for file management. It's the PS of File management. Very, very powerful, customisable and usable. Completely the opposite of Finder, the utterly useless piece of shit that OSX uses to 'manage' files.

This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.

Well if you use OSX, it's designed to be absolutely perfect, so no customisation is needed!!    Yeah right, like any design, no matter how good will not fit everyone's needs. Customisable tools are always superior. And OSX loses out to Windows a lot in this area


DOpus info - some info re the best file manager. It's expensive compared to all others including the one you linked to, but I'd pay twice as much, as it saves me so much time and effort. I just spent 2+ days doing file managing stuff on the Mac, that would take me 25 mins in Dopus. Not got DOpus installed on the Mac/Parallels Windows yet, as OSX is is a fresh install. Again!
The only 'drawback' to DOpus is that it is sooooooo customisable, it'll take a little while to get your head around all that it does, but handily you can simply save the presets/tweaks and export them to other copies on laptop etc no problem. Something CS4 suite/Lightroom could really do with.
The main thing that shows how good a programme it is, is that when you think 'wouldn't it be cool if it could do blah blah....', usually it already does just that and even better than you thought.

I use Path Finder and Default Folder X on the Mac to make file management a little less painfull, but Finder compared to DOpus is like MS Paint Vs Photoshop CS4 Extended!

[button]

This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.

Hey DWDallam (and anyone else who can help),

Would you mind posting how you have your (presumably Vista 64) OS customized?  I'm getting ready to install Vista 64 home premium for the sole purpose of running CS4 in 64 bit mode.  I want to know how to strip it down as much as safely possible in order to make my machine sing.  I have a pretty decent rig- 8 gig RAM, 512 meg GeForce 7950 gt video card, and two Raptors on RAID 0 as scratch.  How do I take the bloat out of this MS bloatware?  If you would, also please post your optimized PS settings.

Thanks,
John

[jani]

This mod process is one of the things that makes Windows desirable. It's highly customizable. Of course I'd love to see a GUI that has Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux for sure.

 

Customization in Windows is cumbersome at best, so I understand that you're coming from a Windows-only world, blessedly free of having experienced other systems.

How do I (easily) change the window functionality in Windows from click-to-focus to sloppy-focus (focus follows the mouse, but if the mouse isn't over a window, the last activated window stays active)?

How do I (easily) create a 3x5 set of virtual desktops that I can navigate between with simple keyboard shortcuts? Can I also see which virtual desktop I'm currently in, and its location in relation to the others?

How do I (easily) set up keyboard and mouse shortcuts for manipulating window sizes, positions, and minimization?

How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

How do I (easily) replace mouse movement with keyboard shortcuts, while allowing different movement increments depending on the shortcut?

How do I (easily) keep the same GUI configuration across many separate computers?

The answer to the above questions, in Windows XP at least, is: you can't do it without installing third-party software or severe modifications, and even so, it won't work smoothly (distributing user settings to different computers is comparatively painful; in Unix/Linux, you'd mount your home directory on a server and your settings would load from file, locally on the computer you're logged in at).

These features were readily available in the early nineties if you were using something other than Windows, namely a Unix with the X Window System, and all you had to do was to edit a text file and reload your GUI (which you could do without rebooting, and to a certain extent without restarting applications...).

As a configurable GUI, especially for power users, Windows has a LONG way to go. You won't find "Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux" because those systems were more configurable and functionable fifteen years ago.

Today, you probably won't notice quite as much of a difference, since in the interest of commercialization, several desktop GUIs for Unix/Linux have aimed for similarity with Windows, and that process has been ongoing for the better part of a decade (since "FVWM 95", I suppose).

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

What makes Windows desirable is a huge base of hardware and software vendors who make tremendous efforts at Making Stuff Just Work under Windows. It's the platform that "everyone" uses. It makes the OS a very desirable platform for the sake of compatibility, either with other users' expectations, with their software, or simply in the availability of proprietary hardware drivers.

The Mac doesn't come close here; you can't just replace your graphics card and expect it to work, you have to get one with specific Mac support.

Linux/Unix doesn't come close here; the commercial everyday software is released usually for Windows, sometimes for Mac, and rarely for Linux/Unix.

(In terms of server software and hardware, the situation is different.)

In either case, if the third party vendor drops their support, you're thoroughly screwed, q.v. us poor XP Pro x64 users, those who want to run certain software on MacOS 9 or 10.3 (I wouldn't know why), or more than five year old Linux distributions.

[jjj]

How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

Alt+Tab does it for me, Cmd+ Tab on the Mac. You could try learning the shortcuts that are already there!  
As for virtual desktops, never seen the point myself, due to the very handy Alt+Tab shortcut. I leave everything full sized and tab between programmes. Far less clunky than virtual desktops.
Some 'solutions' you come across, particularly in OSX or you mention above are simply overkill.

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

Seeing as most people are using Windows or Apple software, the ability to tweak MS stuff [as in the post above] is usually in comparison to Apple's OS.
Other OSs are simply of no interest/use to most people here. Why? They do not run the software we need/use. So the fact that alternative OSs like the ones you mention, are slightly more customisable, is completely moot.

It's like going on about how much better say an LPG car is compared to petrol or diesel cars, but ignoring the fact that you may not be able to actually buy the 'better' fuel. There is only one LPG place in the large city I live in and it's completely out of the way for most city dwellers and only 4 in entire county. But that's still better than Linux is for professional photographers, which has no pro level photo editing packages. And no, The Gimp is still not up to the task.

[djgarcia]

Hey DWDallam (and anyone else who can help),

Would you mind posting how you have your (presumably Vista 64) OS customized?  I'm getting ready to install Vista 64 home premium for the sole purpose of running CS4 in 64 bit mode.  I want to know how to strip it down as much as safely possible in order to make my machine sing.  I have a pretty decent rig- 8 gig RAM, 512 meg GeForce 7950 gt video card, and two Raptors on RAID 0 as scratch.  How do I take the bloat out of this MS bloatware?  If you would, also please post your optimized PS settings.

Thanks,
John

If you're going to strip Vista 64 down to the bare bones, why not get XPx64? That's what I'm using, 12GB w/2 quad-core Xeons. I'm running LR 2.1 and PS CS4 in 64-bit mode, no problems. Use MSCONFIG.EXE to turn off start-ups and services you don't need.

[dwdallam]

It was a big Dell "workstation" and about 3 years ago.  It was 2 single-core Xeons, may have been 3.4's but I thought they were 3.6's -- I really don't remember. Anyway, it was the highest horsepower PC Dell sold at the time. And it was fast for the time. Obviously it would be ancient technology by today's standards  

My kids would like that case.  Looks like I'd have a hard time stuffing 6 drives in it though.  And of course then there's the dust issue after a few months.

It only holds two drives, but it has "hangers" where you can hang 4 more drives on the outside right where the intake fans are. The MB "tray" slides out and clips in, no screws. Everything clips in, including DVDs, cards, everything. So you could change a hard drive while you sit at your workstation, really. It's like a Leggo PC case. I'd buy that for my next build, but the downside is that it has, obviously, no sound dampening qualities

[Huib]

@djgarcia Vista64 takes much better efforts of memory then XP64.
Vista64 runs very stable. Why stay with a old OS?

[dwdallam]

Hey DWDallam (and anyone else who can help),

Would you mind posting how you have your (presumably Vista 64) OS customized?  I'm getting ready to install Vista 64 home premium for the sole purpose of running CS4 in 64 bit mode.  I want to know how to strip it down as much as safely possible in order to make my machine sing.  I have a pretty decent rig- 8 gig RAM, 512 meg GeForce 7950 gt video card, and two Raptors on RAID 0 as scratch.  How do I take the bloat out of this MS bloatware?  If you would, also please post your optimized PS settings.

Thanks,
John

Hey John,

There isn't really anything to do. Vista isn't anymore bloat than any Windows OS has been. Just load and blow. That said, here are a few tips that I do, but no necessary.

1. Use "Windows Classic" desktop. Aero is just , well, lol--bloat. It has absolutely no functions that you will miss, unless you like staring at your screen stoned.

2. Create a partition on another physical hard drive, and make it about 3GBs. Change the page file--Windows scratch disk--to that partition and set the max and min size to 2.9GBs. Make sure that there are no other page files. Setting the max and min to the same size prevents Windows from shrinking and expanding the page file, which slows down your system.  If you have enough RAM, Windows won't even use the page file.

3. Partition the active drive, where you install Vista, making a partition on the "C" drive at about 35GB. Install Vista on that partition--and nothing else. Create a "D" partition and load ALL programs in that partition. Initially allow the full disk space for the D partition, excluding the partition C that you made first. That way you only have necessary files on the C drive, which means only Vista and it's drivers, etc. and programs files on the other partition. This also keeps the C and D drive form fragmenting, or it will takes a long, long time to fragment. In ordet o prevent fragmentation, I also use another drive for all programs's "temp files" but that's getting anal. I just want as little writing on the C and D drives as possible. It also takes up less space on those drives, and you have all of your temp files--except Vista's--in one location. So you know what each program is doing. I create a "Program_Tempfile" directory and then use subdirectories inside that to identify each program's temp files.

Another bonus of doing your system this way is that you can use Acronis True Image, which is a free download, to image just the C and D drives. If you get into any trouble, you can re-image a new hard drive, or the old one, and immediately have all your programs and OS ready to go. If you put everything on one partition, you'll need to image the entire hard drive, and that means your image could be 100s of GB and that won't be too easy to store, nor efficient.

After you get all of your programs installed on the D drive, use Windows disk management to shrink the D partition to about 3-5GB larger than all of your installed programs, such as CS4. Make subdirectories under the install directory to store them all in one place, like Windows does automatically on the C drive. After you shrink the D drive down, that action will force you to create another partition "E" for anything else you want to install or store, while making the True Image images small, probably around 15-20GB total for system and programs you use, and probably much less for you unless you have all sorts of other programs installed besides work type, like I do. You will need to save the image to a different physical drive. NOTE: before you do this, make sure your DVD drive are assigned letters far down the alphabet, such as X or Y or W, X, Y and leave Z open. (Damn I do some funkie shiznit.) I leave the Z drive open for virtual drives or the addition of another DVD. If you're a power user of sorts, you'll "get" this set up as you work with it. It's all very logical.

4. Put all of your images on yet another physical drive, and back that up traditionally anyway you want too an external drive that you SHUT OFF after each back up and UNPLUG. That will prevent you from getting fried from an electrical problem. It happened to my brother with his rig OFF. Fried everything in it--everything, drives, MB, Vid card, RAM, etc.

You probably already have that end of it figured out.

Example of my system:
Physical Drive #1: Fastest Drive you have. Mine is a Western Digital Enterprise RE2 drive.
Partition C: 33GB for the OS only.
Partition D: Program installs only.
Partition E: any other installs you want or storage, other than your images that you want to open as fast as possible.
Physical Drive #2: All of your working images. This is the drive you want the Windows page file on, or any other drive besides your primary #1 drive.


Hmmm. That's about it. I can't really think of anything else except buy that new Intel X25 SSD drive, two of them and a dedicated controller.

[dwdallam]

Customization in Windows is cumbersome at best, so I understand that you're coming from a Windows-only world, blessedly free of having experienced other systems.

How do I (easily) change the window functionality in Windows from click-to-focus to sloppy-focus (focus follows the mouse, but if the mouse isn't over a window, the last activated window stays active)?

How do I (easily) create a 3x5 set of virtual desktops that I can navigate between with simple keyboard shortcuts? Can I also see which virtual desktop I'm currently in, and its location in relation to the others?

How do I (easily) set up keyboard and mouse shortcuts for manipulating window sizes, positions, and minimization?

How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

How do I (easily) replace mouse movement with keyboard shortcuts, while allowing different movement increments depending on the shortcut?

How do I (easily) keep the same GUI configuration across many separate computers?

The answer to the above questions, in Windows XP at least, is: you can't do it without installing third-party software or severe modifications, and even so, it won't work smoothly (distributing user settings to different computers is comparatively painful; in Unix/Linux, you'd mount your home directory on a server and your settings would load from file, locally on the computer you're logged in at).

These features were readily available in the early nineties if you were using something other than Windows, namely a Unix with the X Window System, and all you had to do was to edit a text file and reload your GUI (which you could do without rebooting, and to a certain extent without restarting applications...).

As a configurable GUI, especially for power users, Windows has a LONG way to go. You won't find "Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux" because those systems were more configurable and functionable fifteen years ago.

Today, you probably won't notice quite as much of a difference, since in the interest of commercialization, several desktop GUIs for Unix/Linux have aimed for similarity with Windows, and that process has been ongoing for the better part of a decade (since "FVWM 95", I suppose).

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

What makes Windows desirable is a huge base of hardware and software vendors who make tremendous efforts at Making Stuff Just Work under Windows. It's the platform that "everyone" uses. It makes the OS a very desirable platform for the sake of compatibility, either with other users' expectations, with their software, or simply in the availability of proprietary hardware drivers.

The Mac doesn't come close here; you can't just replace your graphics card and expect it to work, you have to get one with specific Mac support.

Linux/Unix doesn't come close here; the commercial everyday software is released usually for Windows, sometimes for Mac, and rarely for Linux/Unix.

(In terms of server software and hardware, the situation is different.)

In either case, if the third party vendor drops their support, you're thoroughly screwed, q.v. us poor XP Pro x64 users, those who want to run certain software on MacOS 9 or 10.3 (I wouldn't know why), or more than five year old Linux distributions.

How do I (easily) change the window functionality in Windows from click-to-focus to sloppy-focus (focus follows the mouse, but if the mouse isn't over a window, the last activated window stays active)?

Vista does that now.

How do I (easily) create a 3x5 set of virtual desktops that I can navigate between with simple keyboard shortcuts? Can I also see which virtual desktop I'm currently in, and its location in relation to the others?


Why would you want virtual desktops? You can do anything you want in Vista live without virtual anything. You can run as many programs in teh background as you have RAM, very smoothly and shrink them down to the task bar where they go un-noticed unless you want them.


How do I (easily) set up keyboard and mouse shortcuts for manipulating window sizes, positions, and minimization?

Windows sizes, positions, and mouse shortcuts? Why not just drag them to the size and location you want them? If you must use keys to navigate and resize/position, I think XP and Vista have a key recorder function. If not there are about 200 zillion macro programs available for any Windows platform, which install in like 3 seconds and are so easy to use you don't even need instructions. This is one area where Windows has it over other OS's--external third party customizations by the zillions.


How do I (easily) demote a window to the background without minimizing it?

Click on the desktop.


How do I (easily) replace mouse movement with keyboard shortcuts, while allowing different movement increments depending on the shortcut?


This is something no iteration of Windows can do, and I have no idea why anyone would want to move the mouse cursor with key strokes--lol. However, again, you can use a macro program like EZ macro, which is free, to move the mouse cursor with assigned key strokes.


How do I (easily) keep the same GUI configuration across many separate computers?


You cannot do that from client to client. You can however deploy the same GUI from a server and have it reset every time the server is rebooted. IT personnel have been doing that since Windows 3.11 for work groups.

As a configurable GUI, especially for power users, Windows has a LONG way to go. You won't find "Windows customization possibility and function running over Unix/Linux" because those systems were more configurable and functionable fifteen years ago.

Again, there are any amount of programs you can install and use quite seamlessly to customize the GUI anyway you want it. However, once you get use to the Windows GUI it is quite efficient and intuitive. You have to use the taskbar though. Vista allow you to CNTR click and cycle through each opened window on the desk top.

No, the "mod process" isn't what makes Windows desirable. It's possibly what makes Windows bearable, if you can be bothered with setting it up for every computer you're going to use.

Sometimes the problem is that people do not understand how to do things with Windows, which are very easy after you learn them. Deploy your settings using a server/client process. Done. Windows business Server, included with XP pro and Vista series, is soooo easy, once you know how to start it. If you take teh timie to learn the Windows server/client system, especially in a msall business environment, you will be very pleased with its ease and simplicity.

[dwdallam]

If you're going to strip Vista 64 down to the bare bones, why not get XPx64? That's what I'm using, 12GB w/2 quad-core Xeons. I'm running LR 2.1 and PS CS4 in 64-bit mode, no problems. Use MSCONFIG.EXE to turn off start-ups and services you don't need.

Vista Enterprise on my drive is using 21GB total and that's with Restore allowing 5GBs, nothing stripped out.

Look guys, I'm not a fan of MicroBrains. But XP and Vista are very stable and strong OS's finally, and Vista is almost IMPOSSIBLE to impregnate with viruses--easy for spyware--but very hard to program a virus that will propagate through the internet to infect millions of machines, because Vista is a "virtual" machine now. All the paths to infection change every time a program is started. With Vista, they really locked things down and have a solid platform stability wise.

I would LOVE for a huge company to adopt unix/linux and make a GUI for it so that people would begin leaving MS to Open Source Kernels, like Unix/Linus runs on, and then MS would need to develop a "better" OS to draw people back in. The only reason MS has so much share now is that all of their programs work in concert with each other across all their platforms. Their word processor can talk to their servers! Corporations like that.

Open Office is fast becoming the choice of college student who don't want to fork out the money for MS Word, so you know what happend? MS lowered the price to something like 99 bucks for students only. Anyway . . . . if you want a workstation for work purposes, Vista works and is very, very stable.

[dwdallam]

I knew it was too good to be true. No Contact Sheet, Image Package, web gqallery, etc or any other tool automate that CS3 and versions before had--GONE. They are now "optional." I'm wondering if Adobe has decided that contact sheets and image packager are no longer really necessary today, or that it would be better to install them after you get PS installed, for some reason? What reason is that? Why would Adobe take such a key option like CONTACT SHEET out of Photoshop? The explanation for this one ought to be a good one.

"The ability to create contact sheets and picture packages as a PDF presentation is now available in Adobe Bridge CS4 Output Module. We highly recommend creating your contact sheets and picture packages this way."

So uh now we have to open Bridge to create a Contact sheet?  Sheesh. New Adobe Work flow. I can't even get the "Output" function to work. Click on it and nothing happens.

Open Lightroom, import to Photoshop, open Bridge for options not now available in Photoshop. Close bridge, go back to Photoshop, forget one image, open bridge again, use plugin, close Bridge. Yeah that's a better work flow. Now you get to use all three programs, even if you don't want too!

Well at least it isn't crashing like CS3 did and not working at all, like Acrobat 8 (print module). I guess that's something.

I guess you can download them here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4048

and maybe here:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/pro...latform=Windows

But it still states that they have been removed for CS4, and "If you still need them. . . ." Uh, CONTACT SHEET/Image packager---DUH?

Baffling.

[jani]

Alt+Tab does it for me, Cmd+ Tab on the Mac. You could try learning the shortcuts that are already there!  

Indeed, and so should you.

Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab do NOT do what I described.

I wrote "demote to the background", not "switch to another application", which is what Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab do.

dwdallam's suggestion of "clicking the desktop" doesn't do that, either.

As for virtual desktops, never seen the point myself, due to the very handy Alt+Tab shortcut. I leave everything full sized and tab between programmes. Far less clunky than virtual desktops.

Horses for courses, I find Alt+Tab to be extremely clunky in Windows XP, though Vista's copied functionality from MacOS X where you can use the mouse to select which application is an improvement.

Seeing as most people are using Windows or Apple software, the ability to tweak MS stuff [as in the post above] is usually in comparison to Apple's OS.
Other OSs are simply of no interest/use to most people here. Why? They do not run the software we need/use. So the fact that alternative OSs like the ones you mention, are slightly more customisable, is completely moot.

I believe you should read my post to the end, and you'd see that I'm fully aware of this position.

It's like going on about how much better say an LPG car is compared to petrol or diesel cars, but ignoring the fact that you may not be able to actually buy the 'better' fuel. There is only one LPG place in the large city I live in and it's completely out of the way for most city dwellers and only 4 in entire county. But that's still better than Linux is for professional photographers, which has no pro level photo editing packages. And no, The Gimp is still not up to the task.

No, the GIMP sucks bigtime.

However, there are professional photographers who are happy to use Bibble, or other photo editing packages for e.g. Linux.

Whether you consider Bibble and these other packages to be "pro level" or not is of course a different matter.

But I haven't claimed that this was one of the strengths of Linux, I was responding to an outrageous claim regarding Windows' configurability.

[jani]

Vista does that now.

(...)

Why would you want virtual desktops? You can do anything you want in Vista live without virtual anything.

(...)

If you must use keys to navigate and resize/position, I think XP and Vista have a key recorder function. If not there are about 200 zillion macro programs available for any Windows platform, which install in like 3 seconds and are so easy to use you don't even need instructions.

You've been able to do lots of stuff in Windows through third party applications since the very early days of Windows, that's nothing new, but it's not configurability, it means that Windows is extentable.

There's nothing unique about Windows in what you say, and you surely must see that I'm describing things that are easily configurable in another GUI - and has been for 15 years! - but which require third-party extensions, obscure incantations, or are simply impossible (you're not even sure what "demote to the background" means, you think I'm talking about activating the desktop!).

Again, there are any amount of programs you can install and use quite seamlessly to customize the GUI anyway you want it. However, once you get use to the Windows GUI it is quite efficient and intuitive.

I've been using almost every ordinary Windows version since version 1.0. I've never found it efficient and intuitive.

(Exceptions: Windows ME, Windows NT 3.1, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, plus various specialist releases for mobile/embedded devices and tablets.)

I have, however, found it usable, even if there are many obstacles against efficient use.

Sometimes the problem is that people do not understand how to do things with Windows, which are very easy after you learn them. Deploy your settings using a server/client process. Done. Windows business Server, included with XP pro and Vista series, is soooo easy, once you know how to start it. If you take teh timie to learn the Windows server/client system, especially in a msall business environment, you will be very pleased with its ease and simplicity.

Somehow, I think you underestimate the possibility that computer industry professionals with a few years' experience might not have been there before you.

I agree that there are things about recent Windows versions which indeed are easy to do and simple, but that's in comparison with earlier Windows versions.

I even know of quite a few things that Windows does better than my OS of choice, even for parts of my work.

But ease of configurability of the GUI is, unfortunately, not where Windows excels. I've already written where I think that is.

I think it's a completely honest mistake to make, to think that the most used OS platform in the world is also the "best" at everything it does, and that it does everything it does well. I don't think that's true for any OS platform. Experience certainly shows otherwise.

As a photographer, I'm torn between Windows and MacOS X, which both have the necessary application base to be the most useful.

Time and again, I end up defending my use of Windows with Photoshop and other software that I think I need.

That doesn't mean I have to think Windows is the best thing since sliced bread.

[jani]

Look guys, I'm not a fan of MicroBrains. But XP and Vista are very stable and strong OS's finally, and Vista is almost IMPOSSIBLE to impregnate with viruses--easy for spyware--but very hard to program a virus that will propagate through the internet to infect millions of machines, because Vista is a "virtual" machine now. All the paths to infection change every time a program is started. With Vista, they really locked things down and have a solid platform stability wise.

Actually, that's not quite true, but yes, Vista is more secure than XP Pro.

Also, spyware is just as bad as viruses, arguably even worse, since they collect personal information (like your usernames and passwords for websites, internet banking, etc.), and use your own mail software to send spam containing viruses and new spyware.

Vista isn't a "virtual" machine. The effect you describe is because Vista randomizes the way memory is allocated, so that simple buffer overflow attacks don't work as readily as they used to.

Still, Vista has had and probably will be discovered to have buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities in central code.

I would LOVE for a huge company to adopt unix/linux and make a GUI for it so that people would begin leaving MS to Open Source Kernels, like Unix/Linus runs on, and then MS would need to develop a "better" OS to draw people back in. The only reason MS has so much share now is that all of their programs work in concert with each other across all their platforms. Their word processor can talk to their servers! Corporations like that.

There have been several attempts at this, but none of them have been concerted enough to achieve anything like unity.

Perhaps the recent netbook surge will make a slow change.

MacOS X has also gained significant popularity, enough that people don't look at you like you're a crazy designer dude for using a MacBook or iMac.

Open Office is fast becoming the choice of college student who don't want to fork out the money for MS Word, so you know what happend? MS lowered the price to something like 99 bucks for students only. Anyway . . . . if you want a workstation for work purposes, Vista works and is very, very stable.

The current Vista (SP1) appears to be a clear notch above Windows XP, at least.

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If you're going to strip Vista 64 down to the bare bones, why not get XPx64? That's what I'm using, 12GB w/2 quad-core Xeons. I'm running LR 2.1 and PS CS4 in 64-bit mode, no problems. Use MSCONFIG.EXE to turn off start-ups and services you don't need.

I've thought quite a lot about that, but given that Adobe officially doesn't support xp 64, I'm concerned that future PS updates/fixes might create lack of compatibility.  I haven't A-B'd xp 64 against Vista, and I've read mixed reviews for each OS.  It seems that nvidia drivers caused around 30% of vista crashes in 2007:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-...-crashes-in-20/

Anecdotal reports indidcate that these crashes happened under heavy video intensive loads, such as gaming (I don't know about PS).  Another anecdotal report (I can't find the link) suggests that nvidia's newest drivers as of late October '08 haven't done much to improve the older cards' performance with vista.  As I have an older GeForce card (7950 GT), I may be in for a bit of trouble.  Is anyone here using older nvidia cards with vista?  If so, please post experiences.

John

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3. Partition the active drive, where you install Vista, making a partition on the "C" drive at about 35GB. Install Vista on that partition--and nothing else. Create a "D" partition and load ALL programs in that partition.

Thanks, man.  One thing I've read, however, is that a PS install anywhere other than the "C" drive may cause problems.  Apparently, your setup is working.  Is there anything special you had to do to make PS run from "D"?

John

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I knew it was too good to be true. No Contact Sheet, Image Package, web gqallery, etc or any other tool automate that CS3 and versions before had--GONE. They are now "optional." I'm wondering if Adobe has decided that contact sheets and image packager are no longer really necessary today, or that it would be better to install them after you get PS installed, for some reason? What reason is that? Why would Adobe take such a key option like CONTACT SHEET out of Photoshop? The explanation for this one ought to be a good one.

"The ability to create contact sheets and picture packages as a PDF presentation is now available in Adobe Bridge CS4 Output Module. We highly recommend creating your contact sheets and picture packages this way."

So uh now we have to open Bridge to create a Contact sheet?  Sheesh. New Adobe Work flow. I can't even get the "Output" function to work. Click on it and nothing happens.

Open Lightroom, import to Photoshop, open Bridge for options not now available in Photoshop. Close bridge, go back to Photoshop, forget one image, open bridge again, use plugin, close Bridge. Yeah that's a better work flow. Now you get to use all three programs, even if you don't want too!

Actually doing those jobs now removed from PS is better done in Bridge, hence why they were placed there. You used to be able open all your images into say the web package into PS from Bridge anyway, so why bother going into PS at all if Bridge can do the same thing? This way you can work in PS whilst Bridge makes a gallery. Though I have a  customised version of previous PS web galleries that I used to use and now doesn't work in Bridge, So I have to do that in PS still, if I want to use it, but it's easy enough to do so.
 Having said that I hated the crappy and clunky interface and lack of any real feedback when tweaking the web galleries. You can preview any change you make now which is a vast improvement. Though a lack of savable presets is not so good.
Bridge is a very useful and powerful programme, much better in many ways than LR is. I've used LR a lot less since installing Bridge CS4.  Not opening it is like removing part of PS's functionality, I have Bridge open all the time and see no need to close it.
Bridge actually used to be an integrated part of PS, it was made a separate programme so other software could utilise it as well.
Sounds like you need to learn how to use Bridge, rather than Bridge itself being bad.