Posted 10/17/08 at 06:19:38 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Adobe began shipping its Creative Suite 4 (CS4) this week, and perhaps the most significant new feature from a typical Maximum PC reader's point of view is the support for GPU acceleration in Photoshop CS4 and other components, including Bridge CS4, After Effects CS4, Premiere Pro CS4, Acrobat 9, and Flash Player 10.

Photoshop CS4 uses OpenGL 2.0 GPU acceleration for the following features:

• Smooth Display at ALL Zoom Levels
• Animated Zoom Tool
• Animated Transitions when doing a One Stop Zoom
• Hand Toss Image
• Birdseye View
• Rotate Canvas
• Smooth Display of Non Square Pixel Images
• Pixel Grid
• Move Color Matching to the GPU
• Draw Brush Tip Editing Feedback via GPU
• 3D Acceleration
  • 3D Axis
  • 3D Lights Widget
  • Accelerated 3D Interaction via Direct To Screen

To learn more about which GPUs make the grade, and the role memory size plays in performance, join us after the break.

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graphics, photoshop, windows xp, Windows Vista, Adobe, MacOS, application, Creative Suite, CS4, OpenGL 2.0

Posted 07/15/08 at 10:39:10 AM by Mark Edward Soper

Pingdom AB, a Swedish-based website monitoring firm, recently studied the uptime of the update sites for the three most popular desktop operating systems, Microsoft, Apple, and Ubuntu. During the second quarter of 2008 (April-June), Pingdom reports (2) that Windows Update was up 100% of the time, compared to Apple Software Update's 99.9% uptime, and Ubuntu Archive's 98.64% availability. During the period, Apple's update service could not be contacted for a total of 2 hours, 34 minutes, while Ubuntu's update service could not be contacted for a total of 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes.

It sounds like a clear win for Redmond, but a closer look at how update sites work suggest the story isn't so simple. For more, join us after the jump.

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3

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windows, microsoft, apple, ubuntu, linux, linux ubuntu, Windows Update, MacOS

Posted 07/04/08 at 01:23:24 PM by Mark Edward Soper

 

Data Robotics, the creators of Drobo, "The World's First Storage Robot" and DroboShare, which adds network capabilities to Drobo, have taken Drobo to the next level. Endgadget reports that Data Robotics has opened Drobo+DroboShare up to developers through its new Drobo Developer Community (DDC) and SDK program.

To understand why the network media server category has just gotten even bigger, catch me after the break.

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network, windows, server, storage, linux, sata, Gigabit Ethernet, hardware, MacOS, consumer electronics, upnp, DNLA, media server, Drobo

Posted 06/27/08 at 04:35:09 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Maxtor, Seagate's home storage brand, is set to centralize home network storage with its new Central Axis network drive. In a world of other network attached storage devices, what makes it different than the competition?

Read on to discover how Central Axis is designed to "play nice" with today's diverse network configurations, and how much it will cost to add it to your home network.

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network, windows, maxtor, seagate, Xbox 360, Gigabit Ethernet, hardware, MacOS, Playstation 3, external hard disk, upnp, DNLA, UPnP AV

Posted 10/19/07 at 11:59:14 PM by Mark 'Marcus Soperus' Soper

Get your hands on the latest goodies for Windows (and MacOS!) from Microsoft, including Flickr support for Windows Live Photo Gallery, refreshes to DirectX, a new version of Virtual Earth 3D, and support for playing Windows Media files in MacOS QuickTime.

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2

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windows xp, Windows Vista, Windows Media, MacOS, Windows Live Photo Gallery, QuickTime, Virtual Earth 3D, Live Search

Posted 10/10/07 at 11:26:33 PM by Mark 'Marcus Soperus' Soper

Version 6, that is. Find out what's new in the surprisingly powerful photo editor for "casual" photographers, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.

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windows xp, Windows Vista, photo editor, Photoshop Elements, Abobe, Premiere Elements, MacOS