Christmas is a dangerous time for me, usually no one knows what to buy me. I’m happy with this as I always get cash, either that or I choose my own presents. This Christmas is no exception, so whilst I’m awaiting the pre Christmas cash to arrive I’m pondering a Netbook.
I’ve had a play with the Acer Aspire in John Lewis. To be honest it’s not a MacBook running OS X, however the man that is known as Steve Jobs decrees that the glorious Apple will not enter that market (afterall, the fucking fanboys will tell you the MBA or the iPhone is ‘the’ mobile internet platform – twats).
So I go into this knowing it’s not going to be as easy (or indeed as easy as it would equally be on Windows XP).
A number of things are putting my off at present. I know that one is easy to resolve (how to get a 3 mobile USB modem working – should be a piece of piss), others are applications I cannot run on Linux.
2 big showstoppers for me. Photoshop and Lightroom. For a netbook I probably do not need the sophisticated library that Lightroom provides. However it’s raw conversion and editing tools/crop tools are required. As for Photoshop, it’s batch processing and further image manipulation are required.
Now I know with Linux others write similar applications. So lets look at the two rivals.
Ufraw: Seems on the face of it a fairly complex raw processer. It can’t (or i’ve not found how) process in bulk. It will process in turn each image If I open say 20-30 at a time. Still it’s only a raw processor.
Gimp: Advocates of Gimp will tell you it’s as good as Photoshop. Sorry it is not. Whilst it’s a good editor it is not CS3.
So game over? Some would say try LightZone. I’m sure it’s great, but at £145.21 for the Linux version it’s not that great. Especially I have invested in LightRoom already. The more I think about it the more I can’t see myself getting a Linux netbook. If it was just for web use then I’d have one now. But the main requirement for me is a small laptop for photography work. Whilst it has options for photography it isn’t an easy solution.
Looks like this Christmas I really do not know what I want.