OT: free graphics software / Windows 7 rant

A profound insight there! (at least that rules out looking at it wrong!)

Indeed, in general XP is pretty rock solid - I go months between reboots usually. It can be a tad vulnerable to lockups in network or optical media drivers though.

A few years ago SWMBO got a copy of Office through the NHS on that scheme. Some years later an email came round to the effect that Microsoft and the NHS had had a falling out; the scheme was now discontinued, and everybody needed to delete their home copies of Office immediately. Please.

In my case it was a code that I had to enter - supplied by my company to me. That, plus my payment, enabled download and registration of 2010.

sorry - going at Googlespeed!

Am I looking just for stuff which runs all the time, memory-resident; some of which I want running but other processes (like bloody iTunesHelper and Citrix Connection Center, which insist on running 24/7 whether I'm using the actual software or not); or could it equally also down be to more apparently well-behaved programs which I've installed but don't actually do anything until I call them up?

Thanks David

Good luck trying to downloading it from m$soft because it isn't on the Win7 CD by default. I spent a couple of days and then gave up and started again by reinstalled Win7 32 bit - just to get my Nikon scanner working.

Andrew

Umm, where from ??. I tried this in June - no one seems to sell it any more. Even Vista seems to have vanished. With hindsight I wish I had bought the full retail version of XP, because you can legally move that to a new PC (but do microsoft actually check ?)

Andrew

if you change from the default loook then all the online tutorials and help will be harder to comprehend.

i'v just bought a book, Gimp2.6 for photographers, its my bedside reading. [g]

No they don't check. However some OEM software is tied to the BIOS. Hence there is no need to enter a key when you use the install disks on HP and Dells (and others).

I have moved the "retail" OEM software before.

You'd be better off with xp than 7. And you've already paid for xp.

NT

Paint.net - good stuff, less of a learning curve than the GIMP.

Also Image Composite Editor if you're into creating panoramas.

both free

Oh yes, for basic photo adjustments, Picasa is simple - does a lot more than that though.

You get a 60 day trial for office 2010 home & student 3 user. I succumbed to it after needing to read an excel file with 80,000+ rows that 2003 truncated. As the trial neared its end I was bombarded with M$oft emails to upgrade, then after it had expired I finally got a "15% off offer with a promo code for their online shop. When I tried it I got "invalid code" and their emails were from a "don't reply" address... WTF is up with M$oft? Anyway I had already bought it from Amazon at less than the M$ 15% off price. Paid £89 for it inc vat & delivery.

Yes, you need to get used to the effing ribbon, though it is claimed you can switch to 2003 menu mode.

Phil

I've used PhotoImpact for years, and very good it is too, but the help is minimal and there are precious few tutorials online. Gimp appears to be much better in this respect and there are plenty of books (albeit a bit pricey).

I think to access that licensing stream, your *company* has to have signed the appropriate deal with MS. I vaguely recall it being punted last year, when we had some MS wallahs come in and rationalise our licensing.

The thing is, that since XP, all MS operating systems "phone home" and can theoretically be disabled remotely. Since you need to activate Office online, it too can be remotely deactivated, if MS so wish.

That said, I haven't heard of anyone experiencing that.

Windows achilles heel has always been it's hardware drivers. A badly coded one could easily crash a system ... signed drivers helped, and the MS certification programme too, but you're still at the mercy of the quality of software. It's the price we pay for having such a choice of peripherals and suppliers ....

Never liked the Gimp (though that was a while ago).

You can usually pick up older versions of PSE cheap though. IIRC V8 and above are the only ones guaranteed to be compatible with Win7.

Here is a version 8 for £30

The current version 10 can be had for £50

Free, there is also Paint.net, which si pretty good and not as complicated as a lot of image editing stuff.

Or Picasa? ok mostly a cataloging program and to encourage people to use google's online service but it has reasonable basic image editing facilities IIRC