The Subtlety of Grandness

Click to see Lightroom at 3,840 x 1,200 resolution.

I love Aperture, but there are simply too many limitations in it right now. Thus, I bit the bullet on a $100 Lightroom 2 upgrade today. I originally purchased both Aperture and Lightroom a few years ago (Ugh, that’s $600 of photo software right there), but I ended up sticking with Aperture because Lightroom 1.0 wasn’t as feature-rich. Flash forward to 2009 and now Aperture is the one with all the problems. First, it’s Mac-only, which is understandable since it’s an Apple product, but the problem is that my 2006 MacBook Pro is getting pokey and I really can’t afford another right now, whereas I have a top-of-the-line Dell PC that can crunch RAW images without breaking a sweat. Hence, I needed a PC solution, and Lightroom is both PC/Mac. My next problem is that Apple never added support for the Fovean sensor on the Sigma DP-1. Adobe added Fovean support in Lightroom 2.0, which means that my DP-1 has a new lease on life (I dislike Sigma’s proprietary software solution.) My third problem is that Aperture likes to work with one big library. Yes, you can have swap libraries in and out, but it’s not an ideal solution, and my photo collection was eating about 80-percent of hard drive space on my laptop. Given that I’ve got 600+ GB free on my PC, it made sense to move it to the platform with plenty of room to grow. Plus, Lightroom does a better job of creating catalogs that will help me disperse my photo collection over various drives should the need arise.

I’m really impressed with Lightroom 2 so far. It’s certainly more fleshed out than its predecessor, and I like that it’s a 64-bit app that’s taking full advantage of my Core i7 system and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. The speed is really amazing with 6GB of RAM, and I was able to multitask while it crunched smoothly in the background. Multi-monitor support is also a welcome addition that was missing in Lightroom 1.0. Being able to edit an image on one 24-inch LCD while having a full-screen preview on another 24-inch LCD is a lot nicer than having to work with the MBP’s single 15.4-inch screen. You can see for yourself by clicking on the image above and blowing it up to full size. Isn’t that pretty? The one thing Lightroom desperately needs is a magnifying loupe like the one in Aperture; it was my favorite bit of Aperture and it’s sorely missing in Lightroom.

Thanks to a fan I’ve got a fully legit version of Windows 7 Professional on my Dell Studio XPS desktop, and it’s awesome. I’m running the 64-bit version, and this is the retail code, only about 10 days before release. I toyed around with the Release Candidate a couple of months ago, so I had a taste of the goodness, but the retail version is even better. This is seriously Microsoft’s best OS release, period. Windows 95 had the hype, Windows XP was a huge step forward, but Windows 7 is near perfection. It’s fast, rock solid, secure, and even pretty.

What do I like thus far? Well, everything.

1. The look and feel is polished and refined, and I love the new changes to the taskbar and the desktop. It’s a huge improvement over Vista, where the glorified Flip 3D feature was a joke, barely better than regular alt-tab. Witness how brilliantly Expose works in Mac OS X; it lets you see all windows at once! Flip 3D just highlighted a single window at a time; you still had to alt-tab through them to find the one you want. Idiotic. Flip 3D is gone in Windows 7, and instead there’s much more useful functionality that lets you locate the application you want and navigate the clutter of windows on your desktop, but at the same time it doesn’t feel like a Mac rip-off.

2. I seriously wanted to rip the throat out of whoever designed Vista’s UAC system. I’m a power user, but every time I want to do something to my system I have to hit the “Mother May I?” button as many as three times. “Oh,” the UAC defenders proclain, “Linux and Mac OS X require you to give permission to the system, too!” But the key thing there is that they only ask you once! If I want to do something pretty docile to the control panel settings in Vista, I’ve got to acknowledge that I’m doing something that could change my settings, and then when I actually change my settings UAC kicks in and requires me to sign off again. Come on, Microsoft, I’ve already signed off. Why do you think people dive into the control panel in the first place? In Windows 7, UAC is still there, but it’s been toned down to be much more common sense.

3. Why does Vista require 5 to 10 minutes to shut down at times? It’s mind boggling. Windows 7 shuts down when you tell it to.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Now, it sounds like I’m praising 7 mainly by damning Vista, but that’s just part of the story. Vista was annoying, but it wasn’t as terrible as Apple would have you believe. Windows 7 isn’t just Vista-done-better, though. It displays a refinement and sense of craftsmanship that I rarely attribute to Microsoft. Windows 7 is Microsoft, finally, firing on all cylinders.

Wow, I started playing around with the latest build of Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope and I finally turned the corner on it. Before, I had trouble doing anything. Now, the light bulb went off and I started using the guided tours, and that’s how I discovered how this thing is the next best thing to being in a planetarium. It’s like having all of the world’s astronomical data at your fingertips. I will admit, it’s not quite as cool as the 3D planetarium program that’s over at the California Academy of Sciences (I’d kill to have a desktop version of that; it’s just freaking unbelievable), but considering it’s free the Worldwide Telescope is a remarkable tool. My only real knit so far about WWT is that it has a 3D model of the solar system, but it fudges on the distances; if the Moon is three days travel from the Earth, then the Sun is about a month away based on this scale. I’d love to see a 3D model that has realistic scale.

If you’re fascinated by astronomy and astrophysics like I am, this is definitely something to check out.

Ugh, I spent this morning toying around with Ubuntu 9.04 and if this is “Linux for the people” or what have you, then they assume the “people” all have CS degrees. What a nightmare. Base install went well, but then have fun installing drivers! To install the Radeon drivers you have to do some voodoo in the terminal window, and as someone with experience with command line interfaces (oh, those heady days of DOS and UNIX back in high school and college) I finally figured it out, but I can’t imagine what Joe Sixpack is going to do in that situation. For example:

$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri

Getting to install something as simple as Adobe Flash Player was a headache until I gave the system access to the “multiverse” repository online and then having fun with voodoo in the terminal window again. I finally gave up trying to get my audio drivers installed; again, facing a nightmare with the terminal window, as the download package from the company won’t install “out of the box.”

Then, as soon as I tried going multi-monitor, the desktop properties freaked out. And that’s when I said screw it and wiped the damn partition. I’m back to Vista, and I’ve got a whole new appreciation for Microsoft. Sure, OS X is pretty solid, but Apple’s engineers get to worked in a closed and controlled environment; Microsoft engineers have to make something that will run in the PC ecosystem where you have roughly a bajillion different combinations of hardware in the form of different CPUs, motherboards, memory, hard drives, optical drives, Ethernet ports, video cards, sound cards, etc. And the damn thing just works, somehow.

I was using Windows 7 RC for the past month, and unfortunately the trick that I found on the Internet to re-arm it after the 30-day evaluation period doesn’t work, at least not for the release candidate. So I’m back to Vista for the next month or two, depending on when I bite the bullet on Windows 7. Vista’s not as bad as Apple and others make it out to be, but it’s nowhere near as good as 7. The sheer fact that I’ve had to sit and wait 10 minutes for Vista to shut down in order to reboot and install updates makes me remember why 7 rocks so much. It’s just so much better than Vista in every area.

My Dell Studio XPS and dual Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP LCDs. Missing is my MacBook Pro.

I’m a bit torn about my Dell. I love my Core i7 Studio XPS. Insanely powerful rig for a great price, a modest form factor, and whisper silent. And I love my dual Dell Ultrasharp 2408WFP LCDs; they’re pretty much the best LCDs you can buy. Sure, you can find 24-inch LCDs in big box stores for less than half the price (and sometimes at a third the price), but they’re nowhere as versatile or as good as the 2408WFP. We’re talking razor sharp images, coupled with a huge array of inputs, an adjustable stand, and a rotatable screen. The LCDs you find in your average Best Buy use the inferior TN display technology, have fewer inputs, and you usually can’t adjust the stand, so good luck with that neck sprain.

The only problem is that I’ve had two 2408WFPs crap out on me. One had a backlight die within days of arrival. Getting that replaced was a headache, as Dell mistakenly overnighted an older revision refurb to replace what was a brand new LCD. I had to pester Dell customer service for a week before they upgraded me to their elite customer service team. These are the guys and gals who work out of the Dell HQ in Texas and know how to expedite things. They finally made things right by overnighting me a brand new 2408WFP to replace my bad one, and I shipped the bad one and the refurbished one back.

Then, last week, that replacement 2408WFP got a vertical line through it. At first I thought it was a software issue because it disappeared after a day, but then it reappeared again. I again thought it was a software issue, but then I realized it’s showing up in the BIOS screen at boot-up and if I switch it over to my 360. So, again, on the phone with Dell, and they overnighted me another brand new 2408WFP to replace it. I will say that the warranty and the overnight replacement service is superb, but then again, you pay for it. Like I said, these LCDs are two or three times more expensive than those you find in the store.

So, knock on my glass desk. Let’s hope this 2408WFP lasts.

I’ve been playing around with Snow Leopard since Friday, and it’s nice, but it’s no Windows 7. Apple’s latest OS isn’t that big a leap over its predecessor, and the company has done things that have irritated me. Take, for instance, the installation. Previous versions of Mac OS X let you select the “erase and install” option, which is great for those of us who like to nuke the hard drive from orbit and install a totally clean OS. Snow Leopard actually takes that away, and Apple does everything to have you simply upgrade in place. In other words, you just install the new system files over the existing ones. The problem with that is that if you have issues it’s difficult to determine what’s causing them.

Now, there is a way to do a clean install of Snow Leopard, but it’s unintuitive (by Apple standards) and adds needless complexity. I did the clean install, but it required going into utilities, booting from the DVD, then hunting for the disk utility, then wiping the partition, then quitting the disk utility, then installing Snow Leopard. At no point is this listed in the documentation; I had to find this info  on the Internet. It’s like Apple doesn’t want us to clean install, but it’s certainly doable so why take away the “erase and install” option? It makes no sense.

Aside from that, Snow Leopard has a nice polish to it, and it’s a bit faster, but it simply didn’t stun me, not like Windows 7 has. I installed the RTM of Microsoft’s latest on my Core i7 Dell and was floored pretty much from the get go. Windows 7 is magnitudes better than Vista ever was; it’s (way) faster, it requires less memory and resources, it’s a lot more polished and elegant, and it’s a grand slam for Redmond. Snow Leopard, on the other hand, has a bunch of quirks that are a result of Apple keeping everything secret right up until the day of release. The company even threatened to sue a media organization for posting a review  a day early. Microsoft is a lot better at working with others than Apple, and Windows 7 has been beta tested by tens of thousands of users for more than a year. The results speak for themselves.