Jaxon’s Review

Adobe Photoshop is perhaps one of the most widely used graphic manipulator and photo editor around. But it’s expensive for most users.

If that being the case, not to worry as there are substitutes to the programme and one of the more robust ones is GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Programme.

Best of all it can be downloaded for free on the Internet.

The image on the left is a sample of what GIMP can do. I didn’t draw the picture. My 14-year-old son did and he didn’t know much about computer graphic, and image manipulation. Yet. He was just doing trial and error.

Imagine what the programme can do if it is used by people experienced on both — graphic art and image manipulation. If you want to give it a try, you can download GIMP for Windows here. More information can be obtained from this GIMP Wikipedia page and GIMP website.

I wonder if there are other free photo editing/graphic software out there. If there are, I haven’t come across it.

It’s Yahoo! vs Google, Microsoft vs Apple, IE vs Firefox, Intel vs AMD. As a technology user, I’m all for the competition.

On to the Intel vs AMD face-off, AMD ships its triple-core Phenom destop processors this week, signaling what is perhaps a new round of chips war between AMD and Intel.

AMD’s Phenom X3 8000 series which are expected to perform significantly better than dual-core chips in gaming and HD video playback at a lower price point than powerful quad-core chips, the flagship product by Intel.

Antone Gonsalves of InformationWeek has the news:

Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday shipped triple-core desktop processors that the company hopes will slip into a price-performance slot between dual-core and quad-core processors available from rival Intel.

While not as powerful as quad-core processors, the AMD Phenom X3 8000 series is expected to provide a significant improvement over dual-core chips in gaming and playback of high-definition content in mainstream PCs.

As a result, the chips may be good enough for enthusiasts who don’t want to pay more for a quad-core product.

AMD is initially shipping the X3 8400 and X3 8600 processors to computer makers, AMD spokesman Jake Whitman said. The chips will be available to individuals through retailers in late April.

Pricing will be around $150 for the 2.1-GHz 8400 and about $175 for the 2.3-GHz 8600. AMD’s lowest priced quad-core Phenom processors, the 2.2-GHz 9500 and 9550, sell for $209. Intel’s 2.4-GHz Core 2 Q6600 quad-core sells for about $250 retail.

“(The X3) fits really nicely between dual- and quad-core,” Whitman said.

I’m extremely exited by this development as I had just got the approval to buy a Desktop PC from the Home Affairs Minister (my wife).

I’m currently blogging on a 3-year-old HP notebook embedded AMD Turion64. I can’t wait for the chips war to take on laptop computers.