Month: May 2013

Adobe Creative Suite 6 will be the last licensed product that you will ever have to buy from Adobe, with the introduction to Adobe Creative Cloud you’ll now have to rent your Adobe Apps.

Originally Adobe’s Creative Cloud was to be used as a subscription-based alternative to traditional licensing models. The Creative Cloud was alongside the Creative Suites, offering access to the full Adobe Creative suite 6 software, including services such as Adobe’s Digital publishing Suite and Adobe Touch Apps for mobile devices.

Adobe announced at their Adobe’s MAX, The Creativity Conference keynote in Los Angeles, California, that they would be phasing out the licensing model altogether and launching updated CS6 applications through the all fresh Creative Cloud. This means that instead of purchasing a some-what expensive Creative Suite, you would only have to pay a monthly fee to use Adobe apps like Photoshop and Illustrator.

The move from Creative Suites to Creative Cloud will allow Adobe’s engineers the ability to focus on quicker updates and we hope future innovative features. More conveniently for Adobe, their software has probably long been the most pirated, so this is one way for them to kill piracy.

Creative Cloud

Adobe’s Creative Cloud is set to launch this June. Together with Adobe’s library of applications, Creative Cloud gives customers a chance to connect with others, share files, and build their creative portfolios through Behance. Creative Cloud is thought to be Adobes own version of Office 365, where individuals would receive 20 GB of cloud storage (100 GB for teams).

Adobes’ desktop applications will be branded CC, the big highlights being, Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC and Premier Pro CC. Photoshop in particular will be receiving some impressive features with the new update. One feature to include an all-new Smart Sharpen tool for bringing out more detail while reducing noise and halo effects and a camera shake reduction for restoring sharpness to blurry photos. With a simple wave of the wand tool anyone will impressively restore clarity to lost photos.

Adobe XD is to launch Projects Mighty and Napoleon, which consist of a Wacom-like pen stylus and digital ruler. The devices will be cleverly interfaced with your CC. The pen will allow artists to copy and paste snippets between Adobe’s suite of touch apps for mobile devices, whilst the digital ruler projects shapes to trace on the screen, acting as a pocket-able replacement for a variety of traditional pen &paper tools.

So how much is this new monthly rental going to cost us? A single application will cost £17.58 per month however for a full version of the most popular applications it will cost £46.88 a month. If you have Creative Suite 6, for the first year you’ll only have to pay £27.34 per month. Students will also benefit from a promotional pricing of only £15.88 a month. Teams, or small businesses will have to pay £65.44 per month per user, or £37.11 per month if they have are previous Creative Suite Owners.

Adobe has decided to position all its resources into CC and halt any further developments of Creative Suite 6, even further, any developments of a Creative Suite 7. It’s the end of an era. From now on, you either rent Adobe’s software or you go with an alternative: buying it or pirating is just no longer going to be an option.

Is it a tablet? Is it a laptop? No it’s a Lenovo Twist! This is the latest in a string of Windows 8-running hybrids trying to bridge the gap between the convenience of a tablet and the capability of a laptop. However this crossbreed has a little (excuse the pun) twist compared to the competition.

Not restricted to a single clamshell action, as the name suggests, the Lenovo Twist allows you to turn, bend, fold and spin the entire screen to offer a number of different positions; the Chinese gymnast of the computing world. The laptop and stand mode is implied for more business-based activities, where as tablet and tent mode are lent to viewing, media consumption and occasional gaming. Work and play has been united in one machine.

Built for function as well as form, the ThinkPad Twist is understated and elegant. Covered in a black, slightly rubbery material there’s nothing garish about its appearance. The water resistant keyboard is highly responsive, feeling effortless to type on with a slightly concave shape to the keys that caress your fingertips with each press. As well as featuring a velvety smooth texture to the Trackpad and iconic red TrackPoint the Twist has a 12.5-inch touch display that sits behind Gorilla Glass. The 1366×768 resolution is superb with colours that are accurate. Full fat 64-bit Windows 8 not only looks good but also delivers a sensitive enough screen to make using it a breeze. Sitting above is a webcam with capabilities of handling a 720p video, more than adequate for a Skype conference call. The Twist also comes with pre-installed dedicated software tools aimed specifically at small businesses, like Lenovo Solutions for Small Businesses and Lenovo Cloud Storage.

This gymnast is made up of strong stuff, the uni-directional hinge can survive hundreds of thousands of rotations with a hard disk equipped with an anti-shock system to protect your data from those errant tumbles. Inside it boasts one of Intel’s third-generation Core architecture processors, the i5-3317U. This is a dual-core processor that can handle up to four threads at the same time so whether you’re managing emails, checking the latest news or working on a project The Twist has it under control. As well as running at a desktop-speed drive of 7,200rpm it packs in a 8GB of RAM into its modest 1.6kg body keeping things running efficiently throughout its 6-hour battery life.

The Lenovo Twist manages to squeeze a lot out of its sturdy design, achieving a strong performance either as a laptop or as a tablet it has been built with a workhorse attitude. From just £8.20 + VAT per week it offers business-class perks such as the morph-design, responsive touch interface and unrivalled typing experience making it a serious gold medal contender for us at GEEX.