Mac it is....

So after weeks of deliberation... well not quite. I've made a decision and ordered a new iMac. I had looked at Windows PC's but by the time you added in the extra software I would need to purchase and a similar size monitor I would have exceeded the price of the iMac.

So I've ordered a new iMac quad core machine with a 27 inch monitor... yes it's big! But in terms of screen resolution it's only slightly bigger than what I'm using at present but by combining two monitors. Having it all on one screen will be a lot more useful, and I will spend less time glancing left and right all the time!

Delivery date is as yet to be confirmed but some time this month. I will still be retaining my netbook PC for XP and portable use, it works well and it's very compact. My two existing monitors will find use on other PC's and at last I think I will be getting rid of the last two CRT monitors we own.

I'm looking forward to the iMac it will be a new challenge although I'm familiar with the Apple OS, using it full time will be different.

Watch this space.....

Picasa 3.5 - Face Recognition

Picasa is an application for orgainising and doing minor editing of your photo collections. It is a Google application which is free to download and use.

It offers a lot of the usual facilities such as sharing on line, printing, slideshows etc. I've been using it for a number of years and I can't fault it really.

The latest version has recently been released and it includes face recognition. Admittedly this isn't the first application to offer this. But I was fascinated to try this out on my growing collection of digital photographs.

It scans through your collection and then shows the faces for you to put a name to. Having been told a name it then automatically puts the same faces in to their own 'album' If it's not sure it offers them up again etc. All quite easy to use as well.

Some amusing things are popping up as it continues to scan my collection. It occasionally matches two brothers as being the same person. Easily corrected.

It's also pulled out statues in photos too! You can however, tell it to 'ignore people' such as people in the background etc.

I did some pictures of the Tour de France last year and all the riders are starting to appear in the face scan window...

I've got a terrible memory for names so hopefully this new feature will help me remember peoples names in my advancing years!

PC or Mac.... Mac or PC

The PC I use is now over 5 years old. Today one of the graphics cards decided to play up, so I've had to revert to the internal card and go from two displays to one, which is a bit of a shame. I liked the dual 1280x1024 display set up a lot. Mail in one screen, browser in another etc.

So the obvious quick fix may be is a wide screen single display... but sadly the internal graphics card won't support more than 1280 x 1024.

So do I just get another graphics card... my machine is quite old so it's AGP only... although you can still get those cards.

So may be a new graphics card and a wide screen display.

I've been thinking about upgrading to a new machine anyway... but what... another PC, with Windows 7 may be... or may be a Mac Mini.

I need to sit down and look at my real requirements and compare the two to see what I actually need.

At first sight Windows machines look cheap and Mac's expensive... but specifying them up to similar performance, there's not much difference in them really.

Anyway my spare display can now be used on my notebook, or on my old G4 Mac over in France!