I think he might have linked to the wrong article. Recently (a few months ago I think) there *was* an article on slashdot about the exact same computer as this article.

Install the trial version of CS5 straight from adobe's site, use a "borrowed key" from a warez site, block a few adobe activation addresses in /etc/hosts and bob's ya sister. No cracks needed and it will run happily forever amen...

There is no good substitute, open source or proprietary. NOTHING can match up to Fireworks. It really sucks that Adobe bought Macromedia, now they don't give a shit about fireworks and it gets hardly any attention in the newer versions. Even with the Adobe suck factor it is still the best application for website prototyping and web graphic creation IMO.

Students don't have to pay for Visual Studio at all. It's available free of charge on dreamspark along with a bunch of other expensive microsoft software.

GIMP looks (and feels) like ass on Linux. GIMP looks and feels like ass on every os. That's probably due to the fact that it's a piece of shit.

OH NOES, PAYING FOR SOFTWARE, HOW TERRIBLE!

Cost: Fireworks $299
Cost saved due to productivity: infinite

Fireworks is always running on my computer as I use it heavily so it makes no difference to me, half the time I don't need to start it up. Even when I am starting it up cold it takes maybe 5 seconds. Whatcha gonna do with the *seconds* you saved by running a CLI program instead of an easier to use GUI app? Gee if I had all free time on my hands from the *seconds* I saved I just would not know what to do with myself!

And your CLI app might not need to export them. Big deal. Fireworks doesn't need to export the images either, if all you want to do is resize the images and save them over themselves it does that. But it's only 1 extra click to set the export step in the batch process and it optimises the images for the web as well as scaling them.

Faster than a GUI my arse. It takes me about 10 seconds to go file > batch process in Fireworks and choose what size to resize an entire directory full of image files to and then export them as web optimised JPEG files. All without having to remember a bunch of esoteric commands and switches.

Photoshop does batch processing and custom macros. It would not be hard to do this in Photoshop at all. Oh look!

I think the law of them having to be covered up on display is stupid. It doesn't make me want to smoke less. And this is even stupider: I was at the supermarket once with my mum and she asked how much her brand was, the cashier wouldn't tell her and pointed to the shelf where the smokes she wanted were and said the price is there. She said that she is not allowed by law to tell you how much they cost. Mum got pretty pissed off because she didn't have her glasses and couldn't see that far.

I also hate the insane prices. A relative of mine went on a holiday overseas and it cost her $1.20 for a packet of cigarettes, I was shocked at that. I knew that they are heavily taxed here but I wasn't aware by how much. It's getting ridiculous, about 20 dollars for a packet of 35 for me, where a few years ago they were only like 13 dollars. Oh well. At least champix is PBS subsidised, it seems to be working pretty well for me...

It's not a meltdown. It's an unrequested fission surplus.

I agree, this article is nothing but a troll.

I use OS X as a web dev platform (it's how I earn my living). It runs apache/php/mysql. It has a million different editors available (I use Komodo IDE). Excellent database tools run on it (Navicat in my case) and it runs all the adobe software that I need as well (mainly Fireworks & Photoshop). I can also run almost every browser in existence for testing, except ie, which I can run fine in a virtual box vm. And underneath all of that it provides nearly all the power of a FreeBSD system.

I've used different systems as my primary development environment in the past, mainly Windows and several different Linux distros and NONE were as good for my purposes as OS X.

NO U

Gotta love freedtards. A single post of "bullshit" contributes nothing yet still gets upmodded...

> Other bits that are not, they're free to do what they please.

Uh oh. You don't say stuff like that on Slashdot! Them's fightin' words!

I modify the logo banner on the website of the company I work for on the holidays, in fact, I just created new artwork for easter... Am I in trouble? :p