Fitting the battle of life

Receiving 40 prints free just for joining isn’t such a bad offer even when first-class postage (the cheapest I could see) is £1.50 – that’s 3.75p per 6″x4″, which isn’t too bad really.

Some of the prints turned out a little darker than they’d appeared on-screen (some of the detail in the photo above was lost), but others were just fine, so I’m not entirely sure whether it was a problem my end or theirs. They were bloody fast tho – put in the order on Sunday and they arrived on Tuesday morning, in a nice sturdy envelope containing a wallet of prints. I’d ordered a mix of 6″x4″ and one 6″x4.5″ (don’t ask), but thankfully it was all in one delivery.

I was also rewarded for clever naming of files – they print the file name (sans suffix) on the reverse, so if like me you are a bit anal about naming your photos (including date, location, event…), they potentially save your memory a little strain in the future.

Try them out. Even if you don’t like them, the 3.75p prints offer is good enough to take up.

So, I have a lovely modern shiny laptop that is underpowered with too little storage (hey, it was free from these guys for winning their competition) and a three-year old laptop that makes my room noiser than [text deleted by the PC brigade]. I also have a fscking awesome wonderful new camera (a Canon 450D) that’s producing rather large RAW files that need processing.

I don’t, unfortunately, have much money. The shiny laptop was free, the old laptop a birthday present and the camera also a birthday present. In January, however, I get a nice chunk of student loan in again, and I am working during term so I can save up a little cash.

The problem to solve is, I would quite like to buy a desktop PC for a) working at home on a machine that’s not ridiculously tiny and bad for my fingers to be typing on, b) a nice large screen to see my nice large photos, c) a computer that’s powerful enough to process said photos and d) that isn’t too expensive.

At the moment my decision is between a £799 iMac (because they’re supposed to be good for that kind of thing) and a comparable Dell running Ubuntu (because I like Ubuntu and can do everything for two different values of free with GIMP and ufraw instead of acquiring buying Lightroom/Aperture/Photoshop etc). I haven’t ever had a desktop of my own, and am not really sure I know what I’m looking for. Any suggestions, tips or warnings (and hatemail for the iMac comment), please do let me know down there in the comment box. I won’t be buying until the New Year, but it would be good to have an idea of what I’m looking for before I start looking!

[Updated]:

Dell computer:
Looking at Dell’s site, I can get a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 gig RAM, 320GB hard drive with 128MB ATI card for £310. Monitor I’d buy separately – could probably get cheaper, as with wireless adaptor. Add another, larger hard drive myself, and I’m sorted. Does that sound good enough?

So, it’s a big number for me, and I decided a while ago I wanted to join the DSLR club – now I’m the (very!) proud owner of a Canon 450D with the 18-55mm kit lens and a 70-300mm Tamron lens as well.

Libby with London background

It’s taking me a little while to get used to the DSLR but having played around with a few people’s before, it’s not too difficult. My friends are starting to get a little annoyed at the sheer volume of snaps I am taking of them while testing out various different settings, but they’ll get used to it…

Would have been better two release ago, and it would have been facebook and f-spot in feisty for alliterative goodness, but oh well.

The previous facebook plugin for f-spot (0.95) was pretty broken, and the online facebook uploader won’t work with Firefox 3 at the moment, which sucks a little because photos is an application I use quite a lot – I’m now up to 35 albums, many of which have the full 60 photos in them.

So imagine my delight when I realise there’s a new version of the plugin available (0.96) which does indeed work. I had a few glitches getting the log-in working, but once it did I was able to export photos to facebook without a hitch. The plugin allows you to create a new album or add photos to an existing album, add captions, and right-clicking brings up a ‘Who’s in this photo?’ dialogue, although that’s quite buggy (and by quite buggy, I mean, I won’t be using it because the dialogue doesn’t seem to work at all, and doesn’t come off the screen until you close f-spot).

Uploaded photos require your approval when you open the album online, but this is standard facebook behaviour.

I saw a friend exporting photos to an album from iPhoto (is it called that?) on his Mac last summer, so we’re a little behind with a fully functioning version, but at least it now works for me.

[On a side note, f-spot very rarely exits gracefully on my system, always requiring a force quit. Anyone else have this problem?]