The gaming ultrabook for 2014

Hmmmm. Seems like ASUS has produced a successor to the UX32VD ultrabook that I bought last year. It is the UX32LN and is based on an Intel Haswell CPU with an NVIDIA 840M discrete graphics chip. This seems (unexpectedly?) significantly better than what the UX32VD provided last year.

I recommend it as a really sleek and lightweight gaming + multipurpose ultrabook. I have been quite happy with the UX32VD, and as the UX32LN comes with even better graphics, it should be quite competent for gaming.

One caveat though: make sure you pick the right options when configuring your UX32LN: you want the fast CPU, the nice screen, and enough memory. It is nicely upgradable though.

Anyway, it's quite nice what we can get these days in a light and slim little package!

Enjoy!

/hardware | Posted at 09:27 | permanent link

The eagle has landed...

As I've posted earlier on May 25th, we have moved back to Montreal after 18 years in Europe (Paris, then Zurich, then Paris again).

It's been a busy few weeks since landing back here, with a new job and a big search for a new place to live.

I'm happy to say that we've now found a new appartment in the beautiful Altitude project in downtown Montreal. You can find a view from our office window above!

There are presently many very nice condos available in Montreal with many more projects to come, but the Altitude was the one that really caught our eye as the most interesting and attractive in town.

It's been fun being back in Montreal: not only have we been able to enjoy seeing many friends and family members a lot more than before, but also we've been able to enjoy some of the Montreal summer festivals (the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Festival Juste pour rire, and more). Of course, we have good friends that we miss in Europe, but being back here feels like home.

Now, if we can just empty those 200+ boxes that the movers have left in our appartment :-)

/misc | Posted at 09:26 | permanent link

Adobe Creative Cloud: not for me

I have been a user of various Adobe products for years. Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat, and even some of the more obscure ones. Some of these, I use professionally at the office (notably Acrobat), but for the others, I am a casual user.

As I've never been one for pirating software, I have bought over the years the odd license for Photoshop, Premiere, and Acrobat for personal use. Most of them for Windows, but even some on MacOS X when I had switched my main computer to an iMac.

I use something like Photoshop every couple of months... Premiere, once a year or so. I still found it useful to have the "real" Adobe software because if I needed to do something, I really could do it.

Every so often, Adobe would write to me to encourage me to upgrade to the latest release... most of the time, I'd file these ads in the "Advert" folder an ignore them, but every few years or so, there would be a new feature compelling enought that I'd upgrade to keep up.

Now, they keep writing me to encourage me to subscribe to their Adobe Creative Cloud with its montly fee. Pfff! There is no way that I would saddle myself with a recurring monthly fee for something that I will not use on most months! As a general rule, I eschew recurring fees except for things which are really regular and important to me (heck, I even bought Office 2013 on my laptop instead of subscribing to Office 365).

So, I will look for alternatives to Photoshop and Premiere, and Adobe has now lost my (irregular, but somewhat recurring) revenue stream going forward.

Unfortunate move Adobe: you should have offered options to your customers.

/software | Posted at 09:13 | permanent link