Blognoscenti – Official Blog of WebAntics.co.za

Archive for March, 2012

Corel has announced the launch of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6, the newest version of its flagship graphics suite.

Featuring a completely revamped typography engine, inspiring new colour styles and harmonies, and powerful shaping tools, the new suite offers graphics professionals its most creative and powerful tools to date. With a focus on opening up new creative possibilities for the design community, this major update delivers improved workflow and performance making it even easier for both aspiring and experienced designers to connect with assets, work with leading edge tools and technology, and output their design projects with confidence.

CorelDRAW senior product manager John Falsetto says the CorelDRAW community consistently inspires the copmany with their creativity and versatility.

“Our members play a central role in helping us determine the essential features and enhancements that will help to accelerate the design process, while enabling them to showcase their true design style.

“We want to provide our users with all of the tools and options they need to be as creative and productive as possible so that they can share their vision and inspire others through their work,” says Falsetto. The new features and numerous enhancements included  in the latest suite are designed to address the needs of CorelDRAW users in a wide variety of industries, including sign making, graphic design, fashion or apparel design, wide format printing, marketing, print production, screen printing, awards and engraving, vehicle wrap design, and others.

Key New Features and Enhancements include:

• Advanced OpenType Support: Create beautiful text with advanced OpenType typography features, such as contextual and stylistic alternates, ligatures, ornaments, swash variants, and more.
• New Custom-built Colour Harmonies: Modify colours collectively in a harmony and analyze colours and hues to deliver complementary colour schemes.
• New Native 64-bit and Enhanced Multi-Core Support: Quickly process files and images up to 50% faster than before.
• New Creative Vector Shaping tools: Creatively add effects using four new vector shaping tools – Smear, Twirl, Attract and Repel.
• New Styles Engine and Docker: Format with speed and simplify the creation, application, and management of styles for consistent formatting across multiple objects.
• New Corel Website Creator X6 application: Build and manage websites with ease using the Site Wizard, templates, drag-and-drop functionality and seamless integration with XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and XML.
• New Smart Carver: Remove unwanted areas from an image while simultaneously maintaining the photo’s aspect ratio.
• Improved Page Layout Capabilities: Create design layouts with ease using new and improved Master Layer functionality, Alignment Guides, Interactive frames and much more.
• Redesigned Object Properties Docker: Save time, fine-tune designs and get access to the object settings in one centralised location.

What’s Included in CorelDRAW Graphics X6:

• CorelDRAW X6, an intuitive vector-illustration and page-layout application
• Corel PHOTO-PAINT X6, a professional image-editing application
• Corel PowerTRACE X6, a utility to quickly and accurately convert bitmaps into editable vector graphics
• Corel CONNECT, a full-screen browser to search the suite’s digital content on a computer, local network, or disc and stock imagery from iStockPhoto and Fotolia
• Corel CAPTURE X6, a one-click screen capture utility
• Corel, Website Creator X6, a powerful new do-it-yourself website creation software

Users also receive 10 000 high-quality clipart and images; 1 000 new professional high-resolution digital photos; 1 000 OpenType fonts, including premium fonts such as Helvetica; 2,000 vehicle templates; 350 professionally designed templates; and 800 frames and patterns. Corel will continue to enhance the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 experience by making more content and functionality available throughout the lifecycle for X6 users.

All box versions of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 include a comprehensive full-colour, hard cover Guidebook to help users of all skill levels getting started quickly.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 is now available from WebAntics Online in a box version at the promotional pricing of R3999.99 for the full version and R1999.99 for the upgrade version. All prices include VAT.

I suppose it’s not a little ironic that what is easily the best Android tablet yet does not look a little bit like an iPad, but a lot like an iPad, and is being sued for trademark infringement – though not by Apple. If you want to be generous, you could say that Asus’s Transformer Prime stands on the shoulders of giants. With spiked cleats.

Why It Matters
In a word: speed. This tablet has not a dual, not a triple, but a quad-core 1.3Ghz processor, plus an integrated GPU. It is the first device to run Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor—the first quad-core Android tablet—and it simply blows the doors off of everything else. In terms of speed, anyway. Just imagine when it’s not hobbled by the crippling inefficiencies of Honeycomb. Of course, it won’t be the only quad-core tablet by this time next week.

Using It
At just 8.3mm, it’s thinner than the iPad 2 (8.8mm) and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (8.6mm). There’s no cheap plastic on this thing. The back is a solid panel of brushed aluminum—the texture feels slightly off though, to some of us. The result is a very low-profile device that feels incredibly strong (unlike the Galaxy Tabs). It’s not quite as comfortable to hold as Motorola’s rubberized Xyboard tablets, but the lightness makes up for it.

Right now, the Prime is running Honeycomb (Android 3.2.1). All Honeycomb tablets have had problems with consistency. They’re fast one minute, and then slow as hell the next. Not with the Prime. Even when I had ten programs running simultaneously (most of which were HD games) there was virtually no stutter or lag on the homescreen or anywhere else. Nvidia delivered a package of sample HD games that use all four cores and the GPU, and they are absolutely gorgeous. Asus has done some light, (mostly) inoffensive tweaking to the stock Android experience. It adds some extra controls, which are nice, and some software which ranges from useful (Polaris Office) to useless (@vibe Music, a Pandora clone). When it get its Ice Cream Sandwich update, you’ll be able to remove anything you don’t want, and considering we’ve already seen ICS running on the Prime, that should be very soon.

NOTE: The reason it’s called a Transformer is because it has a spiffy keyboard dock that basically transforms it into a laptop. It has a full keyboard, touchpad, USB and SD card ports, and it adds an extra 50-60% to the battery life, theoretically bringing it up to 15 or 16 hours.

Like
The Transformer Prime shows how Android tablets could and should be built. And this tablet actually lives up to the hype as far as speed and performance goes. It’s easily the fastest Android tablet out there, and may well be faster than the iPad 2—though Android has a knack for feelingslower, because of the way, for instance, that it animates transitions. The Super IPS+ screen is incredibly bright, and I had no problem seeing the screen in sunlight. Colors were nice and vivid, too. Battery life is terrific. With fairly conservative use and Wi-Fi only on half of the time, I got ten hours of use. When I pushed it way harder, I still got close to eight.

No Like
The big ding is that it’s still running Honeycomb. While the Tegra 3 over-powers Honeycomb’s speed problems with obscene processing power, it’s still not a very intuitive UI.

The most glaring design flaw is the speaker. Yes, speaker. Singular. If you hold the tablet in landscape (as you will for most games and for all movies) the speaker is on the far right side of the tablet, under your hand. Because the tablet is so thin your hand doesn’t really block the speaker, but you can absolutely tell that it’s only coming out of one side.

Asus has provided their own sliding keyboard (similar to Swype) which is awful. Not only does swiping not make much sense on a giant screen, but the predictions were very bad indeed (fortunately you can easily switch out the keyboard, because it’s Android.). No 3G/4G radio on board (just Wi-Fi), which may be a deal-breaker for some.

Should I Buy It?
Yes. If you know you don’t want an iPad 3. That is, if you know you want an Android tablet. This is the one to buy. It’s the best constructed, fastest Android tablet out there. The only people who should hesitate are those who don’t want to be confined to Wi-Fi. That said, this is my new favorite tablet. Maybe it’ll be yours too

Article courtesy of Brent Rose - http://gizmodo.com/

The Asus Transformer Prime (TF201) is now available from WebAntics Online in a 32GB (R5,999.00 incl VAT) and a 64GB version (R6,999.00 incl VAT). The optional Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Keyboard/Mobile Docking Station is also available at R1,699.99 incl VAT.

The Wacom Intuos5 range of tablets has been announced keeping in mind professionals such as artists, designers and photographers.Some of its features are inclusive of multi-touch gestures, an Express View Display and wireless capabilities.

The Wacom Intuos5 is the new professional pen tablet generation for photographers, designers and artists who want to dive into their digital image. Superior new features include multi-touch gesture support for intuitive input, an Express View display to facilitate an efficient workflow and wireless capabilities for convenience and comfort. Combined with Wacom’s renowned pen pressure and tilt sensitive pen, the state-of-the-art Intuos5 represents the intuitive way to create.

What’s new from the Intuos 4:
NEW– now with multi-touch function supporting user-defined shortcuts and conveying a natural feel simply – through multi-touch gestures
NEW– now with the revolutionary Express View on-screen display
NEW– gain freedom via the optional wireless accessory kit
NEW– now with ergonomic soft-touch surface designed for maximum comfort

Same as the Intuos 4:
- Pen precision with 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity and pen tilt for a real pen-on-paper feel
- Up to 8 individually configurable ExpressKeys with new surface feel
- Multifunctional Touch Ring with 4 freely programmable functions per application

The Wacom Intuos5 price and availability details have been disclosed. The small, medium and large slate types price tags read at R2599.99, R3517.58 and R5228.90, correspondingly. The Intuos5 and the rest of the Wacom tablet range and accessories are now available from WebAntics Online Shopping Store.

WebAntics Online is an authorised Wacom Reseller and is one of South Africa’s Leading Online Shopping Stores selling a wide range of products including Computers, Electronics, Gadgets, Corporate Gifts and Software to name just a few of our products. Established in 2005 with an aim of providing customers with an easy way of shopping from the comfort of their chair while at the same time benefiting from the cost saving from operating on-line.