Archive for the ‘ software ’ Category

Update your laptop display drivers (either Nvidia, ATI or Intel)

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

If you play games on your laptop, you are probably interested on keeping your display drivers up to date, but depending on the brand of the graphics card it can be difficult to do. I have recently found an interesting site to dowload drivers: TousLesDrivers.com, a French site compiling lots of drivers. You can always check the support site of the manufacturer of your laptop, but these are the less-often updated. So your choices are mainly:

I downloaded Catalyst 9.12 for my Dell Studio 1537 (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450) from TousLesDrivers.com and the installation was a breeze. No need for Mobility Modder and so. And stability has been rock solid!

If you know other sources of drivers for laptops, please share them!

Dell’s Windows 7 upgrade program from June 26th

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Dell has confirmed that computers purchased from June 26th can be eligible for the free Windows 7 upgrade program. You can register to get the free upgrade at https://win7.dell.com

Windows 7 for October 22th and Dell announces its upgrade program

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Short news: October 22th is the official launch date of Windows 7, and some computer makers such as Dell have announced its upgrade program for systems purchased short before the launch date.

The GeForce 9500M found in the Dell Studio XPS 13 (1340) is in fact a 9400M G + 9200M GS Hybrid SLI

Saturday, January 17th, 2009

So the guys at the Notebook Review forums found it: the Nvidia GeForce 9500M found in the Dell Studio XPS 13 is not a single graphics card, but two: an integrated GeForce 9400M G plus a GeForce 9200M GS with 256 MB of dedicated memory, working in a Hybrid SLI configuration. The expected performance is higher than that of the 9400M G alone and lower than a 9500M GS, so the naming seems right, but maybe the actual performance is not as high as you expected when you saw the 9500M model number.

In addition, as Hybrid SLI is only supported under Windows Vista, so users of other operating systems will only be able to use one of the cards (probably the 9400M G).

Nvidia GeForce 9500M

Source: Notebook Review forums and Dell Studio XPS 13 setup guide (go to page 52).

Adobe Photoshop Express: online apps keep spreading

Friday, November 9th, 2007

That Adobe is developing an online version of Photoshop is old news, but News.com tells us about some features of this software, that has been shown in the 6sight digital imaging conference.

While it’s still a pre-beta version (Adobe has committed to release the beta later this year), it is now clear that Photoshop Express is much less powerful than the local versions, and seems to be aimed to provide additional photo editing features to several online photo hosting services. But it’s going to be free.

The final version of Photoshop Express is expected to be released in 2008.

Think about it: the first time I heard about “software as a service” and it being run through Internet, I thought that it was a concept without future. But almost 10 years have past, and Internet has changed a lot, and now we can be online everywhere, at any time. E-mail clients did seem so much better than webmail… But the last time I sent an e-mail in Thunderbird was many months ago. Now, I think it’s possible that, in a future, most of our programs are online apps, but the world still has to change a lot.