Free Graphics Upgrade

Hands on with Windows Thin PC and RemoteFX

While almost everyone in the Western world has at least one laptop or desktop in their household, it’s important to remember that a huge percentage of computing is done in an office and enterprise environment. The use-cases of home and office machines are understandably quite different — we play World of Warcraft at home, and fiddle with Word and Excel documents at work — and thus the hardware specifications are very different, too. It’s very rare to find an office machine that has more than a bare minimum of memory and processor power.

This hasn’t historically been a problem. Office machines have been equipped with wimpy CPUs and integrated graphics solutions, and companies have saved billions of dollars as a result. Unfortunately for enterprises, though, the world of computing is changing. Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the last 18 months, you will have noticed that all three major browser vendors have been racing to improve their JavaScript performance and HTML5 compliance. Along the way, hardware acceleration for 2D and 3D rendering was thrown into the mix. We’ve seen a veritable explosion in rich web apps as a result, and we’re now soundly plugging our way towards HTML5-based operating systems like Chrome OS and Windows 8 .

The end result is a chain of technological innovations that is moving much, much faster than the 3- and 5-year upgrade cycles that plague most large businesses. Not only are there millions of office workers that are forced to surf and work on old, low-RAM, antique-CPU beige boxes, but more importantly they’re often forced into using ancient versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox that were released long before last year’s performance surge.

Enter Windows Thin PC , or WinTPC for short. WinTPC is the latest in the long line of Windows Embedded releases, but slightly retooled and re-branded to represent its new use-case: turning decrepit computers into thin clients. Windows Embedded Standard 7 (WES7), released last month, and Windows Thin PC, released this week, are both based on Windows 7. They look like Windows 7 (with the exception of Aero in the case of WinTPC, but more on that later), they have much the same enterprise feature set as Windows 7 (BitLocker, AppLocker, Direct Access), and most importantly they can be administered using the standard Windows backend of WSUS, Active Directory, Configuration Manager, Group Policies, and PowerShell.

VectorScribe version 1.1 released – free upgrade - Astute Graphics

One month on from VectorScribe’s initial release, Astute Graphics is pleased to announce version 1.1, which is a free upgrade to all existing customers and those within the 7 day full trial period .

This upgrade brings a series of mainly user-led enhancements to the PathScribe, Dynamic Measure and Dynamic Shapes tools. The focus of this upgrade is to further enhance the design workflow, bringing greater time-savings and convenience to common tasks.

Enjoy!

The standard and HD video is already present in the VectorScribe tutorial movies page .

Each upgraded feature is as follows:

If you have yet to join the thousands of Illustrator users who have found great pleasure in VectorScribe, including well-regarded designers , you can download VectorScribe version 1.1 by clicking here…

Existing users, including those within the 7 day trial period, can find upgrade links via the Illustrator menu Help > Astute Graphics > VectorScribe > Check for Updates… .

Mac OS users will find access to an upgrade-only installer which removes the need to restart the computer following installation. Windows users do not need to restart when installing for the first time or upgrading.

InfoWorld

InfoWorld

PC magazine, the independent guide to IBM-standard personal computing

InfoWorld

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