Serif promotion

[ms.fuentecilla]

You might be amused and interested by this experience. Having serious problems with APhoto hanging on a pc laptop with 4Gb memory and 2.4GHz processor I decided to buy a new laptop. In the local shop I told them exactly what performance I wanted, i7 and minimum 8Gb. So I was asked what software I used to which I replied Serif Affinity Photo amongst others. The smart assistant then looked up your stated requirements of 2GB memory and a fairly basic processor and proceeded to argue for nearly half an hour that I needed only a basic laptop based on that information. We abandoned that, needless to say and I then bought via the internet. Perhaps your promotional information might be a little more precise? Because it is impossible to apply some processes to a large panorama with those basic requirements!

It runs perfectly on an i7 with 12 Gb!

[Old Bruce]

Glad to hear that it runs 'perfectly' on the new machine. I have run into sales people like you did but quite often I run into actual knowledgeable sales people who save me money by actually listening to what I say and steering me towards a better choice which I had never heard of. The better sales people tend to be not young but not as old as I, in the sweet spot between youthful enthusiasm and wisdom. Me, my mind is made up and everything new is not as good as it was in my day, which is why I don't work in sales and recently seem to only buy food instead of tech.

[silent_knight]

I'm fixing my main PC and am using a very old laptop right now. It has 4gb of DDR2 ram with an old AMD processor and both Photo and Designer run amazing on it. They state the minimum requirements to run the software effectively. On the other hand, those listed minimum requirements are only for Publisher as I don't see any for Photo or Designer. They definitely need to add more information about each program on their website. They tried to copy Adobe too much in branding but you can't do that with a new product. Their marketing team doesn't seem the greatest tbh. 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, ms.fuentecilla said:

The smart assistant then looked up your stated requirements of 2GB memory and a fairly basic processor ...

If that assistant really knew what they were talking about, they would know that the minimum system requirements are nothing more than that: the absolute minimum for the software to function. They should also know that almost all apps will perform much, much better on systems that significantly exceed those minimum requirements, even when that is not explicitly stated anywhere in the software's promotional info.

[firstdefence]

The assistant has never been taught how to up-sell 

[ms.fuentecilla]

Thank you for your interest and for your comments. He was doing his best and perhaps steering me to what they had available! The error was to believe the Serif data. His boss was even worse! It is a pity though that Serif are not a bit clearer because it is better to go into a real store than to shop in the abstract. If there comes a time when there are none, only the Amazons, - I didn't go there - that would be dire. However, I had done my own research in this instance and what I bought might have been over the top but easily obtainable, an Asus Vivo-book, not a gaming pc.

Perhaps Silent-knight hasn't tried to tone map a large panorama made from RAW files yet or ARM are just that much better. I'm not sure what the balance is in such a process, whether processor heavy or memory heavy but I suspect both are well used. It tends to induce profanities when one has to use the off switch to get out of Photo and lose the work!

[R C-R]

50 minutes ago, ms.fuentecilla said:

The error was to believe the Serif data.

The error was not understanding what that data means, in particular the word "minimum." If the sales people don't understand at least that much, then they are not qualified for that job.

[Patrick Connor]

A more realistic recommended spec would improve the matter (and perhaps a higher minimum)

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

A more realistic recommended spec would improve the matter (and perhaps a higher minimum)

Typically, this is done by including both minimum & recommended specs.

[Patrick Connor]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Typically, this is done by including both minimum & recommended specs.

This is as close as we get at the moment

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/desktop/full-feature-list/

Memory
2GB RAM (4GB RAM recommended)

[IanSG]

On 4/2/2019 at 9:01 PM, R C-R said:

They should also know that almost all apps will perform much, much better on systems that significantly exceed those minimum requirements, even when that is not explicitly stated anywhere in the software's promotional info.

Back in the day, my answer to "what computer should I buy" was "what will you use it for" -  for the last umpteen years it's been "what can you afford?".  Someone less charitable than me might blame programmers' increased dependence on Moor's Law to make up for their inefficient design/coding .  

[R C-R]

45 minutes ago, IanSG said:

Back in the day, my answer to "what computer should I buy" was "what will you use it for" -  for the last umpteen years it's been "what can you afford?"

Just as a point of reference, one of my first Mac systems was a 'pizza box' Mac Centris 660AV paired with a 15" NEC monitor. That cost considerably more than my current 27" iMac, had far less than 1/100th the processing power under the hood, a tiny 3" speaker that was just about useless for anything other than system beeps, a hard drive with less storage capacity than a single CD-ROM disk (remember those?), & a maximum RAM capacity that made it incapable of loading much less running most modern applications, even the most efficiently coded ones.

[v_kyr]

Pizzabox? - Well mine looked like that (long time ago) ...

... pricing, well we better don't talk about that theme.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, v_kyr said:

... pricing, well we better don't talk about that theme.

Ha! My first long term archive/backup purchase was a mag-optical drive that stored a whopping 128 MB per disk ... & the drive only cost $1000. IIRC, disks were about $10 each in quantity. I think it still works but I no longer have a working computer with a SCSI interface so I have no way of knowing.

[Old Bruce]

42 minutes ago, R C-R said:

a SCSI interface

Bane of my existence back in the day. Turn on in a particular order to use the different drives and the hardware sampler.

[R C-R]

16 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Bane of my existence back in the day. Turn on in a particular order to use the different drives and the hardware sampler.

I had a SCSI Zip drive that was so light that it would not sit flat on the desk with the thick, stiff SCSI cable attached to it unless I put a heavy object like a book on top of it.

[Old Bruce]

34 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I had a SCSI Zip drive that was so light that it would not sit flat on the desk with the thick, stiff SCSI cable attached to it unless I put a heavy object like a book on top of it.

I think I had the same model. I just left it askew.

[v_kyr]

The NeXTcubes we used had mostly the max possible 64 MB of RAM, a big and loud operating 256 MB  SCSI magneto-optical (MO) drive (from Canon), and 660 MB up to 1000 MB SCSI hard disk drives (mostly Seagate + Fujitsu). For some Cubes we had NeXT Dimension add-on GPU cards (>= DM 10.000 each). - The later NeXT Pizzabox I used had 32 MB RAM, a build-in 2.8 MB Sony FloppyDrive, I used a 3.5" 500 MB Fujitsu SCSI hard disk drive in that (DM 1500.-). The NeXTstations also had just a flat cigarette box sized Sony switching power supply, which was bloody expansive and very difficult to get at all in case of broke as a replacement part. The Pizzaboxes had external 50-Pin SCSI II connectors, where we attached external CD-ROM (Sony) and hard disk drives and SCSI scanners (HSD). The NeXT Laserprinter (from Canon) had it's own printer port. Later there was then also a color InkJet printer (also from Canon) available from NeXT.

[ms.fuentecilla]

That seems to have drifted away into nostalgia!

[Alfred]

11 minutes ago, ms.fuentecilla said:

That seems to have drifted away into nostalgia!

“Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be!”

[firstdefence]

On 4/5/2019 at 11:49 PM, R C-R said:

I had a SCSI Zip drive that was so light that it would not sit flat on the desk with the thick, stiff SCSI cable attached to it unless I put a heavy object like a book on top of it.

 

On 4/6/2019 at 12:24 AM, Old Bruce said:

I think I had the same model. I just left it askew.

4 big blobs of bluetack did the trick for me. 

[casterle]

On 4/5/2019 at 3:44 PM, R C-R said:

mag-optical drive that stored a whopping 128 MB per disk

IOMega?

On 4/5/2019 at 4:27 PM, Old Bruce said:

Bane of my existence back in the day.

Yeah, adding a new SCSI device was always an adventure (or nightmare, depending on your particular experience).

On 4/5/2019 at 4:49 PM, R C-R said:

I had a SCSI Zip drive that was so light that it would not sit flat on the desk

I had a SCSI scanner, but fortunately it was an HP and weighed as much as a small truck, so it didn't go anywhere. I think the worst were GPIB (IEEE-488) instrument cables, an HP invention that became a widely used standard. The way HP built things you'd think they were German! Their stuff lasted forever, you could tow a car with those cables (perhaps literally).

8 hours ago, firstdefence said:

4 big blobs of bluetack did the trick for me. 

I used that thick, foamy 3-M double-stick tape for decades, until the invention of stick-on Velcro. I still use it today to hold my WiFi router, a 16-port Ethernet switch and a power-strip to the side of a bookshelf. I've also got my cable modem Velcro'd to my desk, as is a holder for pencils, glasses, rulers and such. 

[R C-R]

27 minutes ago, casterle said:

IOMega?

No, my MO drive was made by APS, at the time widely considered the top rated company for SCSI peripherals for Macs.

IIRC, it was fitted with a pair of 50 pin Centronics style connectors, so to connect it to my Mac Centris 660AV fitted with a DB-25 SCSI port I needed a 50-25 pin SCSI rated cable. Daisy chaining a mix of 50 & 25 pin SCSI devices & making sure the last one in the chain was terminated was a nightmare, made even worse when I got a PowerBook with an Apple-designed HDI-30 SCSI port.

All together, I think I ended up investing several hundred dollars in a plethora of SCSI cables, adaptors, & terminators to get it all to work.

[casterle]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Daisy chaining a mix of 50 & 25 pin SCSI devices & making sure the last one in the chain was terminated

Been there, done that. At one time I had to build those horrid DB-25 cables - I mean the 25-conductor version, not the cheap printer-only kind - if I look closely I can probably still find some burn scars on my fingertips. 

 Ain't USB grand?

[R C-R]

32 minutes ago, casterle said:

Ain't USB grand?

It is indeed!