kopakuxi

I'd really have to agree with buscuitrat and alperuzi. first of all you don't get the same specs (most of the time) with diff manufacturers and dell and alienware are two completely different animals. as far as a computer comparision would probably go....dell (even in there xps-gaming-rig) has partnerships with various suppliers, and they "customize" the boards to have specialized software (i.e. bios) to run the boards. on the other hand, alienware which may rewrite the bios and have partnerships, markets their rigs for POWER USERS and yes are very expensive when compared to a dell (xps is pretty expenzive though). basically, as in life you pay for what you get. now as far as macs go....well i'm not a fan so i'm not gonna say a whole lot except for this: apple recently announced that they are gonna start using pc chipsets and processors in their computers....WHY??? cause -no offense mac fans- they are gettin the crap beat out of them in raw horsepower. don't get me wrong they have awesome software. :::kopakuxi:::

the gimp is an awesome little program that was made using the gpl license (originally for linux, but has been ported to windows). it can do almost everything that photoshop can do. The only thing i have against it is that after installation, when you load the program it opens in seperate windows unlike most conventional programs. but it has a lot of good points...1} it's not a resource hog like most other graphical editors (including photoshop) and 2} it's incredibly small and install is a breeze. you can download gimp for here) i've also done some digging and here is the brush convert utility for converting photoshop brushes to gimp brushes. and if that's not enough for ya, here is the forum for exactly how to convert the brushes (I think it even has pics ). you can find that here. now that that's out of the way, here are a few alternatives to photoshop other than gimp. 1] is paint.net...i've never even messed with it to be honest, but i've heard it's pretty darn good. i've seen screenshots and it looks cool. you'll need the .net framework to get it installed and working though, and it has a link for that download as well on the download site (here. oh and i think it's free too. there's also paint shop pro that i've messed with and is ok. it's bout $109 for the newest version and you can get the 30 day trial here. I'm not a very big fan of it though. then there's the photoshop tryout of version cs2 (9) here and it runs some ungodly price. last time i checked it was like $600, but that was a long time ago with version 6. i went a step furthur and looked at ebays prices for ya and verion 7 of photoshop is runnin bout $80 which is a pretty darn good price even though it's version 7. there are a lot of good improvements from versions 7-9, however it's nothing you absolutely can't live without or download as a plugin and introduce to your experience. Just whatever you do stay away from elements man. it's not horrible, but it's a very very stipped down version that i wouldn't give the time of day (but i have...that's how i know!! ). and i guess that's about it, i hope i've helped you some. :::kopakuxi::: Notice from BuffaloHELP: Merged double posts. Whenever you need to edit or correct your post, simply click on REPORT button located at the bottom of every post and write a detailed instruction to how to fix/edit your mistake.