Journal of computing related issues for Web Authoring, and general topics using Mac, Windows and Linux platforms.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Serif Software

As stated earlier I am hoping that my next PC, in 2 or 3 years time, will run on Open Software and Linux, and so escape expensive SW bill and put funds into hardware. However I am a fan of the UK Serif Software, although I think it only works on Windows platform.

For several years I have used PagePlus, and found it very intuitive and well featured. I am currently on version 11. It fulfills Publisher functions at a much lower price. Recently a friend wanted a plan drawn up and PagePlus (10 at the time) did the job fine. Very easy to make a flyer and I used it as a basis to rewrite my wife's web site www.fascinatingfungi.com

Because I purchased the PP 11 upgrade online, I was approached by Serif salesman to see if I wanted to order any other packages at special prices. Now I have dealt with Serif in the past and I know you can haggle and negotiate further price reductions, which as an ex-salesman I enjoy the banter.

This prompted me to order the WebPlus package, which uses a similar approach. This looks fine but as of yet I have not used it for real. I plan to rewrite my own web pages www.roderickt.com with it .

Finally as I had just purchased a new Camcorder I also purchased MoviePlus 5. I have just completed creating my first video with this which has prompted me to write this article. I have used several film editors, Pinnacle, Ulead, Windows.. but I found this more to my liking and richer in function. The MoviePlus approach is to provide you basic functions which you can add to and build up your movie, rather than a collection of pre-built features. So it is a bit difficult to learn but very powerful and to date no limiting factors.

You can try back dated versions of Serif SW for free by downloading it from
www.freeserifsoftware.com . I tried PhotoPlus from this source, in fact paid £5 to get version 8 which is more up to date than free version although not the current version, however I am not too keen on this and no doubt will keep on using Adobe Photoshop although I plan to have a good look at the open software GIMP.

Serif's main web page is www.serif.com/

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About Me

Husband, dad and grandad. Physics graduate from London University in late 60s. Retired from IBM company in 2000 after 27 years as both Sytems Engineer and Salesman. Interests include photography, nature, science, maths, walking, travel. I like facts as a basis of opinion and not opinion that is assumed to be fact.