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Matthias Schmitt

Posts: 16

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Member Since: 19 Mar 2011
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Matthias Schmitt's Posts

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VLC Media Player

Laos rated on 19 Mar 2012
[Version 2.0.1]

Scribus

Laos reviewed on 08 Aug 2011

Scribus is a professional DTP solution. To really understand its value we must look at it pros and cons.

1. Scribus is cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X). This is its main advantage and its main disadvantage. It is an advantage as you can move its document files across different operating systems and the result will still look the same (try this with a MS product). It is a disadvantage as you cannot expect a native Mac OS X user interface.

2. Scribus has a professional feature set. As with any professional software it has its complexity and learning curve. But when you start to manage it, it is of real value. I printed a lot of flyers and smaller books with it and was always impressed by its feature set.

3. Scribus is open source and comes for free. It is really impressive what Scribus brings you for nothing. But, as true for many open source projects, its development cycles could be shorter. Of course, we all would like to see every month a new final release, but the available resources are limited. Scribus has a strong development community, which offers continuous support since many years. What else can we expect?

If you do not bring your files to a professional printer often, then this software might not be for you. You might be more pleased with Apple's Pages. If you need to create printable PDFs and you do not want to invest in expensive software like Adobe InDesign, then this is worth looking at.

[Version 1.4.0.rc3]

2 Replies

Laos replied on 02 Jan 2012

@Rubaiyat
Scribus has its own algorithms to create a PDF. It does not use the PDF engine of Mac OS X, which makes its PDF output much better.

Laos replied on 03 Jan 2012

@Johninsapporo
Pages brings you a lot of features with ease of use, but its layout and text rendering engine is rather limited. It would be more fair to compare Scribus with Adobe's InDesign.

@Rubaiyat
Even tough I never tried it, the documentation says Scribus can do spot colors. Read more information here:
http://documentation.scribus.net/index.php/Spot_Colors

MPEG Streamclip

Laos reviewed on 06 Jul 2011

I use it to cut video streams recorded from my Dreambox. Excellent peace of software except one major missing feature: no support for HD video streams since many years. The software is stable, but not well maintained.

[Version 1.9.3b5]

VLC Media Player

Laos rated on 06 Jun 2011
[Version 1.1.10]

The Unarchiver

Laos rated on 28 Apr 2011
[Version 2.7.1]

DYMO Labelwriter

Laos reviewed on 27 Apr 2011

Software is a PC port, which means complicated and non Mac like. The manual is more misleading than useful. Labels can not be easily customized. Addresses are printed in Europe in a wrong format.
Hey Dymo, the world is not US only!

[Version 8.2.2.1172]

Adobe Photoshop Elements

Laos reviewed on 18 Apr 2011

This is real bloatware. It uses massive amounts of memory on your harddisk and RAM. Beyond this, it is incredible slooooow.
I really regret paying money for this.

[Version 9.0.3]