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Feb 17 - Feb 24, 2002 |
Managing your own digital world
Both Microsoft and Apple have devised ways to help customers with personalized photography
By Alessandro Cancian
Originally Published: 2002-02-03
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A screen shot of iPhoto from Apple
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In case you haven't noticed, we've officially entered the digital age. With the Palaeolithic era left some 12,000 years behind, the Middle Ages forgotten and the industrial revolution completed, the digital era is currently in full swing. Or at least this is what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs keep telling us at every keynote speech of theirs.
To be honest, in recent times digital cameras, camcorders and MP3 players have achieved unprecedented popularity levels, and they don't seem to be losing any momentum.
And what about Bill and Steve?
Starting with the management of digital images, we will report how the new Operation Systems by Microsoft (Windows XP) and Apple (Mac OS X) welcome us to the world of multimedia.
One of the main headaches for millions of digital camera owners is the storage and retrieval of their images. If you are a PC user and you need to deal with this on a regular basis, Windows XP is surely better at it than any other Microsoft OS.
XP includes drivers for the vast majority of digital cameras and scanners, so you just need to connect them to your PC and the OS launches a wizard panel, which offers different options according to the characteristics of the device and guides you step by step through the process of copying images from the device to your system.
If you use a camera, you can choose which images you want to download and by default they will be saved into the My Pictures folder, now easily accessible from Windows' Start Menu.
After completing the process, with a simple click you can decide whether you want to delete the shots from the camera. During the transfer, XP will rename each image in a progressive way designed to avoid any accidental overwriting.
After acquisition, the photos can only be retrieved by opening the various subfolders created: definitely a boring process. It's as if a print could only be retrieved by opening every envelope with old pictures in it.
Anyway, after selecting one or more images the wizard panel will assist you in printing them on your inkjet or sending them to an Internet-based printing service (Kodak or Fuji). If you intend to share images with friends and family, via email or the Web, XP will help you resize them automatically, and if you decide to burn some shots on a CD you're just a click away.
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