A new website, full clothing range and a number of Posters and Flyers will be designed over the next few weeks to celebrate one of Sussex’s leading summer musical events.

You can see last years WEBSITE HERE

We have just finished building a ‘Flash’ page for Braint Communications, you can see this HERE .

Based in Sussex they are one of the leading recording studios around with a huge number of top bands using their facilities.

Watch this space for the new site. : )

Watch this space for more information..

Briant Communications directly employ highly skilled aerial & satellite installers who are local to you. Because they are local, they are on hand to provide a broad range of digital television services usually within hours of your telephone call, and more importantly, have in-depth knowledge of your area and signals being received for services such as Freeview, Freesat, Sky or a range of satellite systems.

Distinktive have built a WordPress based site using HTML 5 and focussing strongly on SEO.

You can see the WEBSITE HERE.

They were looking for a WordPress built site for easy navigation and management, they wanted it clean, user friendly and to give a ‘corporate feel’.

You can see the new website ‘HERE’.

We would love to know your thoughts…

• Mac OS X v10.5.7 (9J3032)
• Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz (3MB L2 cache, 1066MHz frontside bus)
• 2GB 1067MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• 160GB 5400rpm SATA hard disk drive
• 13.3″ glossy widescreen TFT LED backlit display (1280 x 800)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics (256MB of DDR3 shared memory)
• 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• iSight webcam
• AirPort Extreme WiFi (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n)
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
• Mini DisplayPort, Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports (480Mbps), FireWire 800, Audio out and microphone in, SD-Card reader
• Dimensions : 0.95″ x 12.78″ x 8.94″ (H x W x D)
• Weight: 4.51 pounds
• Integrated 58-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
• 60W MagSafe power adapter with cable management system
• MSRP: £1,350

Build and Design
The 13.3″ MacBook Pro is very sleek and classy, which is what we have come to expect from Apple. The design is sharp with the unibody chassis showing no panel lines or breaks except on the bottom for the huge panel that covers the internals. Apple gives us a very simple interface with little clutter (and ports) turning what is usually a mindless appliance into a work of art. To further simplify the design they switched to an internal battery for this model, instead of having a cover and release bar like in the previous revision.

Build quality is excellent thanks to the very strong and rigid unibody chassis that is machined out a solid block of aluminum. Unless you were going to clamp the MacBook Pro in a vise and try to bend it, you can’t really find any flex anywhere on the main half of the notebook. The screen cover does flex slightly under strong pressure, but with something that thin it was expected. Without any plastic panels, except at the screen hinge, there are no parts to squeak or creak under normal use. Outside of a few rugged models I can’t think of a single notebook that has a stronger chassis than the unibody MacBooks.

Normally simple upgrades such as swapping in a faster hard drive or upgrading the system memory (or changing the battery) take a few additional steps on the new 13.3″ Macbook Pro. To access user-serviceable components you must buy a precision Phillips head screwdriver, and remove 10 screws around the perimeter of the notebook. With the cover off you get access to the battery, hard drive, optical drive, and tightly stacked system memory. Once you overcome the fear of ripping off the bottom of your new shiny MacBook Pro, upgrading the components isn’t that bad. The only problem that might come up is going against the recommended advice from Apple to not disconnect the main battery when swapping out components. Usually you want to unplug AC and the battery from notebooks before you change the RAM or hard drive to prevent damage.

Screen and Speakers
The screen on the MacBook Pro is average compared to other glossy panels, and has the downside of having the highly reflective glass layer over the LCD. This increases the amount of reflection from other objects, including you sitting right in front of the notebook. While you do adjust to it after a while, it can still be annoying. Pictures and movies look great thanks to the glossy surface and a healthy 60% bump in color gamut over the previous generation MacBook, which gives vibrant colors and deep blacks. Overall brightness is excellent for viewing in brightly lit rooms like in an office building or lecture hall. If you were able to find a spot of shade you could also use it outdoors as long as you find a strategic position away from any glare. Viewing angles are average for a TN-panel LCD, with colors starting to show signs of inversion when titled 20-25 degrees forward or back. Horizontal viewing angles are much better, with colors staying accurate at steep angles, right up until the point where reflections overpower screen.

The speakers sound weak compared to other notebooks, with little bass or midrange sound. The enclosed position of the speakers doesn’t help with stereo separation, so it ends up sounding like one mono speaker. For enjoying some iTunes music or watching a movie headphones are the best option. The MacBook Pro also supports digital audio out through the headphone jack, so hooking it up to a stereo for surround sound is another option you could go with.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The 13″ MacBook Pro offers a full-size Chiclet-style keyboard that is fully backlit for typing where overhead light might not be the best. While Sony originally created this style of keyboard, I think Apple really perfected it and made the better version. The keyboard is comfortable to type on and easy to transition to if you are used to typing on a standard notebook keyboard with tighter key spacing. Individual key action is smooth with less than average pressure required to activate each key. Key noise is low, with a smooth almost-muted click when pressed. If you enjoy stealth typing, look no further. The backlight is nice even when your room isn’t completely dark. If you are not used to an Apple keyboard, it makes it easier to spot keys since everything is lit up. The backlight is also fully adjustable, to be brighter when the room is brighter, and dimmer when you don’t need the keys blindingly-bright in a pitch black room.

One trade-off to the shape of the unibody MacBook Pro is the sharp edges around the perimeter. The palmrest on most notebooks have a slightly rounded or sloped edge for the front of the palmrest, whereas the MacBook Pro is a perfectly flat surface with a sharp edge. If you normally hang your wrists off the edge like I do, one thing you notice over time is the edge digging into your wrist. If you have small hands this might not be a big deal, but for someone like me it gets painful quick. This is just another example of form having a higher priority than function.

The touchpad is a large multi-touch surface with no separate touchpad buttons. The clicking action is through a clicker button under the touchpad, which allows the entire surface to “click”. If you are used to other touchpads, it takes a while to get used clicking the surface itself, instead of a button below it. In OS X the touchpad sensitivity is excellent, offering no lag on the default sensitivity settings. Contrast this with Windows, where the driver support doesn’t give you the same fluid experience. Movement is choppy and over-sensitive, where the cursor will sometimes release an object mid-drag or take many tries to double click. Another problem we ran into is the touchpad sometimes detected a slight increase in fingertip pressure as a double click, opening applications when moving over a list in the start menu. None of these problems happened within OS X.

Ports and Features
The new 13″ MacBook Pro offers two USB ports, one mini-DisplayPort, LAN, and the return of FireWire 800. While eSATA is generally the best when it comes to fast external storage, more Mac-targeted storage devices offer FireWire from the long standing Apple support of the standard. The Macbook Pro also offers a headphone jack and a new SD-card slot, bringing it to the same level that most PC’s have been at for a number of years.
The most notable feature on the MacBook Pro is a handy battery gauge mounted on the side of the notebook. Pressing the button lights up a number of eight LED’s showing the current charge level of the battery. This is a handy feature if you are thinking about grabbing the computer before you head out the door without an AC adapter … just in case the battery is actually dead.

Performance
System performance is excellent, even with the NVIDIA 9400M integrated graphics. While most Intel integrated graphics options have greatly reduced performance compared to dedicated options, NVIDIA has broken that trend with the 9400M. With an average 3DMark06 score of more than 2,100 3DMarks, it is comparable to low-end dedicated options and can handle previous generation games with some tweaking of the resolution and detail settings. In our test of the game Portal, the 13″ MacBook Pro delivered 38-42 frames per second (FPS) at 1280×800 resolution on high settings looking through a single portal. Looking through no portals the framerate would be as high as 55FPS, and if you were looking through two it would drop down to about 22-23FPS.

Outside of gaming performance the system handled 720P and 1080P HD movie decoding with ease, perfect for a home theatre hub with a mini-DisplayPort to HDMI adapter. While we didn’t see any significant slowdowns related to the 5400rpm hard drive in our review model, upgrading to a 7200rpm drive would decrease boot and application load times. Battery impact should be minimal, but you will probably see a drop of 15-30 minutes. One interesting hard drive related quirk we noticed with the new MacBook Pro was the drive was working on SATA-150 mode only. Some of our forum members are experiencing this problem as well, which you start to see after you upgrade to a fast SSD that is capable of pushing more than 150MB/s. It is too early to say if this is a hardware or software bug, but we are leaning towards a software problem.

XBench 1.3 summary results:

Could a Canon EOS 5D Mark III release date be just around the corner? We think so. Launched in 2008, the Canon 5D Mark II is due a refresh. Essentially just the innards of an Canon 5D inside a slightly spruced-up body shell, plus a 21-million-pixel sensor and a very cool (for 2008) video shooting function, the 5D MKII always looked like something of a compromise.

At this point in time, the 5D MK II lacks both the speed and enhanced functionality of the newer APS-C format EOS 7D, and the rugged construction and almost infinite customisation of Canon’s professional EOS 1D series.

Expect an updated body shell, greatly improved AF (probably borrowed from the Canon 7D) and a tweaked video shooting capability. We’d also stick our necks out and suggest that whatever replaces the Canon EOS 5D MK2 will have the Canon 60D’s (read our Canon 60D review) articulated LCD screen – but possibly with the addition of touch-sensitivity. If this turns out to be true, it would be the first full-frame camera to feature this technology.

2011 Canon EOS 6D / Canon EOS 5D Mark III release date probability: 75%- in fact, we expect a Canon 5D Mark III release date by early 2011.

Update June 2011: The EOS 5D MKII video capability has proved a major draw for professional photographers, especially photo journalists. It’s therefore very likely that Canon will enhance the video feature for the EOS 5D MK III or EOS 6D.

A key change is likely to be an extension in the range of frames rates that are available at full resolution. Full 1080p at 60fps seems a safe bet.

Video Snapshot: We’d also like to see the inclusion and enhancement of Canon’s Video Snapshot mode. In it’s current incarnation in Canon’s EOS 600D, Video Snapshot mode allows users to shoot snippets of video at predetermined lengths (2, 4 or 8sec), which are then stitched together automatically.

Canon may allow clips of different lengths to be combined and extend the level of in-camera editing of the clips to enable their order rearranged etc.

UPDATE – January 2011: The photography portfolio head of testing, Angela Nicholson, compiles her list of features she’d like to see on a Canon 6Drelease.