Technical Support | Managed Hosting

Exjinn Sup­port Ser­vices is proud to assist Dave’s Best Lim­ou­sine in the upcom­ing relaunch of their website.

Since 1973, peo­ple have con­sis­tently called on Dave’s Best Lim­ou­sine Ser­vice when pro­fes­sion­al­ism, punc­tu­al­ity, safety and depend­abil­ity mat­ter — mak­ing Dave’s Best Lim­ou­sine Ser­vice the pre­miere shut­tle ser­vice in the Delaware Valley.

     Nearly every com­puter user is famil­iar with that age-old frus­tra­tion: in the mid­dle of a project, whether the cre­ation of a doc­u­ment, a series of in-depth research queries, or even at that crit­i­cal moment within a game, some­thing with a pro­gram goes wrong, and all of one’s work is sud­denly, and inex­plic­a­bly, lost. Even those with lit­tle to no bad mem­o­ries to report about ruined effort can attest to expe­ri­enc­ing their favorite pro­grams fail­ing to oper­ate prop­erly at one point or another. Some­times, these prob­lems will mys­te­ri­ously solve them­selves, leav­ing users to won­der when they’ll rear their ugly heads next. But often, they sig­nal some deeper issue that requires pro­fes­sional help to rec­tify. It is at this point that com­puter users often find them­selves truly stuck: tech­ni­cal sup­port for soft­ware is sig­nif­i­cantly lack­ing for even the most pricey pro­grams. For those con­sid­er­ing going open source — tak­ing advan­tage of the global com­mu­nity that devel­ops and uses free, cus­tomiz­able soft­ware — this frus­trat­ing sce­nario is a thing of the past.
     Tech­ni­cal sup­port for major mod­ern, pri­vate pro­grams is usu­ally based on a help file accessed within the pro­gram itself; these pre-fabricated “guides” tend to address only those issues under­stood by the com­pany itself at the time of the program’s release, leav­ing many poten­tial prob­lems unad­dressed. And of course, if you can’t start a given pro­gram to begin with, get­ting it to dis­play its help man­ual may be a slight chal­lenge. One answer to this prob­lem devel­oped over the past few years is to host this help guide online at the company’s site, how­ever this does lit­tle for users with com­plex or eso­teric issues. These users are, in gen­eral, forced to look for what lit­tle com­mu­nity sup­port exists, either online at an enthusiast’s forum, or in the real world via a paid , how­ever this does lit­tle for users with com­plex or eso­teric issues. These users are, in gen­eral, forced to look for what lit­tle com­mu­nity sup­port exists, either online at an enthusiast’s forum, or in the real world via a paid expert or par­tic­u­larly com­puter savvy col­league. The prob­lem with these options is that online sup­port gurus are far and few between — who wants to spend their time sup­ply­ing advice for pro­pri­etary, costly pro­grams based on secret, red-taped code? And what user enjoys shelling out their hard-earned cash to get a paid tech­ni­cian to fix some­one else’s pro­gram?
     Open source pro­grams by their very nature encour­age peo­ple to share their insight and exper­tise sur­round­ing a pro­gram itself and its poten­tial prob­lems (as well as oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment and expan­sion). As a result, users find that these pro­grams have large and thriv­ing online groups ded­i­cated to help­ing each other solve issues — as well as manip­u­late the pro­gram itself to help ensure bet­ter func­tion­al­ity in the future. This free and gen­uine spirit of sup­port is far supe­rior to the lim­ited trou­bleshoot­ing of pri­vate pro­grams, and is one of the open source community’s major assets. And these sup­port groups are eas­ily found online; a sim­ple search for a given pro­gram will yield many options, from estab­lished pro­fes­sional groups with refined and detailed man­u­als to more rus­tic forums and venues for up to date, in depth res­o­lu­tions. Make the imper­sonal and often unhelp­ful sup­port file of pri­vate pro­grams a thing of the past and let open source sup­port your busi­ness through any problem.

Graphic design­ers and dig­i­tal artists of all dis­ci­plines, per­haps more inti­mately than any other cat­e­gory of com­puter user, are famil­iar with the eas­ily sky­rock­et­ing costs of lead­ing appli­ca­tions. Stu­dent dis­counts, pirated copies, and fre­quent treks to the office or a pub­lic com­puter clus­ter can help keep the expense of artistry within man­age­able lev­els, yet this strug­gle with one’s own vir­tual paint box is detri­men­tal to design.

Open source appli­ca­tions are free to use, and have scores of asso­ci­ated guides, help com­mu­ni­ties, extras, and more, mak­ing them an obvi­ous answer for any­one tired of play­ing the high-priced game of pri­vate soft­ware. For graphic design­ers and artists, the use of tools that com­pli­ment your abil­i­ties and allow for true cus­tomiza­tion while cost­ing noth­ing are invalu­able, and these appli­ca­tions can become essen­tial com­po­nents of a cre­ative career.

One of the most widely used and expen­sive graphic pro­grams on the mar­ket today is Adobe’s Pho­to­shop, which is renowned for its com­plex­ity, con­fus­ing inter­face, and costly price tag. This prod­uct has actu­ally spawned an entirely sep­a­rate indus­try solely devoted to help­ing peo­ple try to under­stand the seem­ingly end­less eccen­tric­i­ties of the appli­ca­tion with books, man­u­als, videos, and even accred­ited courses. An artist with the time, patience, and pock­et­book power nec­es­sary to mas­ter Pho­to­shop is in fact bestowed with a tool capa­ble of refined cre­ative expres­sion and artis­tic out­put. But many users find them­selves daunted by the program’s eso­teric func­tion­ing and are unable to afford it any­way (and with fre­quent updates to pur­chase to stay on the cut­ting edge, buy­ing Pho­to­shop is no guar­an­tee of fully func­tional use). So what is a designer to do? As with most endeav­ors, cre­ativ­ity and col­lec­tive effort save the day — open source pro­grams are freely avail­able and allow for pre­cise, pow­er­ful design­ing no less func­tional than Pho­to­shop, but cer­tainly more accessible.

One of the lead­ing open source graphic pro­grams cur­rently avail­able is GIMP, or the Gnu Image Manip­u­la­tion Pro­gram. With a sim­ple foun­da­tion and loads of add-ons and extras avail­able around the web, GIMP is capa­ble of craft­ing qual­ity design work with­out wad­ing through exces­sive man­u­als or shelling out hun­dreds of dollars.

Of course, design­ers today can make use of many dif­fer­ent kinds of tools and appli­ca­tions, and as some com­pa­nies vie for vast prof­its with over­priced and pri­vate pro­grams, the open source com­mu­nity is devel­op­ing an arse­nal all its own. Some use­ful high­lights include Scribus, a pro­gram ded­i­cate to web page lay­out design and “pub­li­ca­tion ready” copy, QCAD, an appli­ca­tion for two-dimensional CAD ren­der­ing and manip­u­la­tion, and Mis­fit Model 3D, a model edi­tor with an excit­ing yet easy to use array of func­tions. These pro­grams are all free to use, are exten­sively sup­ported and updated with com­mu­nity effort, an encour­age open, rea­son­able, and respon­si­ble appli­ca­tion cod­ing; a fresh breath of air for those used to the con­fines of pri­vate soft­ware. With these ver­sa­tile tools, artists can embrace their cre­ativ­ity, increase pro­duc­tiv­ity, and pro­claim their inde­pen­dence from expen­sive and eccen­tric soft­ware programs.