Microsoft releases a free beta of Acrylic, an "illustration, painting and graphics tool" that works presumably with pixels and vectors (I'm no graphics designer.. what else is there besides these two?).

Currently standing at a mere 77mb download, it's hard to imagine how Acrylic can challenge the incumbent behemoth Photoshop. It's nice to see Adobe getting decent competition though. Perhaps it's not a standalone installer. Maybe I should go install it. I shudder at installing a Microsoft Beta product though, seeing how bugridden their official releases are.

Pretty website:

Update: Guy reviews Acrylic, gets flamed. Slashdot posts an entry pointing to the "initial review", gets flamed.

Filed under: Technology, Microsoft, Blogging