Henk van de Goor's Bloggers@large

2009 is going to be an annoying year for Windows users. My girlfriend already found that out in the last weeks for Xmas. The latest malware that hackers use to penetrate your computer goes in the form of fake webpages that act and behave like a virus scanner (see image on the top left). They pop-up pretenting to be either an XP or Vista alert and when you do not watch out what you're doing, download a file like SpywareGuard2008.exe which is not an anti-spyware program, but actually malware/spyware disguised as anti-spyware.

In my case I was just surfing the web with Safari on my MacBook Pro when I encountered a website that tried to convince my Mac it was actually an infected PC. When I clicked on the screen it just download SpywareGuard2008.exe. Off course that does not fly on a Mac.

Since I'm an IT expert (ahum) I'm not impressed by these attempts: since 1995 I've never had a virus. But for the not so knowledgeable people this really might look like a genuine problem and they will be presuaded to install the program.

In case you did so: get rid of it by installing either one of these legitimate anti-malware/spyware programs:

Lavasoft Ad-Aware Free
HitmanPro 3

Video of the malware in action:

There is finally something exiting happening again in the universe of the Net, now that Google has launched Chrome. As I wrote, I installed it on my PC right away to discover how fast it really is. Also, as was to be expected, there where a couple of nice bugs found right after the launch and a few of them killed the whole "stability" story behind Chrome. To their credit, these bug have been fixed already by Google.

Anyhow: if you want to hear about the story behind Google Chrome, here is a video from Google in which they give you the details on it's conception and the whole idea behind it.

If Google keeps up the good work with Chrome, I'm quite sure it may become my default browser!

Ok, so So I bought a nice Asus Eee PC 900 last month. After tinkering around a while with the Xandros Linux distribution that came with it, I decided to install the Eeebuntu Netbook Remix RC1 on it. It looks very nice but still I didn't feel I got what I wanted from it. So about a week ago I decided to install good old Windows XP on it. And as much as I would love to run Linux on my Eee PC I have to admit that XP is just so much easier and and offers 100% more compatibility. It runs all essential apps that I need and - most important - I can encrypt both SSD's (solid state disk) with TrueCypt, so I know for sure that there is no privacy problem if I ever lose my Eee PC or it get's stolen.

So I have installed a ton of apps on it and my precious Eee PC has become the ultimate portable tool: much like my Swiss pocketknife.

After all that, there was one thing if found my Eee PC lacked: nice, spiffy backgrounds aka wallpapers for my desktop! As I found out quickly, the usual backgrounds do not render well on the tiny 1024x600 pixel screen. A pity, because I have a ton of nice backgrounds for the PC on my web album.

Therefor I decided that I would do something back for the Eee community and spend some hours this weekend (it was raining cats and dogs anyway), resizing some of my own desktop background favorites especially for the Eee PC 900.

So if you want some nice, cool backgrounds, head over to my free Eee PC 900 desktop background library library and start downloading the goodies! As of today there are 224 backgrounds available (and growing!), like the one that comes with this article.

So enjoy!

Ps: if you like me to include some of your own home-made wallpapers, just e-mail them to me (including the information you like me to include) at: eeepc[at]vandegoor.com.

Just picked it up 30 minutes ago! Can't believe I got it already: they said that it might take 2-3 months, but here it is: my own Asus Eee PC 900 (the improved Eee PC by Asus).

Wow, I'm impressed with my new PC for sure. It's a blast for real. I don't know where to begin telling what I like about it, but let's start with the fact that it's blazing fast compared to my P4 2.8ghz. Vista is very responsive and everything worked straight away out of the box. Windows Media Center is really cool! I very much enjoy watching TV on my Pc and having a DVR (digital video recorder). The program guide works well and I had no trouble installing the IR-remote. The 20" flat screen is very nice looking and is pixel perfect.

And the videocard performs just... awesome! I installed a bunch of games like Battlefield 2 and they al perform very well at the highest resolutions. I was particulary impressed with Half-Life2. It just looks visually stunning! HDR (High Dynamic Range) is looking very nice. And even at 1680x1050 with everything turned on high detail and 6xAA on it got a 135fps doing the performance test.

I did install Crysis and it looks very nice with all details on very high; I haven't had a chance yet to benchmark that but it really is cool to have a PC that is able to run anything I throw at it.

The only thing is that I now have to re-arrange my 7 PC's so this one fits in somewhere ;-)