Last night I set my laptop to sleep, packed it into my computer backpack and went to bed. Today I brought it with me to work (as usual) and set it up on the desk, hit the power button and went to fetch a cup of coffee. When I returned to my office I was dismayed to find that the screen was black – pitch black. I moved the mouse… nothing happened, hmmm.. I used the touchpad… nothing happened… What the… I hit CTRL-ALT-DEL… still nothing… Okay, probably Bill Gates at work, so I held down the power button for 4 seconds and the machine powered down. I hit it again and waited for the usual HP logo screen… NOTHING!? and then… a long beep, and then two short ones. NOOOOOO… The videocard has died, and since this is embedded on the motherboard the whole thing needs to be replaced.

I contacted HP customer support, but since the warranty expired a long time ago, I mean – I bought this machine October 2006 – no immediate luck there. But, Norwegian consumer laws to the rescue. Under law I have 5 years in which I can complain and have the machine fixed. So I submitted my claim to HP and are now waiting their response, which I should have sometime tomorrow. (Wish me luck)

Being impatient I went to some online stores to see if there were any laptops I could think of purchasing if it comes to that. Microsoft has been running a lot of ads centering on the fact that Apple machines are way to expensive compared to PCs that are available. Well, are they?

Living in Norway, I went to Apples online store and was shocked to see the prices there:

For a 13 inch MacBook with and 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive they wanted a whooping kr 11.000,- (approximately 1500 US dollars). No way…

Then I went to komplett.no, one of Norway’s largest online computer shops and found this beauty;

A HP (yes, again) Pavilion dv5-1190 15,4 inch laptop, with a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB RAM and  a 320 GB Hard drive for kr 7500 (approximately 1100 US dollars).

So, in other words a much larger screen, double the amount of RAM and double the amount of storage for kr 3500 less? Maybe my taste is awful, but I do think that the HP is every bit as appealing to the eye as the MacBook, so why the difference in price? It must be the silhouette of that one bite Golden Delicious on the front…

Conclusion;

None so far, other than the fact that a snowball would survive in hell before I buy a Mac (or their prices have to drop significantly).

For now I am waiting for HPs response, and hopefully a repair of my laptop. You know, I really like my HP dv9074ea. It was purchased 2 1/2 years ago, which is a long time when it comes to computers, but it’s specs can still hold up, and it ran (hopefully runs) Windows 7 beautifully!

Wish me and my laptop luck! 🙂

Microsoft published this page today clearly stating that Windows 7 RC will be publicly available starting May 5, 2009. As a TechNet member I have gone to my downloads page, but alas, it is not yet available. Will update this post as soon as it goes live there.

Good times…

And oh by the way; if it is made available before May on TechNet and MSDN I think that Paul Thurrott actually got it (mostly) right in his predictions… 😉

This article was originally written by Pål Joakim Olsen in norwegian for DinSide. The article was released as a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike and has been translated and republished here under the same CC-license.

Microsoft has offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the creators of the Conficker worm. This clearly indicates how dangerous this worm is considered to be.

And tomorrow is D-day. On 1 April Conficker.C strikes. The date is hardly random, since most headlines on that day is not necessarily taken seriously. What makes the Conficker worm extra dangerous is that on top of blocking access to security-related web-sites it also blocks many AV suites and programs as well as Windows Update.

It is estimated that as many as 10 million Windows machines around the world are ticking bombs. It is not well known the full extent of what will happen tomorrow,  but we do know that infected computers will “phone home” to a number servers to get instructions (250 new URLs are aggregated daily, and rumors has it that by tomorrow the total will be around 50.000). So basically the infected computers is part of a giant botnet that is under the control of the creators of the Conficker-worm.

The issued instructions will make the infected computers to start a process – which process is not yet known – it will probably take down large parts of the internet, but it may also perform unwanted local changes to the infected computers.

This is serious. Your computer might be infected, and nobody knows exactly what might happen tomorrow.  Fortunately, by investing a few minutes now you can safeguard yourself from whatever is supposed to happen tomorrow.

Here are some of your options;

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

Microsoft recommends Windows users to download the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool manually. This tool can then be run in order to remove malicious software, among them the Conficker-worm.

F-Secure Easy Clean

F-Secure has a free tool to kill the Conficker-worm and you can find it here

McAfee Stinger

McAfee has made a special version of their Stinger-tool which is tailor-made to handle the Conficker-worm. You can find it here.

Panda ActiveScan

Panda has a web-solution that does not require neither download or installation, and you can run it from here. According to the Panda approximately 6% of those who ran this check were infected with the Conficker worm.

or…

Use OpenDNS!

DinSide has covered OpenDNS earlier, and to put it simply, with OpenDNS you can surf the net both quicker and safer by changing the IP-adress from your Internet Service Providers to the ones provided by OpenDNS. (this is easier than it sounds)

OpenDNS cooperates with Kaspersky Lab in order to update the list of malicious servers daily, so that your computer (infected or not) will not be able to connect with those servers.

URL: http://www.opendns.com
The article covering it (in Norwegian) can be found here.

Do the internet and your friends a favor: Tell them about this article!

Personally I recommend the following; update Windows regularly (automatic updates) and use an updated and good AV-suite, I use and recommend Norton Internet Security 2009.

This Microsoft illustration shows how the Conficker-worm operates.

UPDATE:

Ed Bott has written a scathing article over on ZDNet where he ridicules McAfee for their Conficker site. And rightly so: the URL are conspicious to say the least (see the link above) and the About section is just hilarious. So I rec0mmend you follow Eds advise and go somewhere else for your security!