Widescreen LCD Monitor on Eee PC

I tested a Philips 220EW8FB LCD monitor on my Eee PC. It is 21.6" with response time 5ms, resolution 1680 x 1050, contrast ratio 1000:1 and brightness 300cd/sq m. Also, it is HDCP ready and accepts dual input VGA & DVI. The resolutions supported by Eee PC are as follows:

1. 800 x 600
2. 1024 x 768
3. 1152 x 864
4. 1280 x 720
5. 1280 x 960
6. 1280 x 1024
7. 1400 x 1050
8. 1440 x 900
9. 1600 x 900
   

Personal Computer World April 2008

Features

1. Ultimate desktops vs ultimate laptops
2. Colour laser MFDs
3. The evolution of PC gaming

Cover CD (Free Paid Full Version)

1. McAfee Internet Security 2008 (90-days license)
2. PC Tools Desktop Maestro 2.0 (1 year license)
3. Ashampoo Photo Commander 5

Australian PC Authority April 2008

Features

1. eBay Exposed! Friend or Foe?
2. Windows Home Server

Cover DVD (Free Paid Version)

1. Avanquest Driver Genius 6
2. Magix Music Maker silver
3. Large Software PC Tune-Up
4. Bluesquad PC Booster
5. Webroot Desktop Firewall 5.5
6. Reallusion Crazytalk Messenger
7. Steganos Safe One

Putting Ultimate Boot CD on USB Flash Drive

If you're buying a Linux/Mac laptop without a built-in optical drive, it is impractical to bring along an external optical drive for running Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) just to check for defective pixels on the LCD screen. The solution is to put UBCD on a USB flash drive with at least 114MB of free space .

1. Download ubcd411.iso and burn it to a CD.
2. Test booting the CD to make sure it works.
   
3. Copy all the contents of CD to the USB flash drive.
4. Download syslinux-3.36.zip and unzip the files to c:\syslinux
   
5. Click Start -> Run & type cmd.
6. Type cd c:\syslinux\win32
7. Type syslinux -ma u: (replace u with your USB flash drive letter) to make the drive bootable.
8. Restart computer and set your BIOS to boot from your USB flash drive.
9. Select Mainboard Tools, Peripherals Tools & CHZ Monitor-Test

For Windows laptop, you can run Dead Pixel Buddy or UD Pix directly from the USB flash drive without installation.

Checking Defective Pixels on LCD Screen

There are three types of pixel defects:

1. Type 1 - a stuck bright white pixel which is constantly illuminated (Hot pixels - always on)
2. Type 2 - a fixed black spot which is not illuminated in any way (Dead pixels - always off)
3. Type 3 - a pixel which shows up as a fixed single colour (not black or white) (Stuck pixels - one or more sub-pixels are always on or always off)

To check dead pixel, you can download Dead Pixel Buddy or UD Pix. UD Pix also allows you to rejuvenate Type 1 and 3 faults by flashing colours across them rapidly. Both programs run on Windows OS only.
How do you check the LCD screens for Linux/Mac laptops? If these laptops have a built-in or external optical drive, you can still boot up from Ultimate Boot CD and run CHZ Monitor Test 1.01 to check.

PC Advisor April 2008

Features

1. Faster, safer Wi-Fi
   
2. XP to Vista
   

Cover DVD (Free Paid Version)

1. Ashampoo AntiVirus (Windows XP/Vista) (6 months of free updates)
   
2. Serif PagePlus 8.0 PDF Edition
   
3. CrazyTalk 4 SE
   

AVG 8.0 Released

Grisoft now AVG Technologies has released AVG 8.0. For home users, the products are AVG Anti-virus, AVG Anti-virus plus firewall, AVG Internet Security. The differences are here. I decided to test AVG Internet Security which includes Anti-Spam and System Tools. System Tools consist of Processes, Network Connections, Autostart, Browser Extensions & LSP Viewer. After installation, I tested the effectiveness to detect malware using eicar. It detected eicar.com automatically when you download but you have to scan manually after downloading to detect eicar.com.txt, eicar_com.zip & eicarcom2.zip. With AVG Active Surf-Shield disabled in LinkScanner, I proceeded to test whether exploits can be detected. As shown, Internet Explorer 6 SP2 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 failed as expected. But when I enabled AVG Active Surf-Shield in LinkScanner, only Mozilla Firefox passed with a pop-up message while IE6 SP2 failed completely. I have not installed AVG firewall as Sygate Personal Firewall is more effective. The leaktest failed when Web Shield is active and AVG Active Surf-Shield is enabled in LinkScanner. In the end, I rather have a working firewall than Web Shield and Active Surf-Shield. Unlike LinkScanner Pro, AVG 8.0 does not have the ability to check any web links for exploits by right clicking the links although AVG Search-Shield when enabled does check web search results automatically when using Google.