Hey everyone, want to make your Christmas special? Enter the HP Magic Giveaway Contest on Gearlive.com and get the chance to win 4 computers and accessories you can share with family and friends or give to a charity you have in mind. :)

Some persons Christmas will be very special this year!

Here is a list of the prizes:

• HP TouchSmart IQ816 – Windows 7, Windows 7, Windows 7!
• HP HDX18 Premium Notebook PC
• HP Pavilion dv4 Entertainment Notebook PC
• HP Mini 1000 (Windows XP)
• HP MediaSmart Connect
• HP Photosmart C6380 Wireless All-in-One printer
• HP 564 Photo Value Pack
• Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 with 3 licenses
• Microsoft WIndows Live
• Corel VideoStudio X
• Kung-Fu Panda on Blu-ray disc, and two DVDs

NeoWin.net has a link to a Google Calendar with the starting dates for each contest.

A few websites have already started their contest:

• GearLive
• Windows-Connected
• Bleeping-Computer
•  Jake Ludington’s HP Magic Giveaway
• Techie Diva
• Notebooks.com’s Magic Giveaway with HP and Microsoft learn more here

Contest Updates:

• http://merlotmom.blogspot.com/2008/12/its-here-hp-magic-giveaway-begins.html

Its quite overwhelming when you think about what HP, Microsoft and so many sites are giving away. HP has exemplified something here, the gift of giving, so why not do the same? If I were to win all this hardware, I definitely could not keep it all. My brother would absolutely love an upgrade from his XP machine to the HP HDX 18 and my other brother would be excited about the HP Mini 1000. Why I would love to win this contest is specifically for the HP Touch Smart and media smart. The all in one printer and laptop I most likely would give away as a Christmas gift to a lucky member at the up coming Church harvest. A lot of folks are in rough economic times (world-wide)right now, giving somebody a laptop might not necessarily make ones life completely better, but its a nice gesture that will make their holidays a very special and memorable one in addition to starting off the New Year with a bang. This collection of devices is screaming, show the good in you, so why not make the 'smart' choice of sharing the magic too.

Learn more about the contest and all 50 participating websites:

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/blogger-magic/

Now seems to be an awfully good time to be a student. If the HP Magic Giveaway has got your heart pumping for some high-stake freebies and you’re currently enrolled in a higher education (college, university or technical school) institution, then Max Zuckerman from Microsoft’s student Channel8 community has an offer for you.

The competition, now in its second year, involves Max putting together a killer PC system (this year a Media Center) with components suggested (and sometimes disputed) by the community. The selfless guy then gives the finished system to one lucky random winner from the pool of users who contributed at least a comment. Not bad since all you do is suggest the most expensive components you can find. Microsoft’s paying right?

So far they’ve picked a case, CPU and motherboard. Currently discussing memory.

Students from any country can participate. Head over to the Channel8 site for more details.

We see a lot of hard disks in the market today that come in large sizes. We see 80 gigabyte hard drives up to 160 gigabyte. That is quite a large storage capacity if you compare it to the old ones we have some years back and one thing you should be aware of is that the larger the storage, the risky it is as far as perhaps losing data once the hard disk crashes or breaks down.

The best way to go about it is to partition the hard drives into smaller parts. For example, you can partition an 80 gigabyte hard disk into 2 40 gigabytes or even 4 20 gigabyte drives. As you can see, even in smaller partitions, they are still big and normally for most operating systems like Windows Vista or Windows XP, the most you would need would be about 4 gigabyte at the most.

When it comes to installing software, you can install it on the other drive letters assigned. For example, you can install MS Office in drive D or an anti-virus software in drive E. This helps ensure that you are balancing the applications you are installing which in the end can save you the trouble of losing space.

For documents, you don’t have to always follow the usual My Documents on the C drive. You can configure it in a way that it is saved on the other drives. Or if you are lazy to configure, the beauty of partitioning is that you can easily transfer in between drives so that if crashes occur you can retrieve the files and transfer them via DOS or Windows.

Partitioning can be done on the setup menu during your first installation of Windows. Decide and then assign what partition size you want and then install from there.

Description of Winweb Security 2008 and consequences of its residing on your PC

Winweb Security 2008 is a perfect way to make your PC powerless and defenceless; some users pay for registration of this program and believe they are running protected from viruses with Winweb Security 2008 . In reality, Winweb Security 2008 facilitates upload of trojans and viruses when installed as trialware and in case user is not registering (does not pay for registration) the free copy, and only imitates activity to be performed by true security program after upgrade to the full version. There is no reason to have doubts, it is the best measure if this malware infected your machine, to remove Winweb Security 2008 without long-lasting consideration.
It is a method applied by hackers when they are suggesting users to install free copy of Winweb Security 2008 or installing this copy without users’ contest by applying various trickery (trojans, covered link technique etc.) Shadowed installation itself harms targeted machine and may lead to system performance depreciation. It is absolutely necessary to get rid of Winweb Security 2008 in case you need your computer to run at its full capacity. Click here and start free scan with further Winweb Security 2008 removal, including any bundled or independent malware, virus or trojan.

Winweb Security 2008 Technical Details

• Full name: Winweb Security 2008. WinwebSecurity 2008
• Version: 2008
• Type: Rogue anti-spyware
• Origin: Russian Federation

Winweb Security 2008 Screenshot (click to enlarge):

Signs of being infected with Winweb Security 2008:

There are several popular alerts used to suggest the purchase of Winweb Security 2008; they are normally produced by trialware of Winweb Security 2008. The alert looks like follows (the text may vary from case to case):

Winweb Security Warning
Your PC is still infected with dangerous viruses. Activate
antivirus protection to prevent data loss and to avoid the
theft of your credit card details.
Click here to activate protection.

If you have noted something like this popping up nearby desktop toolbar, this may disclose the rogue very early and let you remove Winweb Security 2008 almost immediately after its installation. This period, when Winweb Security 2008 shows only alerts of such content, lasts during several Windows sessions. Such alerts, if you click on them, appear to be the link to purchase form of Winweb Security 2008.
After “alerts only” period, Winweb Security starts screening pop-up every time Windows is loaded. The pop-up has usually blue and white background and entitled Winweb Security 2008 so that it is easy to identify the presence of this rogue as you see it. Winweb Security 2008 pop-up has option of scan, when you click on that command, instead of real scan, video of special format is shown to you. No investigation of disks is performed by Winweb Security 2008. Screenshot above is the typical Winweb Security 2008 pop-up.
Click here to scan computer for free and remove Winweb Security 2008, as well as other misleading and malicious software and viruses.

Automatic Removal of Winweb Security 2008 from your PC:

No matter how you remove Winweb Security 2008, if the removal is successful. It is a fast and safe way to remove Winweb Security 2008 with tool recommended below. Its advantage against manual removal is elimination of all related rogues identified during free scan. It does not matter how to remove Winweb Security 2008, if its removal is efficient and safe, but single Winweb Security 2008 removal may appear to be insufficient for total system cleanup. Follow the link below to download free scanner and then choose the way how to remove threats discovered (there are manual gudilines for Winweb Security 2008 removal below)

Download Winweb Security 2008 Removal Tool

Manual Removal of Winweb Security 2008:

Restart computer before removing WinwebSecurity2008 to ensure any program is not active and restart it after you complete Winweb Security 2008 removal process to make sure Winweb Security 2008 does not show its pop-up and alerts any more. Make the steps as prescribed in the instructions below in preassigned order, this would facilitate and speed up the removal of Winweb Security 2008.

Remove Winweb Security 2008 files and dll’s

config.udb
init.udb
WinwebSecurity.exe
English.lng

Unregister Winweb Security 2008 registry values:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D5DF7C9D-6069-4552-8B0C-D02A912FC889}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{D5DF7C9D-6069-4552-8B0C-D02A912FC889}
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run “WinwebSecurity”

Winweb Security 2008 Remover with free scan

Starting from today, three of the fifty participating blogs will be accepting entries for the jaw-dropping HP and Microsoft $6000 Magic Giveaway contest. This is not your average mousepad and a sticker giveaway, the prizepool includes a multi-touch PC, two laptops, a netbook, a printer, a media server and software. Suffice to say if you win this, it will make your Christmas and hopefully others around you too.

For the best chances of winning, make sure you visit each of the fifty blogs during their 7-day contest period. To make it easy for you to follow along, here are dates of all the blogs in fancy Google Calendar form and downloadable ICS format.

The competition on this site starts on Tuesday, December 2nd.

When you are planning to share an Internet connection at home a WiFi router is your best choice to get the job done. You don’t actually have to tinker around with configuration although some people would make sure that the only computers to access the Internet through their router would be the ones configured with passwords and gateways as supplied with the said router.

But if there is one thing you have to consider is that it would be best to place routes on elevated areas. If you have a two-storey house, place it on the second floor so that it can have better coverage as far as Internet access is concerned.

Some would be fine with having routers on the ground floor since that is where the main source of accessing the web is connected. But the matter of coverage of the Internet is something that may be of concern especially for large places to which limitations on accessing the web is concerned.

With that in mind, placement of routers is still essential as far as maximizing your airborne Internet access is concerned. Locate them in proper areas so that you can get the best coverage as far as where to access the web in any part of your home.

Besides, most of the people in your household are bound to want to access the web wherever they are. Expanding and practicing proper logic on how placement impacts Internet access is the best way to get your router’s worth.