Hackers bypass Windows 7 activation

From CNET News -

Hackers have managed to find a work-around on one of the key anti-piracy protections built into Windows 7, which allows the normal notifications to be turned off and let the user bypass activating the OS within the required 30 days. While the copy does not get confirmed as legitimate it can be used indefinitely.

GMABooster offers graphics boost for netbooks

From Tweaktown -

A programmer named Vladimir Plenskiy has developed a tweaking tool called GMABooster which apparently boosts your netbook's integrated Intel 950 graphics's performance by as much as 2.4 times. It does this by adjusting the clock speed from default 133MHz up to 400MHz, which is actually the setting of the GMA clock in a "normal" desktop Intel 945 chipset. Available for Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.

If you want to try this out, the download page is here. But do proceed with caution, as always.

AsTray Plus 1.3 adds 1000 x 600, 900 x 540 resolutions to the Asus Eee PC

Submitted by Brad Linder -

AsTray Plus 1.3 beta 2 is a software hack (Windows only) that enables virtual resolutions higher than the native resolution. While this isn't the first time someone has put together a hack that allows you to display non-standard resolutions on an Eee PC, it is the first time we've been able to use widescreen resolutions that look good on the Eee PC's widescreen display.

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You can read the details at Brad's Eeesite here. Original post is over at the Eeeuser forum.

Overclocking the Asus Eee PC with EeeCTL

Scalegamer has a straightforward piece on overclocking your Asus Eee PC with EeeCTL. EeeCTL features fan control, temperate display, CPU Clock Speed and CPU voltage adjustments.




The article, including download links, can be accessed here.

Increasing Asus Eee PC's Screen Resolution

Jaffa of the Eeeuser forum has posted a hack to increase the screen resolution to 960 x 576 and 1280 x 976 under Linux including the default Xandros install.

Screen at 960x576:




...and 1280x976:




It works by spawning a VNC server and then using a VNC client back to localhost. At the moment there are two flaws:

1) Ctrl-Alt-T opens a terminal in the master X session, rather than the one being watched. If launched from a menu, it doesn't render properly.

2)krdc, despite having options to start fullscreen and scaled, seems to ignore the options.

You can read the full thread, including complete instructions, here.

A 1 minute 640x480 stretch reversible hardware hack

From the Eeeuser forum, as posted by ziddan -

I was thinking today that perhaps its possible to fool the eee pc into thinking there is an external monitor plugged in.

After a lot googling i found the answer!

People installing OSX on intel laptops have been having problems with it BSODing if an external monitor was not plugged in.

Someone found a dead simple fix for it, i tried it on my eee.

Here is how to get the eee to think a monitor is plugged in:



Ive inserted pieces of a paper clip as per a picture from a mugan on the insanelymac forums.




With this the Eee PC detects a secondary monitor, meaning it can be set to clone mode, thereby 640x480 stretched with the standard driver.

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Additional information, including improved variations of the hack and screenshots, can be viewed here.

How to add internal 3G HSDPA to Asus Eee PC

From jkkmobile -



This mod works on any Asus Eee PC without the extra pcie slot. (so it's not good for 8G models which have that 8g ssd drive ) and not as easy on first 4g models with pcie connector in place ( you would need to cut 20 mm of from the pcb to make it fit).

Hacking the Eee PC

From Ars Technica, a good article regarding modding/hacking the Asus Eee PC. Some sample tips -

Virtual desktops

The Eee's small screen makes it difficult to see more than a few things at once, and switching between windows quickly becomes frustrating. Support for virtual desktops is one of the Eee basic model's coolest undocumented features. Out of the box, basic mode has four separate workspaces that you can switch between by holding Ctrl and Alt while pressing the left and right arrow keys. If you hold the shift key too, you can move the active window with you to a different workspace.

The Eee basic mode environment doesn't provide a graphical display of your workspaces, so it can be pretty easy to forget where you have your windows. To get a visual workspace display, you can run the kpager utility from the command line.


GVim and KPager running on the Eee.

You can also add a workspace switcher to the basic mode panel by creating an IceWM preferences file at ~/.icewm/preferences and adding the following lines:

TaskBarShowWorkspaces=1
WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 ", " 3 ", "

Installing extra IceWM themes

Alternate IceWM window themes can be downloaded from Freshmeat and installed into /usr/share/icewm/themes. Then, to switch between themes, add a theme chooser submenu to the IceWM start menu by adding the following line to ~/.icewm/preferences:

ShowThemesMenu=1

Fixing the fonts

By default, the Eee uses size 10 fonts in most of the programs, which may or may not to be your liking. Unfortunately, there is no central location where you can go to change all the font sizes. You have to configure the font sizes individually for Firefox, GTK, and KDE. To change the default KDE font size, launch the kcontrol utility from the command line, navigate to the Display/Themes/Fonts page, and change the font sizes.

The Eee doesn't come with the GNOME font configuration utility, so you will have to create a custom ~/.gtkrc file to set up a default GTK font. In my .gtkrc file, I also force GTK to omit labels from toolbar buttons in order to save more screen space. This is my ~/.gtkrc file on the Eee:

gtk-font-name = "Sans 8"
gtk-toolbar-style = GTK_TOOLBAR_ICONS

To change the default interface font size in Firefox, you will have to modify the chrome css file, which is located at ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default/chrome/userChrome.css. This is what I put in my userChrome.css file to make the interface use font size 8:

* {
font-family: sans-serif !important;
font-size: 8pt !important;
}

You could probably also customize Thunderbird's default font size with a userChrome.css modification.

You can read the complete article which lists a lot of other tips and info here.

WiFi Modification

TexasGuy of the Eeeuser forum has posted a step-by-step tutorial on replacing original AzureWave 802.11b/g with a Gigabyte a/b/g/n mini pci-e card.

The old AzureWave card.




The new Gigabyte card.




Step-by-step tutorial including photos can be read here.