Sunday, 21 June 2009

Internet Security for the Acer Aspire One

Now that I'm running Windows XP on my Acer Aspire One, I'm aware that I need to protect my AA1 against Viruses and other Internet threats.

I'm also aware that I need to minimize the overhead on the humble processor in the AA1 so I've found a few useful utilities which seem to do the trick.

Internet Browser: Firefox Version 3

Given the recent security alterts around Internet Explorer I made sure that the browser on my Acer Aspire One was FireFox Version 3. Firefox includes strict anti-phishing and anti-malware measures and has an open source process to include new security updates.

More information on the security facilities in Firefox can be found here.


Firewall: Windows Firewall


What's a firewall? (from Wiki)
A firewall is an integrated collection of security measures designed to prevent unauthorized electronic access to a networked computer system. It is also a device or set of devices configured to permit, deny, encrypt, decrypt, or proxy all computer traffic between different security domains based upon a set of rules and other criteria.

Windows Firewall is the standard firewall that comes free with Windows XP.


Anti Virus Software for the Acer Aspire One: Avast!
Avast! is a free (for home users) anti virus software, downloadable from http://www.avast.com/eng/download.html

Avast! is aimed at preventing several types of computer threats, including those that are not technically computer viruses such as spyware and even rogue anti-spyware, and can also make a virus Recovery DataBase which is used to recover files when they are infected (instead of deleting them). The program is available with text and voice translations for 27 languages.

Script Protection for the Acer Aspire One: NoScript

Many websites contain scripts, often these are harmless and need to be run, but sometimes these scripts are malicious and install malware on your computer. NoScript gives the choice back to you of if you want a site to be able to run scripts or not. No script will be able to run unless you give it permission to do so, this might sound like a pain but you can set NoScript to always allow scripts from your favourite page...so you can forget about it after you have set it once for your page.

Saturday, 20 June 2009

Windows XP has now been installed on my Acer Aspire One

I'm finally installed Windows XP on my Acer Aspire One.
It wasn't as easy as I had imagined, I originally had hoped to plug in an external drive using the process described in my post here, and boot from my Windows XP disk. Unfortunately the setup process crashed twice so I searched the internet for a different approach.

Fortunately there is another option.
Check out this process here to see how to install Rons TinyXP.
There is a guy out there who has created a optimised installation of Windows XP for the Acer Aspire One, and it looks to work really well. The original download link has now expired BUT a quick google search will help you find it.

So far so good. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Sunday, 14 June 2009

A great article on tweaking the Acer Aspire One

Whilst I'm finding time to install Windows XP I thought I would share this.
A post on the Acer Aspire One forum reminded me of a great article I read on the register site on how to tweak your AA1.

The article in full can be found by clicking here and it worth a read for every AA1 owner.

If anybody else knows of any good articles on getting the most out of the Acer Aspire one then please feel fee to post them in the comments section of this post.

Sunday, 7 June 2009

Wow - Time flies


Well we are still using Ubuntu - and the plan is still to change to Windows XP.

I've just not had a spare couple of hours to do the installation - hopefully over the next week I'll get it done.

Wednesday, 27 May 2009

The Results are in....


As mentioned in this post I asked the readers of the Acer One Users forums to recommend which Operating System I should install next.

The result that came back, shown in the graph above, was that I should try Windows XP, so this weekend I will try and install it and post here how it goes.

Tuesday, 19 May 2009

Thinking of changing OS but which one?

In this post I described how I had installed Ubuntu on my AA1, but as mentioned here, I wasn't really happy with the speed of the OS.

So I'm on the verge of going back to Linpus but before I do I thought I would ask the users of the Acer One Users forums if they could recommend a different OS.

I've got a poll on the forum so I'll see what comes back.

Thursday, 14 May 2009

How to install Itunes on the Acer Aspire One (running Ubuntu)

For a bit of fun I thought I would see if I could get Itunes to run using Wine.

Wine is available to install from the Synaptic Package Manager, and after it is installed it adds an extra tab to the menu on the left hand side of the screen.

I then downloaded the latest version of Itunes from the apple site, and unfortunately the install wouldn't complete, so I was about to give up.

However I manager to find an earlier version of Itunes for download so I thought I would give it a go, and it looks to work.

After Wine was installed, I downloaded Itunes verion 7.7 from here.
Wine then opened the install file and installed the application, and an Itunes icon was placed in the Wine Tab.


The application loads ok, I haven't yet played with any of the Wine configuration settings so there may be more work to do yet.

Sunday, 10 May 2009

Ubuntu is slower then Linpus on the Acer Aspire One

I've been using Ubuntu for about a week now on my AA1 and here are my impressions so far.

The ubuntu interface is much better and easier to configure then the default Linpus Interface and tasks are generally much easy to perform.

However the AA1 performs better running Linpus, Sites like Youtube and Iplayer and significanlty slower to load and are jerkier when running on Ubuntu.

I'm looking into this but I'm tempted to move back to Linpus.

Sunday, 3 May 2009

How to install Flash player on Ubuntu

In this post I described how I installed Ubuntu on my AA1.

One of the first problems I noticed was that BBC IPlayer and You Tube wouldn't play videos.
This is because Flash Player doesn't come installed as standard on Ubunto Netbook Remix edition.

The solution is quick and easy.
1) In the left hand Ubuntu Menu select Administration.

2) Select Synaptic Package Manager.
3) Enter you Admin password if required.

4) Type Flash in the quick search box.
5) Tick the flashplugin-installer addon.
6) Click Apply - Flash player will now install.

BBC Iplayer and YouTube now work fine. :-)

Installing Ubuntu on the Acer Aspire One.

In this post I mentioned that my Acer Aspire One had started a crashing loop. although the problem looked to have corrected itself I decided to re-install the operating system.

I've taken this opportunity to look at Ubuntu, to see how it matches up to the originally supplied Linpus.

To install Ubuntu I first installed the Netbook Remix edition to an auto booting USB stick using a Windows application. Following the instructions here. (Shown below)

  1. Download the desired .img file ( I downloaded the Netbook Remix edition from here)
  2. Download Disk Imager from https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/+download

  3. Insert your flash media
  4. Note the drive letter assigned to your flash media
  5. Start Disk Imager
  6. Select the downloaded file and target device, and click "Write"
  7. Remove your flash media when the operation is complete
I then booted from the USB to make sure that the system worked and used the Ubuntu install application.

The whole process went well, and my intial impressions of Ubuntu are favourable.

Saturday, 2 May 2009

Acer Aspire One is working again.

Well how bizzare.

Despite a morning of constant crashing, I've just tried my AA1 8 hrs later, and it's worked first time without crashing.


Strange but good. ;-)

My AA1 has started crashing on boot.

Bad news: My Acer Aspire One has stopped loading sucessfully.

It gets to a point where it displays the desktop and then 5 seconds later it crashes.

So I'm going to rebuild it from scratch - I just need to decide which OS to use.

Unfortunatly I'm away from home until Tuesday so my AA1 will be out of action until then. :-(

Thursday, 23 April 2009

Wednesday, 15 April 2009