Geezer uncovers Windows XP "wallpaper"

A Vanity Fair hack has spent a year searching for where the default Windows XP wallpaper 'Serenity' was snapped.

While many would have thought that a Vanity Fair hack might have a bit more to report than hunting for the location of Windows "wallpaper", Nick Toshche seems to have had a bit of an obsession with the wallpaper picture of an autumn scene.

According to the Star newspaper. Toshche sifted through snaps of scenes from Lake Como in Italy to Colborne, in Southern Ontario, until he finally found what he was looking for in Burlington near Toronto.

Tosche admits his search was nuts in May, but he really liked the image. He said that the leaf-littered lane stole his heart one afternoon when he first glimpsed it. He said it was one of the toughest journalistic searches he had ever done. Now this is the bloke who once conned the Vatican into giving him a doctorate so he could gain access to hidden archives.

You would think he could just give Microsoft or Text 100 a bell, but even the Mighty Vole did not know where serenity could be found and besides it was more interested in Vista. It did think that the image was taken in Campbellville but it turned out it wasn't. The Everywhere Girl is easier to find.

Eventually, the tortured hack found the picture in the Corbis database, a library with more than 70 million images for sale, but it did not say where it was.

Toshche found the photographer Peter Burian shot the picture along with hundreds of frames in October 1999 while he was testing lenses for a photography trade magazine. He sent it to Corbis, where Microsoft bought it for $300. Burian's got $45 for appearing on all those XP machines. The Everywhere Girl got $100 ten years ago and no repeat fees at all. Such is life. µ