- Solving your Vista sleep problems (really)
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Posted by oVan on Monday, May 21, 2007 | PermaLink | 10 commentsOnce upon a time
I've posted before of my journeys into solving Vista sleep problems. Although using the latest nVidia drivers for the video card certainly eliminated a lot of lockups, the truth is that the problems on my Dell Precision Workstation 690 never really went away.
In my original post Fix: How-to solve your Vista sleep problems I touched the possibility that nVidia wasn't the only one having trouble writing decent drivers. If you have a sound card from Creative you probably know what I mean.
It struck me that sometimes upon booting or waking Vista from sleep (whenever that worked) there was no sound from the speakers. A quick look at the device manager didn't show anything unusual, and the volume mixer was looking normally too; yet no sound to be heard. This strange phenomena was resolved easily by rebooting, but still it remained in the back of my head.
There's always a side track
In the second post – Windows Vista sleep problems, revisited – I side-tracked towards the LSI SCSI/SAS/SATA controller. I don't think I can prove that the changes to the power plan actually solved much, since Vista still hanged every once in a while upon entering sleep modus.
The solution I stumbled upon
Since I was looking to replace the current speaker setup (two Solid Monitor speakers with a Solid Active Power Bass (now discontinued) from Bowers & Wilkins, which needs a decent amplifier and is thus more suited for Hi-Fi systems, I decided to go with the Logitech Z-10 Interactive Speaker System. I'll leave my impressions of the Logitech speakers for a future post, but for now let me just say that I'm quite pleased with both the sound and the lookds.
What's more important and of relevance to the Vista sleep problems, is that the Logitech speakers are connected via USB instead of audio jacks. Unless you want to use the surround capabilities of your Creative X-Fi card, you can actually replace your sound card with just these speakers. When you open up the playback devices, you'll see them listed amongst other sound hardware you have in your computer.
So, you may ask, that looks really nice, but what is the solution to the sleep problem then? Well you've just read it... remove the Creative Sound Blaster or X-Fi card from your system and replace with something else. The Logitech speakers are one possible option, but you can also use the built-in High Definition Audio Device that is present on many machines, you just need to enable it in your BIOS.
Anyway, I've never had a sleep hang since I removed the Creative card from my system and uninstalled its drivers and software (a whopping 1Gb!).
ps: You can probably apply the same fix by buying a sound card from a different manufacturer, but I'll be the first to admit that I have no experience with other companies. If you do, let us know if it fixed the Vista sleep problems so we can help others too!
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- IntelliPoint: To scroll or not to scroll?
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Posted by oVan on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 | PermaLink | 2 commentsWhomever at Microsoft Hardware decided to remove the universal scrolling functionality from the IntelliPoint software, should be removed from the team immediately. If that is the same person who decided that not every key should be configurable in the IntelliType Pro software, he/she should be expelled to Siberia instantly!
I have a Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 (also part of the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000), in front of me. In many ways, it's an excellent mouse:- very ergonomic for an ambidextrous model
- it's rechargeable and rechargeable AA battery is included
- quite attractive in silver, dark gray and matte black color scheme
- excellent optical performance with adjustable precision
- no noticeable Bluetooth lag (not recommended for gaming though)
- the left and right side buttons are difficult to reach
- although the wheel button turns without notches it doesn't roll smoothly
- no extra buttons (zoom, search, ...)
- But most importantly, it must use the latest IntelliPoint software and therefore it's useless!
For starters, the default configuration for this mouse is to have the scroll wheel click (when you push the wheel) launch the Instant Viewer. What on earth do we need that for? I thought Windows Vista had the great Flip-3D feature? I think I can hear them say "Nah sorry, you can't use that with your expensive mouse. You really need to use our full screen 2D viewer to see what windows are open."
Secondly, the Universal Scrolling feature has disappeared from the list of other activities you can bind to the wheel button. Put simply, you cannot scroll a window anymore without clicking the wheel button first (that's what they call AutoScroll, although I fail to discover the Auto in that functionality).
My excellent Wacom Intuos3 comes with a nice 5 button mouse that is ball free and optics free, and it scrolls immediately in any window. It's wheel rolls with soft notches, making it a very nice experience.
Additionally, my magnificent Logitech VX Revolution notebook mouse comes with an incredible free wheeling scroll wheel. It takes a little time to get used to it, but the productivity gains when skimming through hundreds of spam mails in Outlook 2007 is unbelievable. The best thing about this mouse is that it doesn't need the bloated Logitech software to work as expected, including scrolling a window without clicking. It has a search button, zoom lever, and back/forward buttons: these all work as expected in Vista. To anyone at Microsoft, please take note of this!
Finally, the magnifier functionality of IntelliPoint is very nice in theory. In reality however, it causes your Windows Vista Aero scheme to temporarily switch back to the Vista Basic interface and then immediately switch back to Aero. WTF! So it can work in Aero-mode but somehow they can't load the Magnifier DLL without switching. Uch!
Ps: I'll save my rant about IntelliPoint Pro 6.1 for a future post. There's only so much you can take :-)Labels: 7000, 8000, Aero, AutoScroll, desktop, entertainment, IntelliPoint, IntelliType Pro, Intuos 3, keyboard, Logitech, Microsoft, mouse, Revolution, Universal Scroll, VX, Wacom, Windows Vista, wireless