2008 Blog Entries
Hasta la vista, Vista
I finally gave up on Windows Vista on my SH8. I tried to make it work, I really did. But in the end, you don't use a computer for the OS, you use it for the applications. Vista support for XP applications was the last straw. The story is too long for a blog post, so I wrote it up as a pair of articles:
Hasta la vista, Vista (Part 1) -- My thoughts on two months of living with Vista on the SH8
Hasta la vista, Vista (Part 2) -- My experience "upgrading" to XP
Hopefully this will be of value to anyone considering which Windows OS to use on their SH series machine.
Categories: CategoryKohjinsha
SH8 BlueSoleil Upgrade
Since I got my SH8 I've been annoyed by the BlueSoleil software stack that Kohjinsha includes. I've never been a big fan of BlueSoleil in the first place. Using it on the SH8 was even more annoying due to the fact that the 3.x version Kohjinsha includes doesn't play nice with Vista. Every time I activated BlueSoleil I had to click through a Vista UAC dialog to give it permission to run. Once that was out of the way it worked ok, but the extra step added just enough awkwardness to really sour the experience.
So when BlueSoleil prompted me that there was a newer version available I was eager to check it out. Unfortunately, IVT gives no hints as to whether the new version is compatible with the SH8. Nor did they bother to mention whether it was a free or paid upgrade for Kohjinsha owners. I use my SH8 for work so I didn't want to risk breaking anything, so I continued to put up with the old version. Thanks to the UMPC Forum I was finally able to find someone else who had tried (successfully) the upgrade.
With the risks reduced, I finally set out to try the upgrade. I immediately got a good scare as the upgrade installer proceeded to hang part way through. Luckily I was able to system restore to the pre-broken-install state. A week later I got a chance to try again. This time I Fn+F1 disabled Bluetooth before kicking off the install. The install completed normally and one reboot later the new BT drivers were up and running.
The new 5.0 version of BlueSoleil so far seems like a big improvement over the 3.x version the SH6/8 ships with. The UAC dialogs are gone and what's even nicer is that they've switched from the hideous "orbiting devices" GUI to a much more conventional "Bluetooth Places" GUI. Only time will tell if the long-term stability is as good or better than the 3.x version, but barring any such problems I'd say this is definitely a recommended upgrade.
Categories: CategoryKohjinsha
