Vista Ultimate UMPC - Round 1

As promised, I am giving Vista Ultimate a fair shake on my TabletKiosk eo v7110 with the help of new drivers, clever hacks from other bloggers, and a bit of my own finesse. Only a LITTLE bit of my own - to be shown in the video below.

As I mention and show in the video below - I am eating my hat on this one.

Here are ALL the steps including a timetable:

Upgraded to a gig of RAM
Set video RAM to 64M
Passed Microsoft IQ test on the second try (opening up the Vista Ultimate box)

Disc boot time: 6:04 PM (24x LaCie Combo USB DVDROM CD+/-RW)
• Install screen looks bad (800x480)
• Language select and options still more or less readable.
• Took me three times to enter product key - because I couldn't read what I was typing!
• Took the time to freshly format the C: drive
• Hit "Next" at 6:11 PM. Let it go.
• This time, the installer doesn't go through 20 slides of "how cool it is" while installing. That's an improvement over XP (wink)
• Rebooted at 6:29
• Rebooted again at 6:41
• At 6:42, given more user options. Hit "start" at 6:44 - spoke too soon about the slideshow!
• 6:49: Heard the startup chime and got a login window
• Entered password and watched as it was "Preparing your desktop..."
• Login chime at 6:51. Welcome Center and Sidebar showed up a minute later.

That covers the Vista install. 38 minutes from "boot" to "welcome center." What does NOT work out of the box:
• Touchscreen
• Lifestyle buttons
• Graphic resolution
• WiFi (!!!)

Now to get it working properly:
• Tracked down the driver for the Winbond NetW35G USB Wireless adapter. This was no easy task and another UMPC user had to send it to me. Perhaps some authorized manufacturer can post it somewhere linkable from here? (edit: TabletKiosk to the rescue )
• Installed WIFI driver from a USB key (Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Device Manager -> Right-click USB2Wlan and choose the drivers)
• Connected to my WiFi access point.
• Downloaded and installed VN800 drivers. (Four different warnings here. One to allow web content, one to run as administrator, one for UAC, and one because the driver is not Vista logo'd so it "Windows cannot verify the publisher of this driver software."
• Clicked the "yeah go ahead and reboot already" button at 7:10. Back to the Welcome Center at 7:15 after a while of it saying "Configuring Updates." It must have started some Windows Updates in the background. It prompted me to allow it to run VTTimer.exe and VTTrayp.exe on boot.
• Yay 1024x600! Still no touch. Ran Windows Update at 7:17 PM Chose other options and added the Amtek Lifestyle Button driver but DO NOT INSTALL the WiFi driver. Started at 7:22. Updates finished installing at 7:43. Reboot started then. It spent a good while Configuring Updates. Login window at 7:49. Welcome Center a minute later.
• Created a new shortcut on the desktop to "tabcal novalidate" and ran it as Administrator to calibrate my screen. Touch works, but not Lifestyle Buttons yet. Actually, the volume button works but the other buttons do not. That's interesting. I checked the Control Panel and it had the Amtek T770 image and programs associated with that! Of course, those programs were installed. However, an updated Lifestyle Button driver for the T700 is posted here.
• 8 PM. Dinner time. Let the UMPC sit.
• 10 PM. Finished and posted my Nokia N800 Navigation Kit review and videos. Installed the Amtek Lifestyle Buttons and Origami Experience. (10 minutes there) The AMTEK Lifestyle Buttons have to be tweaked (ran as Administrator) to allow brightness correction else there is an error that says "Unable to extract IO.SYS. Log in as a user who has such permission." then "backlight - Privileged Instruction."

Total time from installation to operation with all drivers, updates, and Origami Experience: (subtracting dinner and writing elseblog) 2 hours, 10 minutes.

While playing around after the initial install:
Turned off UAC
Installed Windows Live OneCare (I am a subscriber)
Ran OneCare Tuneup.
Tweaked Registry Settings except it's in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session....
Tweaked out my power plan
Tweaked indexing options
Installed FFDShow for video decoding


Notes:

• Origami Experience works MUCH better. I attribute that to the registry settings and updated drivers.
• Handwriting is VASTLY improved over XP Tablet PC Edition 2005
• I actually prefer the new Control Panel organization. I also instantly fell in love with the Start menu's search feature.
• Some tasks are a little sluggish, but most are comparable to the same system on XP

Now here's the big one for me:
I figured out why Windows Media Center didn't work! In my first video, I showed how garbled it was and how it simply did not operate properly. This discovery was not accidental - it was methodically trying to figure out why such a valuable component of Windows Vista didn't work.

I created a short video of it below. It's a driver issue. That's all. Just a driver. I'll see if I can find a fix or workaround.

So there it is. Round 1 - Fresh, clean Vista Ultimate install on a TabletKiosk eo v7110. All the hardware works and with 1 GB of RAM and a couple hours dedicated to the initial installation, it can be a keeper in the long term.

Coming up: Round 2 - Upgrading from Tablet PC Edition 2005 to Vista Ultimate. (And if it doesn't work, a "Whoops! Goodbye to everything on my 100G drive!")