Okay, I've installed a lot of development tools and so forth, and I'm pretty happy with the way it all works. When I turned my attention to "consumer" uses of my shiny new machine, I encountered a couple of problems. Ubuntu cannot see the Toshiba's audio adapter or Bluetooth adapter. I spent a couple of hours online looking for solutions and found none, except for a problem with audio on Toshiba laptops dating from 2007 and involving an earlier incarnation of Ubuntu.
I did find a couple of references to a contractual arrangement between Microsoft Corporation and Phoenix Technologies, the makers of the machine's BIOS, that some people assume means that Phoenix may have designed the BIOS to be unfriendly toward operating systems other than Microsoft Vista. I think that is probably speculation on their part, and I plan to keep looking for solutions.
At the moment, I have no way to predict whether I will be able to get Ubuntu to work with the audio adapter and Bluetooth adapter in the Toshiba Satellite. It's possible someone will create drivers, firmware, or whatever else is required to support them. It's also possible that the Phoenix BIOS is actually the problem.
In any case, I need a way to organize my music files and sync my Zune, and I need a Windows system to run Music Publisher. If the audio problem is not solved, I will have to switch to Vista when I want to visit YouTube or Hulu, listen to music on Pandora or a streaming radio station, or listen to news. It would be nice to have audio when using Skype, too. That meant I would be spending at least some of my time on Vista.
OEMs have a long tradition of configuring pre-installed Windows systems in a way designed to piss people off and make them hate computers. Although Toshiba's motto is "leading innovation," in this regard they are respectful of tradition.
So, how could I make the Vista environment less annoying? Here are a few steps I took that seemed to help. None of this pertains to Ubuntu, of course.
Removing unnecessary programs from startup
Press the Start orb, type msconfig into the Search field, and press Enter. This opens the System Configuration utility. Go to the Start tab. YMMV, but what I did was to deselect the following entries:
- Intel(R) Common User Interface - igfxtray.exe
- Intel(R) Common User Interface - hkcmd.exe
- Intel(R) Common User Interface - igfxpers.exe
- TOSHIBA Button Support
- TOSHIBA Zooming Utility
- TOSHIBA Flash Cards
- TOSHIBA Web Camera
- SmartFaceVWatcher
- RealConnect Agent
- Google Toolbar Notifier
- CyberLink Power Cinema
- CyberLink MediaLibrary Service
Disabling "notification balloons"
Press the Start orb, type regedit into the Search field, and press Enter. This opens the Registry Editor. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/Advanced. From the menu choose New -> DWORD(32 bit). Name it EnableBalloonTips. Give it a value of zero. Close the Registry Editor.
Disabling Auto-Complete in Internet Explorer
Start Internet Explorer. On the main menu, choose Tools -> Internet Options. Go to the Content tab. Under AutoComplete, press Settings. In the resulting dialog box, deselect all the checkboxes. Press OK.
To get rid of existing AutoComplete entries, in Internet Options go to the General tab. In the Delete section, press Delete Forms.
Disabling assorted annoyances in Google Toolbar
In Internet Explorer, choose the Tools drop-down near the right-hand end of the Google Toolbar. Choose Options from the drop-down menu. Choose the Search tab. Under 'Search features', deselect 'Suggest searches as you type'.
Go to the General tab. Under 'Additional settings', deselect 'Send usage statistics to Google'.
Go to the Custom Buttons tab. Deselect all the items you don't want.
Go to the AutoFill tab. Deselect 'AutoFill'.
Press the Save button.
Installing necessary Windows programs
As I mentioned previously, there are two Windows-only programs I need: Braeburn Software's Music Publisher and the Microsoft Zune sync software.
Music Publisher is a commercial product that comes on a CD. Installation consists of running the installer off the CD. No problems there.
The Zune software is a free download. Getting the download to work turned into an educational exercise on the relative downloading performance of Vista vs. Ubuntu. It's a tale in its own right, so I blogged about it separately.
Making frequently-used programs easy to access
I took the following steps to place entries in the Start menu for the programs I use most often on Vista:
- Right-clicked the taskbar and chose Properties from the context menu to open the Taskbar and Start Menu utility.
- Went to the Start Menu tab.
- Deselected the checkboxes labeled Store and display a list of recently opened files and Store and display a list of recently opened programs.
- Clicked the Customize button next to the Start Menu radio button near the top of the panel.
- Deselect the checkboxes near the bottom of the panel labeled Internet link and E-mail link.
- Clicked OK until I had clicked my way out of the Taskbar and Start Menu utility.
- Clicked the Start orb and then the All Programs link.
- Navigated to the shortcut for each program of interest, right-clicked it, and clicked Pin to Start Menu
General beautification
Downloaded the flattering photgraph of me from this very website and set it as my User icon in Vista.
Next: Linux vs. Vista download performance
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