I recently bought an ultra-portable computer which seems pretty good. It’s an ASUS U2E. The installation of Windows Vista has given me new reasons to hate Microsoft, but I won’t go on about that here. (I have uninstalled Office 2007 as 2003 is better and I’m seriously considering switching back to Apple – I’ve not used them since the days when I was an Apple user and, almost all the work I did was in Word and Word was pretty much the same on Windows and on Apple, so I couldn’t see the point any more.)
One thing is a problem however. The ASUS software brings up a dialogue box prompting me to update the BIOS. I do this by clicking on the relevant boxes and the dialogue box indicates that an update for the BIOS is loading. It then tells me that I should restart the computer, enter the BIOS and load defaults. This is presumably to install the new update into the BIOS. I reboot, enter the BIOS by hitting F2 as the computer boots up. It tells me that if I want to load defaults, I should press F9 – which I do and then when I ‘exit and save’ it loads up Windows and Bob’s your uncle. I even get a new dialogue box without any empty radio boxes to tick telling me the BIOS is updated.
Then the next time I boot up the computer the original dialogue box appears. And I’m back to square one. Just to fit the mood, I tried to load an image of the dialogue box I see initially, but it wouldn’t work. Anyway, it’s not important.
Any ideas oh Troppodillian ones?
You are more than likely to have problems running Office 2003 on a Vista machine (I wish I still had an XP disc…) if you haven’t found out already. Here are some problems that you might encounter:
1) The graph program may not work on Word properly (the data sheet will often appear off the screen).
2) Outlook may not work at all
3) If you use large files on Excel (e.g., 10Meg plus), the speed will drive you crazy. It can hang for minutes.
Other programs that won’t work at all that you might use:
1) Older Macromedia products (like Fireworks 2.0).
Things that will cause problems:
2) Any development environments that create lots of files (i.e., thousands — there is a hot fix for this, but you need to email Microsoft for it).
I had a somewhat similar issue with a Dell XPS running Vista. It turned out that the first time I attempted to update the Bios, it only half-completed. Every subsequent attempt failed until I got on the phone with a very good Dell tech (alas, you have to spend time with the less knowledgeable ones first), who got me to change some settings to tell the Dell that the Bios had not in fact been updated.
Oh yes, Vista is an utter dog. And attempts by laptop manufacturers to customise it for their brand generally make it even worse.
It’s worth paying for a copy of XP while you still can. After M$ stops allowing its sale then I reckon people will be justified in simply pirating it.
But I reckon Ubuntu is better still – I’ve found it worth the (considerable) transition hassle at home, despite the fact that OpenOffice aint quite as good as Office (mainly because VBA is a brilliant scripting language and environment). The expensive but good alternative is to go for Macs (a Unix based OS) throughout.
Try un-installing the Asus software or if that doesn’t work, just disable the services that the Asus software tries to use. I’d try contacting Asus directly with the problem though, they might have a quick fix for it and their support is usually pretty good.