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Computer woes.

By In Technology0 Comments1,751 Views

So to celebrate me getting a new motherboard/CPU/Memory combo I decided to top it off with my new Coolmaster Case which I got in the mail yesterday. Being all nice and prep’d to get this new case all together I drove right into moving my parts over… but I decided to leave my memory and CPU on the board as I moved it (my mistake). Well thanks to the weight of my 8 GB of memory and the CPU heatsink I bloody well broke my old motherboard (new one yet needs to be sent in for RMA) while I was holding it.  So now I’m with out my awesome setup until I get my new motherboard back from NCIX, but on the bright side at least the new case turned out really cool as well.

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Toshiba M200 and Dual Displays

By In Technology0 Comments4,650 Views

Like me, most of you who have the infamous Toshiba M200 tablet have probably upgraded that outdated XP installation to either Windows Vista or Windows 7. And you probably upgraded the video drivers from the old 64 Forceware to the 97 or 98 Forceware off of LaptopVideo2Go. But you’ve probably also noticed a few things in regards to the display no longer work, such as Dual Displays. Fortunately there’s a solution for enabling Dual Displays in the BIOS.

Reboot your computer and hold down the ESC key before the TOSHIBA logo appears. The laptop will prompt you with an error message “Check system. Then press [F1] key.”  Press the F1 key. Once in the BIOS setup, navigate using the directional keys to get all the way over to the right side where it says Power On Display in the DISPLAY box. Press the Space key until it changes to LCD+Analog RGB. Press the End key followed by the Y key to save your changes.

And that’s it! You can now plug in your monitor to the VGA output of the tablet and enable dual displays in Windows using the mobility center. I was actually quite surprised when I could run my main monitor at 1920×1080 and the laptop LCD at 1400×1050 with out any issues.

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Toshiba M200 + Vista Ultimate = ?

By In Technology0 Comments1,884 Views

Well they don’t have a word for it yet.

But anyway, I did indeed install Vista on my lowly Toshiba M200 (exact specs except I have 1GB of DDR, soon to be 2GB). So far, I’m quite impressed at the overall performance of the machine, the system lags a bit more then XP did but the functionality and ease of use went up. I’m thoroughly impressed with the Vista Tablet functionality vs XP Tablet.  Surprisingly enough, my frame rate in World of Warcraft (yes it can play on the M200) is pretty much the same as it was in XP.

One thing I noticed right away was the responsiveness of the Tablet Pen, it seems to have increased quite a lot. I also combined that with OneNote 2007 which with the improvements from 2003 has made my note taking a lot more easier.

Would I recommend upgrading to Vista on the M200?

Sure. Make sure that you have at least 1GB of memory however, and I’d recommend installing Vista from a folder on lets say a network or USB drive. The reason for this is the 24x External Toshiba drive sucks for transferring files, if you go that route be read to spend a good 1-2 hours getting to the “Installing” screen. I installed Vista from XP from a folder on my network storage. Took about 1 1/2 hours to install from the time I first ran the installer to when I could first login to the machine.

I will say that anyone who wants to upgrade will need 2 things:

And that’s it, Vista will take care of the rest. If you download/install anything else from Toshiba, you’re installing too much redundant/old software. I say you should download Toshiba Tablet PC Button Driver because it contains the drivers needed to change the Display Brightness and Rotate the screen. Once installed you can use the Vista Mobility Center (press Windows Key + X) to rotate the screen and change the Display Brightness depending on your power status.
Mobility Center
Mobility Center