Jamie's Random Musings on Video IM
Having spent a good part of the last year struggling with a variety of video chat and IM programs, I have decided to write a few things down and see what other people have to say about them.
Saturday 8 December 2007, 8:06 PM
Vista to XP - Two weeks later
It has been two weeks since I finally gave up and went back to XP Professional on my laptop, so here is a short update. I could not possibly be more pleased! How is that, short enough?
This laptop never came anywhere close to working this well when I was running Vista Home Premium on it. I have not had a USB bus hang once, and that was happening several times a day with Vista. In fact, I have not had any kind of unexpected shutdown or reboot. It is so nice to have the various peripherals and programs working completely and properly, as well. Little things matter, and when there are a lot of little things, they matter a lot.
This Cisco VPN client connects and disconnects much more quickly, cleanly and reliably under XP than it did under Vista. SightSpeed works very well, no more problem with choppy audio. All of the webcams that I have work well, and don't interfere with each other as the two Philips cams seemed to be doing under Vista.
I'm actually pretty demanding of my laptop in terms of using it on the road, too. On a typical day, I use it at home with a WiFi connection, then suspend it while I go to catch the train; use it on the train with a cellular data connection (Swisscom Unlimited Data HSDPA / UMTS / EDGE / GPRS), then suspend again and walk to the office, then use it all day in the office on wired ethernet behind the corporate firewall. Then I reverse the sequence on the way home. All that without a reboot, and it's working just great. When I was running Vista, it had acquired a nasty habit of crashing when I tried to turn it on when I was on the train, after suspending at home. Instead of resuming, it would boot, and then produce the "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" dialog.
So, I am very pleased that I made the switch.
jw 8/12/2007
Thursday 6 December 2007, 1:47 PM
Skype - Is 10,000 Page Faults per Second normal?
I am writing this as a follow-up to yesterday's Tech Talk about Skype. I mentioned this issue then, and I have received a number of requests for additional information about it. There have been some new developments today, as well. Those who want to review the complete information should read this thread in the Skype User Forums:
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=98518
What disturbs me the most about this is not so much the actual "bug", or "problem", or "feature", whatever you decide to call it. I am much more disturbed by the way Skype has tried to ignore, suppress, deny, discredit, and avoid any discussion of it. Simply following a time line of events, accompanied by statements from Skype and their direct or indirect representatives, is very enlightening:
Oct 3: A user discovers that Skype is producing 10,000 Page Faults per second on his computer. Assuming this is a bug of some sort, he reports it to the Skype User Forums asking for help. "Jamie Watson", who initially tried to help find the problem, is me.
Oct 10: A second user confirms the problem, reporting 9,000 Page Faults / second.
Oct 12: The user files a bug report on "Jira", the Skype Developer Zone bug tracking system
Oct 16: Another Skype user reports the same problem, with 6,000 Page Faults / second
Oct 17: The bug report is marked "Closed" by Raul Liive, who is listed as "Skype Staff" and apparently works in their development group. The comment he wrote was "This is by design".
Oct 30: Another Skype user files another Jira bug report on this issue, stating that it must have been a mistake or misunderstanding to close the initial report.
Nov 2: The second bug report is marked "Closed" by Raul Liive, with a statement that it is a duplicate of the original report. He gave no additional information or comment.
Nov 1-30: Numerous other Skype users report the same problem, including several who have been designated as "Super Users" in the Skype Forums. It becomes apparent that this is not an anomaly, it is happening on every Windows PC that is running Skype 3.5.0.229 or later, with a range of 700 to 10,000 Page Faults per second.
Nov 6, 05:40: Another user opened a Jira bug report about this problem, with quite a lot of additional information.
Nov 6, 08:40: THREE HOURS after the report is opened, it is marked "Closed" by Raul Liive, with the comment "We are aware of the high number of page faults and this is by design"
Nov 6, 11:40: Raul Liive posts the following comment to the Skype User Forum:
I would like to conclude some things in this topic:
* There are number of page fault generated by Skype and it is by design.
* There is no point in generating more than 1 issue report about the same thing, espesically when it is closed as designed.
* Unfortunately I can't explain things to you in detail why we have chosen such a design, but I can say that it does not have impact on computer performance.
Nov 6, 12:25: A Skype "Super User" is so incredulous at this information that he asks Liive to confirm that he did not misquote the Skype programmers.
Nov 6, 23:30: Raul Liive says "No I did not misquote anyone about this statement."
Nov 21: A user reports that the Visual Studio debugger attached to a running Skype process says that there is a steady stream of unhandled exceptions, "Access violation reading location 0xffffffff". This is starting to look like a programming error.
Nov 28: Another person reports that using Windows Process Explorer he was able to isolate the specific Skype process thread which is producing the huge number of Page Faults, stop it, and was apparently still able to use Skype without problem.
Nov 29: Two more users confirm the same information about the Skype process thread, and that stopping only that thread reduces Skype-produced Page Faults to less than 10 per second. It appears that these users might be starting to close in on what is causing these page faults and perhaps even why.
Nov 29, 18:35: A Skype User Forum Moderator, "Gladiator", asks a "Senior Skype Engineer" about this issue. He says the reply he got was "We actually don't understand what they are talking about". Strange, since the discussion has been going on for nearly two months, and Skype Development (in the person of Raul Liive) has closed at least three bug reports about it. The "Senior Engineer" goes on to try to pooh-pooh the whole issue, saying they don't know what tools were used for the measurement or what was considered a "Page Fault", but he can't imagine that it is anything other than normal operation.
Nov 29, 23:59: Gladiator reports that the "Senior Skype Engineer" now says "FYI, the guys indentified the thread that's causing the faults and found a way to fix this." So they have gone from "we don't know what you are talking about" to "we found and fixed it" in five hours, after two months of discussion and complaint?
Nov 30: Numerous Skype users and Super Users say that they would be glad if it were fixed, but after all this discussion, and all the scorn and disrespect from Skype Staff over it, they would like to know what it was and what it was doing.
Nov 30, 14:00: Gladiator says "it was there for a valid (simple) reason and was forgotten to be removed", but he is not allowed to say what that reason was.
Nov 30, 21:23: Gladiator says "The actual reaon the thread was implemented is actually luaghable, and it was for gotten to be removed". So the "pooh-pooh, it was nothing, you are all overreacting" campaign is well under way now - but accompanied with "we can't tell you what the real reason was".
Dec 1, 09:18: Gladiator says "the thread was put in to investigate another issue and basically forgotten about". So apparently Skype is more willing to have people believe that their programmers are careless, sloppy or incompetent? Anyway, he says, "All wells That Ends Well"??? It is difficult for me to imagine what could be construed as "ending well" in this fiasco.
Dec 1, 15:49: Another Skype Super User posts what turns out to be a prescient word of caution: "Not yet, i didn't see a new Skype client version yet"
Dec 1, 19:29: Gladiator says "engineering didn't mind me posting the reason the 'thread' was implemented, but suggested I check clearance with some one else. Frankly I couldn't be bothered". Couldn't be bothered? Something doesn't ring true about that, after two months of problems, discussion, accusations, denials...
Dec 6, 09:06: Raul Liive posts the following comment:
Giving you an update on the situation with page faults.
Thank you all for pointing out this issue and I must say that I was wrong in the beginning about it being fully by design. Some amount of page faults are indeed by design on any software application, but we are creating them lot more than we should be.
We have decided to have a second look on the issue and hopefully we will have a solution for this problem soon.
--------
I am stunned. I have absolutely no idea what the truth about this entire mess is, and I strongly suspect that it will end up being exactly like the "Great Skype Outage" last August - we will never know the truth. Just to recap how the discussion has gone:
Users: There is a Page Fault Problem
Skype: It's not a problem, we designed it that way
Users: It's really a big problem
Skype: We told you already, we designed it that way
Users: Are you sure? This is really a big problem for us.
Skype: We are sure, and please stop talking about it.
Users: We have isolated the Skype process thread that is causing the Page Faults
Skype: We have no idea what you are talking about
Skype: We have found and fixed the problem
Skype: It was an oversight, something that we put in for debugging and forgot to take out
Skype: We have decided to take a second look, and hope to have a solution soon
Now, if it was "by design", as Liive said three times in closing bug reports, how did it suddenly become "unknown"? And if it was "unknown", how did it suddenly get found and fixed in less than five hours? And if it was either "found and fixed", or even if it was "an oversight that we forgot to take out", why does Skype now need to go back and "take a second look", and why would they "hope to have a solution soon" for a problem that a Senior Engineer has already said was "found and fixed"? As the prescient "Super User" said, this isn't over until we see a new release of the Skype client that is not producing thousands of Page Faults per Second.
Something is rotten in the state of Estonia... what have they really been up to, and why are the trying so hard now to cover it up? As my father would have said, they are now working harder than a cat trying to cover its mess on a marble floor!
Now it's "Conspiracy Theory" time. One of the Skype "Super Users" has pointed out at least twice that starting with version 3.6, Skype is holding open an excessive number of network connections, and asked for an explanation of why that is. That has been met with complete silence from Skype. Looking at this through the prism of the recent revelations about FaceBook, is it far-fetched to suspect that Skype is up to something nefarious, when their program is constantly doing something that has nothing whatsoever to do with its stated purpose (text/audio/video communication), they refuse to explain what it is doing, and they are holding open excessive, unexplained network connections that could easily be used for shipping in/out information?
I am starting to wonder if this is a company that I want to allow to put an unknown program on my computer any more, regardless of whether it is "sloppy" (Skype's current explanation) or "malicious" (my current suspicion).
Today is "Santa Claus Day" here in Switzerland, but I am no more willing to believe in Santa Claus any more than I am to take any statements or explanation from Skype at face value.
jw 6/12/2007
Wednesday 5 December 2007, 10:33 AM
Tech Talk - Skype
I think it's pretty obvious that the most talked-about and interesting technical topic with Skype is their much-vaunted new "High Quality Video". That gives a good lead-in to Skype video in general, so that's where we will start.
Basically, if you have the right camera and CPU, a good broadband internet connection, and a little bit of luck, Skype will give you 640x480 resolution at 30 frames per second. This is good resolution and speed, and the difference from the standard 320x240 resolution is noticeable, but in my opinion it is not, as one very silly post in the Skype User Forums termed it, "Break-Through Technology", it is just somewhat improved video.
The downside is that you have to have exactly the equipment that Skype requires - they didn't leave it up to the capability of your equipment to determine if High Quality is possible or not. They made a completely arbitrary and autocratic decision that they will actually check the specific camera and CPU you have, and if you don't have one of only three "anointed" Logitech webcams, and either an Intel Core Duo or AMD Dual Core CPU, you don't get High Quality Video. This can be very frustrating for owners of quite a lot of other webcams which are every bit as capable of producing 640x480 resolution at 30 FPS (some even more capable than the "chosen few" from Logitech). It is even worse, though, for the CPU. If you have a multi-processor system, that doesn't qualify as a "Dual Core", no matter how many processors you have. Even more ridiculous, Intel and AMD Quad Core systems also don't qualify, so you are likewise left out in the cold. It would appear that Skype didn't give this quite enough thought before they implemented it.
There is one other problem with the Skype "High Quality Video" implementation, and that is the "more is not always better" syndrome. Basically, if your equipment and bandwidth meet the specifications, you are going to get High Quality Video, like it or not. Users who have volume-priced internet connections might not want that additional data, or a company that uses Skype might not want their internal network to be flooded with High Quality Video, but there is no way to restrict or disable it. The only solution would be to either replace a nice new (expensive) high-quality webcam with something other than the "chosen ones", or to make audio-only calls.
Setting aside the "High Quality" issues, the Skype video implementation is general is pretty nice. When you start a video call, the incoming video is shown in a window within the Skype main window, and your own outgoing video is also shown in a much smaller window just below the incoming video. There is one small pitfall here - if you are skimpy with screen space, and reduce the size of the Skype main window, it is actually possible to make it so small that the incoming (or even the outgoing) video windows will not fit within it. If this happens, Skype just doesn't show the windows! It doesn't warn you, or complain, or put them in their own windows, it just doesn't bother to show them.
If you move the mouse cursor into the incoming video window, two buttons will appear which say "Video In Window" and "Full Screen Video". Clicking the "Video In Window" button will move the incoming video from within the Skype main window to its own much larger window, and your outgoing video into a window at the bottom left corner of that, also somewhat larger than it was in the Skype main window. Clicking the "Full Screen Video" button will do just what it implies - it takes over the entire screen, however large it is, and stretches the incoming video to fill it. The results of this are generally not pretty, to say the least, unless you are receiving 640x480 High Quality Video, and even then they can be a bit dodgy, depending on the resolution of your monitor (and therefore how much the picture has to be stretched to fill it).
There is one other technical area that I would like to discuss, because it is something that is very strange and unique to Skype. Several Skype users discovered a few months ago that Skype was constantly producing large numbers of Page Faults. The number ranged between 700 and 10,000 (!) Page Faults per second, and they are consistently produced, even when Skype is idle and iconified. The problem was reported in the Skype User Forums, and it was sent directly to Skype Development via their "Jira" bug reporting system. The bug report was immediately closed by Skype Staff, with the comment "this is by design", and the completely ridiculous claim that "10,000 Page Faults per second have no impact on system performance". The debate about this continued in the Skype User Forums for a couple of months, with new bug reports opened by users and immediately closed by Skype Staff. Finally, two determined Skype users armed with nothing more than Windows Process Explorer managed to isolate the specific process thread that was producing the Page Faults, and found that they could stop that thread without having any effect on the operation of Skype. When this was reported in the Skype User Forums, the response from Skype Development was "we've never heard of this before, what are you talking about, many other programs produce about the same number of Page Faults as Skype". When that was debunked, both that they had never heard of it, since there had been several bug reports on it, and that other programs produced comparable Page Faults, Skype Development then suddenly said "we have found the problem and it will be fixed". When pressed for further information about what the problem was and why, because of their prior statements that it was "by design", they changed course again and said it was "an oversight, a thread that was put in for debugging some other problem and then forgotten". Since that time, despite repeated requests there has been no more information forthcoming. The whole episode seems very unsavory, and we are left wondering if Skype Development is inept (it was really a programming error), careless (it was really some debugging code that was "forgotten" and left in the product for at least three or four releases), or something more sinister was going on, and they are more willing to have users think either of the previous things about them than to admit what was really happening. Those who wish to read the entire sordid history of this mess can find it at http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=98518.
I would be remiss in a Tech Talk about Skype if I didn't mention their support, or rather their lack of support. There is no telephone number to call for Skype Support, regardless of whether you need technical or commercial assistance. Likewise, there is no email address for support. The only way to contact Skype Support is to submit a "Support Request" through their web page, and you are then required to wait a MINIMUM of FOUR DAYS before you get the first response - and that response will only be an acknowledgment that they received your Support Request. It will then take days, weeks or even months before your problem is actually solved, if ever. For technical support problems, such as installation, configuration, questions about using Skype and such, this can be quite irritating. But for commercial problems, such as when you have paid Skype for a service and then discovered that they have decided to cut it off, having to wait four days without being about to make or receive phone calls or whatever can be a very serious matter indeed.
I realize that most of what I have written here sounds rather negative about Skype. I have actually tried to be fair, and to discuss only problems and issues that I have experienced or been involved in myself. I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in this, or who thinks I have overstated the situation, to have a look at the Skype User Forums (http://forum.skype.com), and see the problems and discussions that are going on there.
jw 5/12/2007
Monday 3 December 2007, 8:04 AM
Next up, Skype - the 800-pound gorilla
It's time to take a look at Skype. The first thing to be aware of is that Skype is the proverbial "800 pound gorilla" in the room. On a typical day they have between 8 million and 10 million users logged in, according to the information given in the Skype main window. If you believe their propaganda, they have several hundred million user accounts, but of course there is no way to know how many of those are "active", how many are duplicates, and so on. Still, even with exceptions and adjustments, the number is impressive.
Getting the Skype installation package is simple, from their web page, and they have versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, and some mobile devices. I will be concerned only with the Windows version here. It can be difficult to keep up with the "current version" of Skype for Windows, as they seem to release new major and minor versions very frequently. They have progressed from version 2.5 to version 3.6 in less than a year.
Installing Skype can, unfortunately, be a difficult and frustrating experience. There seem to be recurrent problems with corrupted downloads from their web site, which result in Windows saying the installation file "is not a valid Win 32 application". This has happened to me several times, and a quick search of the Skype User Forums (http://forum.skype.com) will reveal many, many instances of this problem being reported. Usually it can be solved by clearing the browser cache and re-downloading, or by using a different browser to download it, but in extreme cases it is necessary to download to a different PC, and then move the installer image over via USB disk.
Just getting a valid copy of the Skype installer image is not enough, though. There have been lots of problems with installer conflicts, corrupted upgrades, registry errors and the likes. In fact, the installation problems have been so numerous and so severe, that they have their own 5-page pinned topic on the Skype for Windows User Forum!
Once the installer is running correctly, you will get a very simple-looking window, asking you what language you want to install, and if you accept the license agreement and privacy statement. The apparent simplicity masks some important and sometimes difficult choices, though. At the lower left corner of the window is an innocuous-looking button labeled "Options". Click on that and you find options to install the "Skype Extras Manager", and browser plug-ins for Internet Explorer and Firefox. Unfortunately, there is no explanation of what any of these actually do. The "Extras Manager" is the interface between Skype and external add-on programs. The browser plug-ins actually modify the behavior of your web browser, if you use Internet Explorer or Firefox, so that anything that remotely resembles a telephone number will be boxed and highlighted, and linked so that if you click on it, Skype will automatically try to call that number. This, of course, depends on you having a SkypeOut account, so you can make outgoing PSTN calls.
The down side of these "Options" is that they seem to be very buggy. One of the biggest installation problems, which I mentioned above, comes from Skype trying (and failing) to install the browser plug-ins; a large portion of the installation problems reported on the Skype User Forums are solved by stopping the installation of these add-ons. Likewise, even after Skype is installed and seems to be working properly, users often find that Internet Explorer suddenly has major problems, either crashing as soon as it starts, or opening the Skype web page "automatically" hundreds of times, or in extreme cases even crashing the entire computer. Last, even if everything is working correctly, there have been a lot of complaints that the Skype "reformatting" of numbers in web pages makes them difficult or impossible to read; they frequently don't fit in the box that Skype puts around them, so you are no longer able to see the last digit or two of the number.
The moral of the story, especially if you are a new user installing Skype for the first time, is that you are probably going to be better off if you just go to the installation options screen and un-check everything. If you decide that you want or need one of the extras later, it is simple to reinstall Skype with the extras included.
Once Skype is successfully installed, signing up for a "free" account is quick and easy. Now you get to see the advantage of dealing with the "800 pound gorilla" - there are millions and millions of users registered already, and your chances of finding people you know on Skype are very good. This can be a disadvantage as well, of course, because there are so many people registered that searching for "John Brown" doesn't produce very useful results. The search can be narrowed by country, state or even city, if the person you are looking for has entered that much information in their Skype profile. However, the best and most efficient way to add a friend is for them to simply give you their Skype name.
Skype allows you to have text chat, audio calls and video calls with your contacts. Text and audio-only calls can be multi-party, but video calls are limited to one-to-one. If you are in a video call and add a third person, the video portion will automatically be dropped; when any one person leaves the call, the video will automatically return for the remaining two parties.
Skype offers calls to and from traditional land-line and mobile phones (at a fee, of course) with their SkypeOut and SkypeIn plans, but it would we wise to be very cautious about the SkypeIn plan, since they are currently going through a very nasty fiasco concerning their sudden withdrawal of a block of SkypeIn numbers associated with central London on very short notice. There is also a "Skype Pro" package which might be interesting to some people, but be sure to read the fine print; it offers "no per minute charge" calls, but only for certain countries, only when the call is to and from the same country, and there might be a "connect fee" for each call.
The Skype user interface is, uh.... busy. It comes up by default with numerous tabs and buttons, not only for your contacts and history but also for "Skype Find", Skype Live", "Call Phones", and an address bar. Fortunately it can be configured to remove a lot of the unused cruft, once you find the right place in the menu.
I have already gone on much longer than I did with either of the other reviews, but there is simply a lot more to be said, and a lot more to be warned about, with Skype. I will follow up in the next day or two with "Tech Talk" about Skype, and there is once again a lot to be said there. To summarize this part of the review, I would say that if you have some reason to install Skype, such as having friends or family who are already using it, your chances of getting it downloaded, installed and working are pretty good. But if you are starting from scratch with a free choice, you are much more likely to be successful, with much less effort and anguish, with either SightSpeed or ooVoo.
Remember, this is not an "exclusive situation", I frequently have all three of these programs running on my laptop at the same time. If you start with one of the others that is easier to install, configure and use, and you subsequently find that you "need" a different one, you can always install it at some later time.
jw 3/12/2007
Friday 30 November 2007, 10:58 AM
Tech Talk - XP to Vista, the Problem Details
Well, I don't get away with "glossing over" much of anything in this blog, do I? After my post about finally giving up on Vista and going back to XP Professional, I have had several requests for a more complete list of the problems that I had with Vista. So, here are all the gory details:
- USB 2 Controller hanging. As I said, this was the last straw. At irregular intervals, but certainly once or twice a day, any and all USB 2 devices would simply stop working. The only way to recover was to reboot, and even that couldn't be done cleanly because the laptop would hang in the final stages of shutdown or reboot, and had to be power-cycled. I have been running the laptop with XP Professional installed for a week now, and this has not happened a single time.
- Linksys WPC54GX4 Wireless-G CardBus Adapter with SRX400. I bought this less than six months before Vista was released. It was basically the last 802.11g "Boosted" adapter Linksys made before going to 802.11n. Apparently Linksys decided that they didn't sell enough of them to justify adapting the drivers to Vista and getting them certified. After waiting several months, I was finally told by Linksys that they will never provide Vista drivers for that adapter. I asked what the alternative was, and they said "buy a new adapter". Period. No compensation, no trade-in, no work-around. So I bought a new adapter. Not a Linksys.
- Canon BJC-55 printer. Ok, so I'm old, but I love this printer. In fact, there are drivers for the printer included in Vista, but I also have a scan head that can be installed in place of the print head, and then it becomes a reasonably nice traveling scanner. Canon has said there will be no Vista support for the IS-12 scanner cartridge. Too bad.
- HP Scanjet 4670 Vertical See-through scanner. After waiting for a long time while the HP web page said "coming soon", they finally released a "Basic Feature Driver", accompanied by this note:
We are sorry to inform you that a full feature driver for Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional x64 Edition will not be available for your HP product in the future
They went on to say that I could upgrade to a product that was fully compatible with Vista. So I bought a new scanner. Not from HP.
- Lexmark Optra E240 laser printer. This actually works ok with Vista, but the driver from Lexmark for XP was much nicer than either the Vista generic driver or the Lexmark Universal driver for Vista.
- Lantronix Device Installer. This is a utility program that I use for my work. When I first inquired about a Vista-compatible version, they said it would be out "sometime in the summer". When I inquired again in October if they meant "summer" in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, they said it would be out in mid-November. It's still not out.
- Vista "Add New Hardware" Wizard. This was a particularly nasty bug, which as far as I can tell from the discussions on MSDN affects many but not all Vista systems. Basically, Vista loses the ability to find device drivers for standard or previously installed devices. It showed up for me when I plugged my Pentax digital camera into a different USB port than it had previously been in. After a good deal of thrashing around, Vista reported that it couldn't find the drivers for my new device. The work-around reported on MSDN is to make a copy of the Windows INF directory, and then point the wizard at that. It will then find the previously installed driver, which it should have found to begin with, without all the extra thrashing. However, as noted in the following problems, this seemed not to work in all cases.
- Philips SPC650NC webcam. This initially installed without problem. But as can be seen from my other blog postings, I do a lot of work and experimentation with a variety of cameras. At some point the driver for this camera got removed, and when I tried to install it again it reported that it couldn't find a required file. I suspect this is related to the "New Hardware Wizard" bug above, but I couldn't get around it. I had extensive contact with Philips Technical Support, and they couldn't figure it out either, but they said it was being reported with increasing frequency.
- 6DEF Video Driver. This is a multiple-input multiple-output video stream processor, part of which installs as a device driver. It would not install on my Vista system, despite the best efforts of their support team and one of the developers of the program. In fact, this went through two stages; initially, from the error it was producing, I strongly suspect that the problem was related to the "New Hardware Wizard" problem above. But even after I reinstalled Vista, and that problem was fixed, the installation procedure worked but it still would not function properly on my laptop.
- Swisscom Unlimited Data Manager. This is the software for the Swisscom (Option) 5-in-1 WLAN/HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS cellular data card. It developed some sort of problem, either with the "New Hardware Wizard" bug or with the Cisco VPN Client software.
- SigmaTel audio driver. I mentioned in my blog entry about installing SightSpeed that the audio was very choppy. This was not the only problem I had with it, there were various other strange audio problems from time to time. The SigmaTel drivers available from Fujitsu were from 2005, and I couldn't find any newer ones which would install on my laptop. It's pretty obvious that drivers that old were not made for Vista, so perhaps that was the problem. I'll never know.
None of these problems were really enough by itself to justify going back to XP. But the cumulative effect was more than enough. After a week running XP Professional on this notebook again, I can honestly say that I am much happier with it - I am now able to just use it for what I need.
jw 30/11/2007
Previous
