Disclaimer: I am on a long-term contract with NXP so I am not unemployed... Thankfully :)
I remember when I first came back to the US from Israel and I thought finding work would be easy. I figured a few quick calls and interviews would get me a contract or a job. This was actually tougher than I expected. I didn't have security clearance and most of the jobs in the DC area are security related. All high level jobs there expect you to have high level security clearances. Being unemployed (by choice) made it even tougher. Here's where I thought LinkedIn would help me.
I contacted my old employees from my previous work in Israel. I got a huge response from them, and I posted 10+ recommendations from my colleagues and friends. My recommendations are glowing, not just glowing but long and expansive and descriptive, and overwhelmingly positive. None of these recommendations were quid-pro-quo. I thought this would open may doors for me.
Nothing happened. Almost no-one cared. The recommendations counted for nothing. It is sad that this is still the current state of affairs.
Thankfully I have generated an excellent reputation with my current co-workers and recruiters, so I am happy that I don't need to rely on LinkedIn recommendations anymore.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Fixed power button and mouse issues
The default configuration has the power button putting the computer to sleep. This didn't work. The settings were all correct, and my attempts to regain this functionality failed. What fixed it was removing the power management software and driver, rebooting, and reinstalling them.
My trackpoint and touchpad also decided not to work. They worked fine before I logged in, but as soon as I swiped my fingerprint and the desktop loaded, the mouse stopped working. The touchscreen still worked fine. To fix this I also removed, rebooted, and then reinstalled the ultranav software and driver.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Lenovo weekend tech support woes
I have been using the x220t for a few days now. Five finger gestures is a nice feature of this laptop. I discovered them by playing around with the touchscreen. Lenovo has no complete list of supported five finger gestures. I searched their website and the user guides.
Calling technical support to find this information was almost a waste of time. The first agent who I asked the question to responded by saying technical support is only for hardware repair. She told me to call sales, as they are aware of all the features of the laptop. My girlfriend was in the car with me, and was as disgusted as I was.
I called sales mentioning what tech support said, and luckily I got a sweet sales agent named Tammi. She clarified the situation, and assured me that tech support DOES support the system, including answering my questions.
Second time around, I got another tech support agent who opened up a new request. I asked him what five finger gestures were supported, and he found this website:
I am surprised that Lenovo has no information about these gestures on their website.
Lenovo releases driver updates for x220t
Suffering through a variety of quirks, bugs, and freezes, I checked back on Lenovo's site. Yesterday they issued a range of updated drivers for the x220t. Amongst the updates you will find a new BIOS, updated Power Management, updates for trackpoint, touchscreen and touchpad, and many other things.
Friday, May 20, 2011
x220t after a day or two
Here's my impressions after a couple days.
Solid build. Great keyboard. Still not completely used to the touchscreen with pen or finger... Less accurate than I'd like, but I suspect I have to get better at using it.
Forced power off two times so far. First time during shutdown the system wouldn't turn off, had to hold power button to force it off. Second time in Windows when the screen went blank. I did not switch it to an alternate screen, or do anything like that. It was the result of attempting to put the computer to sleep using the power button, and then pressing the other two screen buttons a few times.
The system has also powered up without the trackpoint or touchpad working, but this was prior to the full set of system updates and windows updates installed.
Power button is incapable of putting the system to sleep or doing anything other than forcing a power off. I hope this is a software bug. Of course I checked the power settings, and even tried to set the power button to hibernate which didn't work.
Camera seems to work and is as grainy as expected for below 1 megapixel resolution.
Fingerprint reader can recognize a fingerprint regardless of the direction of the swipe. Very nice.
The system is NOT silent. It is by no means noisy. Stand five feet away and I'm sure you couldn't possibly hear it, but sit right next to it, and it does make a low hum. I have the i7, so it is possible that an i5 or i3 might be quieter or even cause the fan to turn off occasionally.
Handwriting recognition still has a lot to be desired; I'm hoping to get better at writing in a way that makes it more seamless.
The tools that Lenovo provides for configuring the pen and tablet mode are very primitive looking. I am not sure why the developers couldn't make nice looking UIs as existed in the past. The pen tablet allows you to configure a pen that has 2 side buttons... whereas the pen that came with the system has only one side button.
The tablet is pretty light, but of course you can't comfortably hold it up with one hand and type / tap on it with the other. But it is definitely light.
The screen rotates only to the left. It allows all four orientations of the desktop on the screen. Allows you to hold the laptop in any mode in whichever direction you'd like.
More to come...
Solid build. Great keyboard. Still not completely used to the touchscreen with pen or finger... Less accurate than I'd like, but I suspect I have to get better at using it.
Forced power off two times so far. First time during shutdown the system wouldn't turn off, had to hold power button to force it off. Second time in Windows when the screen went blank. I did not switch it to an alternate screen, or do anything like that. It was the result of attempting to put the computer to sleep using the power button, and then pressing the other two screen buttons a few times.
The system has also powered up without the trackpoint or touchpad working, but this was prior to the full set of system updates and windows updates installed.
Power button is incapable of putting the system to sleep or doing anything other than forcing a power off. I hope this is a software bug. Of course I checked the power settings, and even tried to set the power button to hibernate which didn't work.
Camera seems to work and is as grainy as expected for below 1 megapixel resolution.
Fingerprint reader can recognize a fingerprint regardless of the direction of the swipe. Very nice.
The system is NOT silent. It is by no means noisy. Stand five feet away and I'm sure you couldn't possibly hear it, but sit right next to it, and it does make a low hum. I have the i7, so it is possible that an i5 or i3 might be quieter or even cause the fan to turn off occasionally.
Handwriting recognition still has a lot to be desired; I'm hoping to get better at writing in a way that makes it more seamless.
The tools that Lenovo provides for configuring the pen and tablet mode are very primitive looking. I am not sure why the developers couldn't make nice looking UIs as existed in the past. The pen tablet allows you to configure a pen that has 2 side buttons... whereas the pen that came with the system has only one side button.
The tablet is pretty light, but of course you can't comfortably hold it up with one hand and type / tap on it with the other. But it is definitely light.
The screen rotates only to the left. It allows all four orientations of the desktop on the screen. Allows you to hold the laptop in any mode in whichever direction you'd like.
More to come...
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Got my Lenovo X220t - first impressions
I was surprised to see how light the laptop is. It has a clear screen, and a full size keyboard.
The touchscreen: works well so far. I have managed to write with the pen, although it is something you have to learn how to do. I will slowly build up proficiency at using the gestures and writing in a way that allows the software to more easily recognize the letters.
There are usability bugs.. The laptop screen has gotten stuck in tablet direction even though it was in laptop mode. What that means is that the screen was upside down. Putting it back into tablet mode (flipping the screen), and then turning it back to laptop mode didn't help. Finally after hitting the portrait button, and then hitting it again it switched back to laptop mode.
Next time I booted it up, I didn't have a trackpad or touchpad... I am assuming all of this will be fixed with the System Update run. I have chosen to install all driver updates.
I will blog more as time goes on.
The touchscreen: works well so far. I have managed to write with the pen, although it is something you have to learn how to do. I will slowly build up proficiency at using the gestures and writing in a way that allows the software to more easily recognize the letters.
There are usability bugs.. The laptop screen has gotten stuck in tablet direction even though it was in laptop mode. What that means is that the screen was upside down. Putting it back into tablet mode (flipping the screen), and then turning it back to laptop mode didn't help. Finally after hitting the portrait button, and then hitting it again it switched back to laptop mode.
Next time I booted it up, I didn't have a trackpad or touchpad... I am assuming all of this will be fixed with the System Update run. I have chosen to install all driver updates.
I will blog more as time goes on.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Windows 7. Seriously?
I am a power user of Windows. I like to fly around windows explorer and applications, and I do not want to take time to find where I'm going. I want things to be where I want them to be, and I want to be able to access them quickly. Here's where Windows 7 was supposed to make life easier.
Taskbar icons that can be reordered! Woot! That is wonderful, right?
Wrong.
I must insult the team at Microsoft that architected / designed / implemented this. It's as if their brains were on hold while they did this.
I've opened IE and Chrome. How difficult or important is it for me that IE be before or after Chrome. In all honesty, I can see the icon and quickly access the one I want. Windows 7 allows you to reorder them. Very nice.
I've opened three Chrome applications. They all have the same icon. I must read the name of each one, or look at the thumbnail more clearly to see which instance I want. Wouldn't it be nice if I could reorder those? Yes, that would be wonderful. But alas, Microsoft has deemed the reordering of instances of an application impossible!
Is there anyone who designed this who understands what they are doing?
This situation is most frustrating when working on multiple projects. I have a folder called 'hdl' under multiple projects. I work on multiple projects at once. I keep the 'hdl' folder open on each project at the same time. With Windows XP, I could interleave my 'hdl' folders on the taskbar, with my 'gvim' instances. So I would have on the taskbar:
'hdl' 'gvim' 'hdl' 'gvim'
The first 'hdl' and 'gvim' belong to project A, and the second 'hdl' and 'gvim' belong to project B.
Of course in Windows XP I had to create this arrangement manually. That is why I was looking forward to Windows 7.
In Windows 7, I can't create this arrangement. I would've happily given up on this requirement if at least I could order the instances. But I can't. Even if you choose to 'not combine' taskbar instances, they are still forcibly grouped together without the ability to reorder the instances.
For the first time since Windows came out, I have been forced to use an after-market application to enable me to work efficiently. Since I would encourage Microsoft to fix this, for those who are interested, it is called "7 Taskbar Tweaker".
I would much prefer to use Window's jump lists, and thumbnail previews, and all that jazz. But I can't because I can't reorder the thumbnails.
Allow thumbnails to be reordered!
Allow application instances to not be grouped together!
Perhaps even make it possible to detach an instance (like Chrome does with tabs).
Taskbar icons that can be reordered! Woot! That is wonderful, right?
Wrong.
I must insult the team at Microsoft that architected / designed / implemented this. It's as if their brains were on hold while they did this.
I've opened IE and Chrome. How difficult or important is it for me that IE be before or after Chrome. In all honesty, I can see the icon and quickly access the one I want. Windows 7 allows you to reorder them. Very nice.
I've opened three Chrome applications. They all have the same icon. I must read the name of each one, or look at the thumbnail more clearly to see which instance I want. Wouldn't it be nice if I could reorder those? Yes, that would be wonderful. But alas, Microsoft has deemed the reordering of instances of an application impossible!
Is there anyone who designed this who understands what they are doing?
This situation is most frustrating when working on multiple projects. I have a folder called 'hdl' under multiple projects. I work on multiple projects at once. I keep the 'hdl' folder open on each project at the same time. With Windows XP, I could interleave my 'hdl' folders on the taskbar, with my 'gvim' instances. So I would have on the taskbar:
'hdl' 'gvim' 'hdl' 'gvim'
The first 'hdl' and 'gvim' belong to project A, and the second 'hdl' and 'gvim' belong to project B.
Of course in Windows XP I had to create this arrangement manually. That is why I was looking forward to Windows 7.
In Windows 7, I can't create this arrangement. I would've happily given up on this requirement if at least I could order the instances. But I can't. Even if you choose to 'not combine' taskbar instances, they are still forcibly grouped together without the ability to reorder the instances.
For the first time since Windows came out, I have been forced to use an after-market application to enable me to work efficiently. Since I would encourage Microsoft to fix this, for those who are interested, it is called "7 Taskbar Tweaker".
I would much prefer to use Window's jump lists, and thumbnail previews, and all that jazz. But I can't because I can't reorder the thumbnails.
Allow thumbnails to be reordered!
Allow application instances to not be grouped together!
Perhaps even make it possible to detach an instance (like Chrome does with tabs).
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