Windows Vista Another ARGH

It's been relatively calm regarding Windows related things and honestly I think Vista has a worse reputation than it actually is. Of course it's resource hungry and slower, but it certainly isn't as bad as everyone thinks it is. Also I've had enough troubles with Windows XP that I don't want to go back anymore. Windows 7 is also around the corner, but it's questionable in what way it will be an improvement to Vista. Certainly it will have a different name and that's by far the biggest benefit, because Vista doesn't sell, no matter how they try to improve it. The name is cursed. Some are already anticipating that Windows 7 will profit a lot, just because people were totally underwhelmed by Vista and there's a backlash that will positively effect the launch of Windows 7. Whatever, I'm running Windows Vista and Vista x64 for some time now and find it good enough to work with. The UAC thing is the only real bugger. I'll have to look into the new taskbar features of Windows 7 to see if it's worth an upgrade.

It somehow reminds me when everyone was ditching the Nikon D200 (even more than the D80) for noise performance and started to praise the D300 when it arrived as it was soooo much better.... There are two things wrong a.) the D200 was never as bad and b.) the D300 certainly isn't as good. Sometimes all the disappointed expectations will convert to total enthusiasm if there's just a minor improvement. I bet with Windows 7 it will be the same.

CHIC Input USB Browser Mouse

Anyway, here's a word of warning to every Vista user. There's an update that is available for a long time and on my system it has been the cause for mouse problems. My laptop wouldn't recognize new USB mice that are attached to the port. It always failed installing the driver, which was the USB Browser Mouse driver. I remembered that once there was an update that said CHIC Input USB Browser Mouse and I installed it, because there's probably nothing wrong with it. Well, there was. After installing it, usb mice were not recognized anymore, the driver always failed to install. One had to go to the device manager and select the driver manually choosing "HID-compliant mouse". I searched on the web and found a few places that mention to just delete the INF file that was installed with this update. The file is located somewhere in C:\Windows\inf, it has a name oemXX.inf. If you check the date when the update has been installed in the update history and then sort the files by this date you should be able to find the file. Actually there are two files with different extensions, look for the string "browser mouse" in the inf file and when you have found it, remove both files with the same number. Restart and it will load the HID-compliant driver as usual and your mice work again.

That was a bit of an ARGH, but I have some good news as well.

As of recently Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 has been released and that's good news for all Outlook users. They've increased performance of Outlook 2007 a lot with this update. Switching between mail and calendar is now much faster. If you also have your colleagues calendar loading it's still nowhere near instant and the first time still takes some time, but the next times it's fast enough to work with. If it's just your calendar, it's very veBefore you always said "oh no" when you accidentally clicked to switch to the calendar or when you had to switch between mail and calendar a few times. Outlook will now also shut down immediately when you select to close it. Before it would stay in memory do some tasks and then shut down. That was terrible!