Useful Little Things

Here’s the steps I went through to set up Visual Studio for assembly programming under Windows 7 64-bit.  Unfortunately, it only builds 32-bit executables.

1. Install Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.
2. Download Irvine samples (“Example programs and link libraries (designed for Visual Studio 2008)”) and install in C:\Irvine.
3. Copy Irvine lib and include files to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\ (*.lib files go in lib folder and *.inc files go in the include folder).
4. Open an Irvine sample project.
5. Compile.

To create a new project, simply use the Save As option from one of the existing Irvine solutions/projects.  It is much easier than trying to create a project from scratch.

Even though I gave up on Windows 7 for my laptop, I haven’t give up on it all together.  I just purchased and downloaded a fresh copy of Windows 7 from Digital River.  Thanks to my status as a student, it only cost $30.  I plan to install it tonight on the PC in my media room and finally get rid on that hideous monstrosity called Vista.

I noticed today that the volume control buttons across the top of the keyboard aren’t working. I checked the Lenovo site for drivers, but didn’t see anything that looked promising. Actually, I tried the “Tablet Button Driver” for Vista, but it didn’t work.

If you have any ideas, post them in the comments.

After reading a few blog posts about installing Windows 7 Release Candidate on the Lenovo X41 Thinkpad Tablet PC (which I happen to own), I decided to try it out. After all, I still have all the media to roll it back if I don’t like it.

It was amazingly easy. Everything appeared to work right out of the box, so to speak. Pen support is built in to Windows. The system seems fairly responsive.

The video card showed up as a “Standard VGA Graphics Adapter.” But it works fine, so I’m not complaining, yet. I like the Windows 7 pen calibration utility better than the one that came installed on the Thinkpad, though both are effective.

I timed the boot sequence before and after the update. With Windows XP Tablet Edition (with all the Lenovo add-ons), it took 2 minutes and 6 seconds to load the desktop. After that, it took another 3 minutes and 16 seconds for the CPU to drop below 10% utilization. Those of you who have one of these PCs know what I mean. The mouse is nearly unresponsive and jumps dysfunctionally around the screen for the first five minutes after a cold boot; I think it may have something to do with all the Lenovo software.

After installing Windows 7, it took 2 minutes and 12 seconds to see a login prompt. About the same as Windows XP. After that, the CPU only pegged for about another 60 seconds. In short, I regained about two minutes of my life every time I cold boot. This alone is probably worth it.

Got any questions? Post them in the comments.

Update: Since posting this article, I have installed Ubuntu 9.04 in place of Windows 7.  This is mainly due to performance seeming to go down hill with Windows 7 over time.  I am happy to report that Ubuntu is holding up well.