If you have a Toshiba m200 (or m205) with Bluetooth built in, there is one thing you should know of when you try to get it all to work together.  By default, the Toshiba comes with the Toshiba Bluetooth stack installed.  I successfully got the MS keyboard and mouse to work on that stack, but I had severe problems getting the devices to work after about 10 minutes of inactivity.

 

So, if I walked away from my computer for a few minutes (yeah, it does happen), I would find the neither the keyboard or mouse would work.  If I poked and prodded at keys and buttons for a while, it might come back, but most of the time I had to reconnect them through the Bluetooth manager app.

 

Finally, I decided to uninstall Toshiba’s Bluetooth stack and install Microsoft’s (which, at least for me, was provided in the c:toshibabtmonitor directory.  After doing that, it has worked perfectly.  Keep in mind though that if the notebook goes to sleep in the port replicator, it appears that you have to wake it up by hitting the power button on the replicator – just hitting a key on the Bluetooth keyboard won’t work.

 

I’ll post more on my thoughts about the Toshiba m200 at a later time…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My good friend Miguel A. Castro was on DotNetRocks for show 136 (released this week).  I’ve listened to a lot of DNR’s and I have to say that in my opinion this is one of the best ones, and I’m not saying that because Miguel has been a friend for over 18 years (yes, it has been that long).

 

Miguel covers a lot of stuff regarding web controls and imparts a lot of useful knowledge in an hour and fifteen minutes.

 

If you’re at all into ASP.NET based programming and want to learn some stuff about building custom web controls, including managing state, give it a listen.

 

 

It’s a real shame how complicated Microsoft makes certain things…

 

If you have the problem with VS.NET 2003 disappearing while compiling your app, you may not know that Microsoft has a hotfix for it.  Unfortunately, you cannot just get the hotfix.  You have to submit a support request, pay your money, get the hotfix, and then get your money back.

 

They say the hotfix isn’t fully regression tested – well, okay, that’s certainly a concern, but if you install it and all your stuff turns turtle, just uninstall it and you’re back where you were.  It wouldn’t be too hard to have a seperate screen that shows up when trying to download it that makes you type something like "I AGREE" to a warning and disclaimer.  Total lost time, a few minutes.

 

Instead, you have a multi day process just to make your tool work the way it’s supposed to.

 

Heck, I can even understand having a hotfix being hard to get if it’s for something like Windows or Active Directory, because some yahoo who doesn’t know what they’re doing can apply it when it isn’t relevant – but this one, and another one that I had to obtain the same way, are for *big* projects.  Joe Schmoe developer who is using a buddy’s stolen copy of VB.NET 2003 isn’t going to create a 100,000+ LOC project in his spare time and need these patches.  Professional developers need them, and should be able to get them easliy.

 

I wish I had cornered Paul Vick at the PDC to get an explanation for why this works the way it works.

 

Can someone in Microsoft give us a clear explanation why several critical hotfixes for VS.NET are held hostage like this?  It isn’t because MS is making money off of the support requests – they will refund the submitted amount.

 

It just reeks of a process that wasn’t thought through.