Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Lenovo X220T Tablet win8 wifi driver issue

Lenovo X220T table runs Windows 8 just fine.  However, there appears to be a issue with the factory 1x1 wifi driver.

The issue manifest as lost of network connection, unable to connect, or "limited connection" upon resume from sleep.  Work around includes resetting NIC through NetSh, turning off and on wifi NIC, or going into and out of airplane mode.

After some digging, it appears that the Realtek driver fixes this issue.  The 1x1 NIC in the X220T uses Realtek RTL8188CE chipset.  The driver was last found on Dec 23, 2012 at:

http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=21&PFid=48&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true



Saturday, January 21, 2012

ASUS Zenbook Touchpad Hack

So if you have the ASUS zenbook UX31 (13"), you probably know how much the touchpad sucks. Most compliants about it comes from the touch pad being a bit too sensitive, and seemingly doing things you don't want it to do.

Some adjustments that can be made to help it work better are:
  1. Tapping - disable two finger tap for popup menu
    This helps prevent the action of putting your thumb on the "left button" being mistaken as a two finger tap.
  2. Drag and Drop - disable to avoid dragging windows if you are fast, where you double-tap and move the cursor, and the Smart-Pad thinks you are dragging.
  3. Smart Detector - enabled, and change the detect area to where you actually put your finger.
    You can tell after some moderate use by looking at the smartpad and seeing an area of "clean" (or grease - ewww). This is the area you most likely actually are putting your pointer finger.

However, if that's NOT enough, here's one more. It's a good one. Hack the registry. This will allow you to see all the functions the smart-pad software can control, but for whatever reason ASUS or Elantech disabled for the Zenbook

  1. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPadDisplay, and change all values to "1"
  2. Go to the Elan Smart-Pad's properties by using the Mouse Properties dialog box
  3. Now you'll see all the hidden options

Once all the options are enabled, you'll see "Palm Tracking" under Additional tab. Turn that up one notch, and it'll make the smart pad less sensitive, but it also makes accidental brushing less likely to register as a mouse movement.

Interesting note on this. Once you make changes to whatever formerly hiddened options and click OK or Apply, the previously modified registry keys will revert back to the way "they want it". If you want to experiment, it's best to change all the values to 1's, export the registry key, and use that to change all the keys at once.

Not all the newly activated options will work with the Zenbook's Elan Smart-Pad, but the Palm Check is tested to work on my UX31. Hopefully this will help you get better control over your Zenbook.