Jay Consentino: December 2007 Archives

My good friend Kristan Kenney has released his Windows Vista power guide for notebooks. I have successfully tested this and it has extended my battery life by about 20 to 30 minutes.

Since the introduction of the Windows Vista operating system, there have been many rumors and complaints made about the way that the operating system manages power settings and how this can impact the battery life and usage on notebook computers. Generally, Windows Vista manages power as well as its predecessor, Windows XP, although in some configurations it can be a little more demanding on your battery.

This guide will help you get the most out of your notebook battery when running Windows Vista.

Windows Vista Power Management for Notebooks

Thanks to Chris123NT for this one:

So, I’ve run across what seems to be a very serious bug in Windows Vista and it still exists in Service Pack 1 RC1 (and I really don’t know if this is going to get fixed in SP1 either, although I would hope so).

Can anyone reproduce this? I would love to have some good customer feedback on this one.

1. Click on Start, and then click on Documents.
2. In the Search entry box, type “NOT Shortcut” (without the quotes).
3. Click on the “Save Search” button and save the search query as “Search Test”.

In 9 out of 10 tries, Windows Explorer will stop working and will restart itself after displaying a crash dialog. Seems to be an issue with how the search files are serialized. How the hell did this one get past quality assurance? It occurs in both RTM and SP1.

The thing that bothers me here is that Microsoft is closing this bug as NoRepro (Not Reproducable). With so many people on the internet saying it happens to them, why is MS taking such an arrogant stance?