Video of Lenovo S10 touch screen mod

Well, I promised video of the touch screen mod, so here is a quick, 1 minute video showing off the touch screen.  As I said in an earlier post, I mostly wanted this touch screen mod so that I could have GPS navigation in my car, so I have Garmin’s Mobile PC software installed on here.  Garmin’s software really takes full advantage of the touch screen, turning my S10 into a large, 10-inch full-featured GPS nav system!  Along with a $25 USB GPS module that I got off eBay, I’m set!

Sorry for the quality of the video.  I plan to throw up some pictures of the interior of the laptop to show how I routed all the cables and where everything is mounted, but that will have to be later.  Maybe when I get the Bluetooth module in and install it, I’ll take pictures for the touch screen mod.

Lenovo S10 touch screen mod complete!

I got the Fidohub touch screen panel for my S10 yesterday and I completed the mod early this morning around 2am.  Despite what the box says, it’s not that easy of an upgrade!  The S10 is pretty tight inside that small chassis, which makes it much more difficult to find places to route cables.

But it works.  I was touch-screening my way all over my OS X installation after installing it and getting the driver installed.  The configuration utility doesn’t seem to work correctly.  Not sure if that’s a problem with the application itself or if it’s due to the fact that my installation of OS X is on unsupported hardware in the first place.

Lenovo S10 teardowns

I just ordered a touchscreen kit for my S10.  Well, technically, the touchscreen kit isn’t designed for the S10, but I’m going to try to cram it in there.  I ordered the Samsung NC10 touchscreen kit from fidohub.com.  In preparation for the eventual installation attempt, I wanted to find some information on the web about how to take the S10 apart completely.  I found two really great items.  Both of these links were found through the forums at s10lenovo.com.

First link is to the actual Lenovo service manual for the S9e and the S10e.  It’s a PDF file.

IdeaPad S9e and S10e Hardware Maintenance Manual

The second link is to a site that has actual instructional videos on how to take the whole freaking thing apart.

http://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/ion/S10e/index.html

After looking at these two sites, I’m not sure I’ll be able to cram this kit into the body of the S10, but it’ll be fun to try!  When I get the kit, I’ll post my progress.

My new D90!

For the longest time, I’ve used a crappy Samsung NV10 as my digital camera.  It’s a simple little point and shoot camera that annoys me at every turn.  The only thing good about it is it’s soft, touch-button interface on the back.  It is an extremely easy system to learn how to use and makes certain settings changes easier than similar cameras.  

Unfortunately, the camera sucks in every other regard, including taking pictures!  Now, I know that any photographer worth his or her salt will tell you that any camera can take great pictures.  It’s the person behind the camera that needs to know how to use it!  Well, this is true.  I don’t know everything about cameras.  But I do know when a camera sucks.  And this one sucks.  A point-and-shoot camera should really be good at one thing: snapshots.  People buy point-and-shoot cameras for that reason.  They want a camera that they can just turn on and take quick snapshots and get decent results.  Well, the Samsung fails at this.  In anything other than a high-noon, bright-as-hell setting, the camera falls apart.  The flash wants to pop up for every single shot.  The “hand shake reduction” feature is horrible, usually resulting in photos that are even MORE shaky looking.  It’s just a poorly implemented camera.  In order to get even a mildly decent photo, you have to mess with 10 different settings to set the camera up.  Now, on a pro-level SLR camera, that’s fine.  Those types of cameras are meant to have every setting changed.  But a point-and-shoot requiring that level of commitment just to get a workable shot?  No no no.  Taking the Samsung to Vegas and seeing the resulting pictures sealed the fate of that particular camera in my mind’s eye.  

But what to replace it with?  I wanted something that could take good pictures on the auto setting.  I wanted something that would offer me great creative control when I wanted it, but also be smart enough to take great pictures when I just want a quickie snapshot.  It would have to have certain features like auto-exposure bracketing, white balance bracketing, nice menu system, etc.  It would have to take good pictures, even in low light situations.  

Windows 7 and the WiFi connection that wouldn’t connect!

I’ve had Windows 7 beta installed on my Lenovo S10 for a few weeks now and I’ve been constantly plagued by a problem with my wireless connectivity.  I set up my wifi connection to my router, and I selected the checkbox to automatically connect to the network whenever it is in range.  I could connect and disconnect from my wireless network all day long.  The problem would occur when I rebooted or shutdown.  When the machine would come back up, I’d have to manually connect to my wireless network again!  All the settings were there except for that checkbox to automatically connect.  Every reboot would reset that checkbox to be blank.  Which meant that every reboot would force me to manually connect again!

Finally, I think I found the solution.  I searched high and low in the registry and couldn’t find an appropriate registry setting to change that would force this automatic connection.  That meant that Windows must be storing the connection profile in a different place.  After using some file access monitoring tools, I narrowed it down to an xml file.  If you’re having a similar problem, either in Windows 7 or Vista, try the following steps: