Recently in M400 Category

I've been fighting a blue screen of death on my Toshiba M400. The error is 0x0000007F 0x00000008, 0x80042000. The blue screen message indicates that this could be software, it could be hardware.

One bug check that was automatically submitted to Microsoft resulted in the suggestion that the video card was faulty.

One search suggested that it might be a Symantec Antivirus problem with kernel memory.

Another search indicates its a stack overflow in the Windows kernel mode thread.

It could really be anything. To get into the operating system, I booted to safe mode and used msconfig to disable most everything. I tried removing Symantec Antivirus and disabling Cyberarmor. Each time I was only able to get into the OS without a BSOD briefly.

I called Toshiba support in search of a diagnostics CD similar to that which Dell provides. Unfortunately Toshiba only provides the diagnostics for use within Windows. They suggest that I revert to the manufacturor image. I wasn't too happy with that response.

Since I was unable to pin it down as a hardware or software problem, I went ahead and backed up my data before restoring to the manufacturers image (hold down zero while booting).

I'm going to wait a few reboots before applying any patches or installing any software.

So I'm working with Windows Journal on my Toshiba M400, when I decide to test the handwriting to text conversion. It didn't do a bad job of it actually. I need to see if there is a way to make the correction boxes bigger so I dont have to scroll horizontally to read the "corrections."

It looks like I need to change the way I create my lowercase "b". It cannot recognize taht correctly. I make the "o" and then add the verticle piece. It thinks that is a "p". Not good.

I also didn't like that when I did my handwriting to text conversion that it did not preserve the highlights that I had made.

My Toshiba M400 has arrived. Its a convertible tabletpc. Whoo hooo! Or should I say, work's M400 has arrived? Nah, its one of my work provided computers for the next two years. Can you believe they went along with this?

I only had a few hours with it on Friday. I think it will take a couple weeks for me to have a strong opinion on it.

The only things I see right now are 1) The screen is highly reflective which is rather annoying. 2) Not sure I like the screen resolution. Seems a little mickey mouse in its pastels. I'll have to play with it. Perhaps cleartype is on by default. I couldn't get the higher resolution model due to some supplier inventory issues. I hear that is now avaialble for order if you want better resolution. 3) I didn't think to order a second power supply so I'll be hauling the one power supply from work to home and back. That sucks. I'll probably go buy one on my own dime.

Anyway, much thanks to Rod Trent over at myitforum.com for putting me on the road to a Tablet with his posts about his gateway tablet.

I'm suspect once I spend some time with it, I'll have more comments.