Good ideas gone bad: Thinkvantage

I've got a T61p and I installed all of the ThinkVantage software; however, I think I am regretting it very much. I am finding that many times I come out of sleep or hibernate all ThinkVantage software other then APS fails. The biggest two problems is that the screen defaults on brightness, which I cannot then change. Second, the internet becomes locked on whatever access point it was last using. This would be fine if it was a desktop system, but I need to connect to other networks. My personal network is WPA2 which is simple enough to access if ThinkVantage is off, but the second requires a bit of set-up and I have a feeling that if Vista knows about it then it will start accessing it on its own, leading to horrible things. I can shut off Access Connections with the taskmanager, but the only way to fix the problem is a restart, which can be a long delay and a cut in battery life.

I really do like the idea of Access Connections, but rather then choosing my default printer and connecting to networks it seems to do the opposite - freeze, block my internet, lower my screen brightness, and then use all remaining ram. (Often up to 1.8GB)

So, is there a way to fix this? I heard that 5.XX will never really make it to Vista in the near term, and I heard it has this problem too. If there is no way to fix this, then can I run the fingerprint reader and APS without any other software, or do I still need the main ThinkVantage program?

 

I could never get TV Access Connections 4.52 to work properly - it always dropped the connection and locked up the card. I uninstalled it, use Vista, and never have a problem...The fact that they aren't even trying to get 5.00 out for Vista is an admission that they just couldn't get it right.

 

Maybe it's Vista... cause all my Thinkvantage software runs sweet under XP/2003.

 

Maybe this will help with the dropped connections,

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CommentView.aspx?guid=dc75de35-c310-43c9-9adc-eba0e0c072d5

 

Thanks Ark - I had tried all that and other suggestions in other threads before I gave up. Mash is right, it is Vista. It handles wireless differently, and lenovo has not yet been motivated enough to do a rewrite for vista. I don't blame them, just an observation. I have no problem with how Vista handles the connection.

 

Don’t blame Vista. If you’re going to preinstall someone’s operating system on your hardware, it is your responsibility to make certain your software, the one you preinstalled, works correctly—even if the solution to the problem is some update from that vendor/Microsoft. Otherwise, you shouldn’t be preinstalling that operating system with your software.

 

I'm running most of the ThinkVantage applications on both my T60 and T61 and I've never had any problems with them. Access Connections is version 4.52 and it runs very smooth on Vista Business (installed on both of my machines). Had a small issue with Access Connections not finding my wirelss network but that was a driver issue.

Other than that, I've never had any problems at all...

 

I visted the site and made one tweak. I guess that it really doesn't do anything anymore though after you disable loaction switching. I have Vista so I will uninstall it this weeked. If I move back to XP then I guess its good to know that it will work well.

P.S. Does anyone know what software you need (if any) to run the ThinkLight (FN+PgUp)?