An Update on the Asus R2H Vista Driver Issue

Yes, the struggle still continues. Last week the folks who own Asus R2H Ultra-Mobile PCs got very excited with the release of a BIOS update for Vista. Several folks had received emails from Asus tech support (still haven’t figured out why they won’t return mine?) requesting patience and saying the release of drivers was going to be soon, and UK retailer Micro Anvika began taking orders for a Vista loaded R2H. Assumptions were made that things might be getting closer to a resolution.

Well, we aren’t there yet.

Fellow R2H owner and UK resident David Maiden and I have been corresponding via email about some of these issues, and he recently let me know that Micro Anvika has now stated that the release of the Vista loaded R2H has been delayed at least a week.

David and I also compared notes on what’s working and what’s not working with our respective R2Hs after the BIOS update. It is an interesting and depressing list.

• Random freezes on boot up.
• The touchscreen randomly stops working. Mouse and button navigation still works, but not touch.
• David’s fix for resolution switching doesn’t work in my case. While I can now change to higher res options, I lose the native 800×480 option, which makes no sense.
• When switching resolutions the screen continually refreshes making it impossible to apply the resolution switch you desire.
• There are still issues with WiFi dropping out randomly.
• On my end after installing the BIOS update, the microphone is permanently on and cannot be disabled. (I can mute all sound but that’s not optimal.) What is annoying about this is that when my hand approaches the R2H I get an annoying feedback squeal. What is potentially interesting about this (and I’m speculating here) is that this may jive with info the Asus rep gave Matt Faulkner and I at CES. Basically he said the hold up was sound driver issues and that he didn’t think they would get resolved.

Time and smarter folks than I may prove me wrong, but I’m thinking that since we’ve seen a number of Vista related sound and sound card issues on other devices (not just mobile devices either) that this is the real stumbling block.