Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG versus Asus HControl.exe

I thought I had solved my wireless networking problems when I decided to let Windows manage my wireless network adaptor. When my Asus notebook computer starts, it establishes a connection. However, when I put Windows on Standby and then Resume my session, Windows still has the same connection problem.

Since there are no newer drivers from Asus, I tried the latest drivers from Intel. They're available from either the PRO/Wireless 2200BG support page or use the Intel support site and enter pro/wireless 2200bg in the search field. Download the PROSet/Wireless Network Connection Software (WIRELESS_TIC_131935_V10.5.2.0_XP32.EXE) which contains the drivers and Windows GUI. After installing it, my wireless adaptor driver was upgraded to version 9.0.4.27. Now I can use my wireless connection after Standby and Resume.

As per course, I rebooted my laptop. Now the Asus HControl.exe could not start. On Asus laptops, users can use keyboard shortcuts to turn off and on features such as the DVD player, display output, speaker volume and (you guessed it) the wireless adaptor. I've fixed this problem previously for another Asus notebook simply by reinstalling the not-so-obvious ATK0100 ACPI Utility. This time, no luck with using the support software for my M6R model. Then I found another version but for the Asus A3 model. Installed it and it works!

Firefox InfoLister Extension

Firefox InfoLister extension can print your current Firefox version, add-ins and plug-ins. For example, here's my current configuration. It also adds new command about:info which displays the same information. Useful for tracking different Firefox installations and reporting bugs.

22-Oct-2007: Fixed URL as per Ant's comment.

Firefox and Windows Text-to-speech

Firefox has a Speak It extension which can read aloud web pages or highlighted text. One application is read aloud the news in the background, say from an RSS feed in one tab, and to continue browsing the web in another tab. However, with the limited options available in Speak It, it's too hard to do this in Firefox at the moment.

This extension works in Windows XP, which comes with a default voice for text-to-speech synthesis, known as Microsoft Sam. If you're tired of Sam, you can get two additional voices from Microsoft, Mike and Mary, from the Speech SDK 5.1 page. The SDK also includes a Sample TTS Voice but I can't get it to say more than, "Blah blah blah," in Speak It.

The hassle is that you have to download the 68 Mbyte SpeechSDK51.exe. That SDK page suggests downloading Sp5TTIntXP.exe but this file contains an MSM file that you can't install; developers include MSM files into a software distribution using a development tool such as Visual Studio. Once you've installed the SDK, you can select a different default voice for your computer in the Speech control panel applet.

Firefox Restart Extension

If you're testing (or simply having fun with) different Firefox add-ins, then it's pretty useful to simply restart Firefox without losing all your tabs. The Restart Firefox extension adds a File / Restart menu item.