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As I mentioned in a previous post, Vista is overly aggressive about powering down the wireless network interface on my new tablet notebook.  Vista seems to want to disable the wireless when it loses connectivity, when wireless network strength is less than excellent, when the wireless network interface is idle for too long, or if it gets tired of me being productive. 

Losing the wireless capability on a Lenovo tablet/laptop (because power-savingness is close to godliness, or something) shouldn’t be a problem. There are a couple of utilities and control panel widgets for turning wireless back on again.  The infuriating problem with my tablet is that either Vista wireless or Lenovo’s wireless managers seem to get themselves, or each other, royally screwed. The easy methods of getting your wireless card turned on again become completely unresponsive. Sometimes they fail to show the correct state and hang when you try to disable or enable wireless again.  The result is extended periods of wirelesslessness.

With Vista’s ambition, though not-terribly successful (compared to Mac OSX) attempts to quickly wake from sleep and power-conserving modes, I would think that getting wireless back should be fast and simple.  It’s supposed to be.  Sadly, it’s not so.  Usually it takes a reboot (which, under Vista, also isn’t that fast) to restore wireless capabilities to their former, precarious, glory.

After searching for answers and persevering with Vista throughout its insistence that I save power foremost through the loss of my wireless connectivity, I finally decided to side-step the problem.  Basically, I excluded my wireless adapter from any power saving scheme. 

To improve my wireless networking dependability, I did the following.

Click on the battery/charger icon in the system tray and choose “More power options”

Under your power plan of choice, select the “Change plan settings”

Now “Change advanced power settings”

Now make your wireless adapter into a CO2 production machine. Set the wireless adapter to use maximum performance and fashion yourself a tinfoil hat.

It’s not a good answer.  Ideally the tablet should be free to shut down wireless on idle and I should be free to start it up again whenever I need the network again.  However, this seems to cure 95% of my unexplained wireless networking deaths. 

The other 5% will no doubt be cured by my faith in Vista Service pack 1, the service pack Vista was never going to have.