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    Mon, 26 May 2008

    25 Aug, 2007: BH200 Vista not working


    Dell Bluetooth headset woes

    I have a Inspiron E1405/640M with Vista Business Dell Truemobile 355 Bluetooth + EDR Driver date 21/06/2006 version 6.0.6000.16398 Bluetooth headset BH200

    I've read various forums such as
    http://www.notebookforums.com/thread178221.html
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=137370
    and the Dell support troubleshooter: "Problems With the Dell BH200 Bluetooth 2.0 EDR Stereo Headset"

    I posted that method to the Dellcommunity.com forum but my question is:

    Why do I have to go through this rigmarole EVERY TIME I turn on the laptop? Surely once installed it should recognise the headset the next time I turn it on? Bluetooth was supposed to make interfacing easier. With the old plug-in mike+earpieces all I had to do was plug them in and they worked. Maybe I should go back to them.

    UPDATE: The method I described in my last post does not work any more. I downloaded what seems to be the latest patch, R140135, but when I run setup I get

     
    ---------------------------
    Bluetooth Software
    ---------------------------
    This installer be run on Windows Vista only.
    ---------------------------
    
    If that message had 'Aaarrr' in front of it that would be talk-like-a-pirate software, but I presume the word 'must' is missing. Which is useless as I *am* running Vista Business.

    I have an email into tech support, got the automated answer, still waiting for a specific answer.

    Still waiting, 2 weeks later....

    [] permanent link

    Sep 27,2007: Excel 2007 float bug at 65535


    microsoft.public.excel is discussing this problem:

    multiply 850 by 77.1 and Excel displays the result to be 100000

    David Gainer's Excel blog says: The Problem
    This issue was introduced when we were making changes to the Excel calculation logic in the Office 2007 time frame. Specifically, Excel incorrectly displays the result of a calculation in 12 very specific cases (outlined below). The key here is that the issue is actually not in the calculation itself (the result of the calculation stored in Excel's memory is correct), but only in the result that is shown in the sheet. Said another way, =850*77.1 will display an incorrect value, but if you then multiply the result by 2, you will get the correct answer (i.e. if A1 contains "=850*77.1", and A2 contains "=A1*2", A2 will return the correct answer of 131,070).
    So what, specifically, are the values that cause this display problem? Of the 9.214*10^18 different floating point numbers (floating point on wikipedia) that Excel 2007 can store, there are 6 floating point numbers (using binary representation) between 65534.99999999995 and 65535, and 6 between 65535.99999999995 and 65536 that cause this problem. You can't actually enter these numbers into Excel directly (since Excel will round to 15 digits on entry), but any calculation returning one of those results will display this issue if the results of the calculation are displayed in a cell. All other calculation results are not affected.

    Other posts on that blog show how the value of 100000 can be propagated rather than just be a display problem.
    Joel Spolsky gives his explanation at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/26b.html

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    PraxIS Feb 2008


    http://www.sysmod.com/praxis/prax0802.htm
    1) Risk & Security
        Societe Generale 
    2) Bank Direct Debit fraud
        Jeremy Clarkson's challenge taken up
    3) Spreadsheets
        New certification on safe spreadsheeting being tested 
    4) Off Topic
        Schadenfreude
    15 Web links in this newsletter
    

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