In my 9 years in computer support, I've done scores of BIOS updates. I've always known that any one of those times, I could end up with an expensive paperweight on my hands, but I've been fortunate each time. I always figured that my luck would run out on me at work, where I've done these updates at least a hundred times more than on my own machines at home, but no, I had to beat the odds last night with one of the machines I carry daily.
Thursday night, I'd checked the Asus web site in the futile hope that they'd released some sort of driver update that would eliminate my R2H's dependence on external WiFi adapters in Vista. When I saw that version 208 of the UMPC's BIOS had been released only a few days before, I thought nothing of downloading it and giving it a try; after all, I also had problems with sleep. The update from 206 to 207 earlier this year had gone smoothly, so I anticipated no problems. Still, I waited until last night to do the install. I downloaded an installed the Vista utility and went to town--or so I thought. Everything looked normal; the app said it was doing everything and declared "Flash Successfully" at the bottom of the screen...and declared "Flash Successfully!" at the bottom of the screen...and declared "Flash Successfully!" at the bottom of the screen...and...that is all it did.
My heart sank...and sank...and sank. I waited, then I waited some more, and with a heavy heart, I pulled the plug and the battery, since the R2H would respond to nothing else. I keep asking myself how I managed to screw it up. Dear Asus, I guess I'll be calling you tomorrow, and please ignore what I said about you guys using the L2-cacheless 900 MHz processors, ok?