I discovered that Iambic’s registration method is rather convoluted. You must first install the software on the device either from the desktop or a CAB installer on the device, get the Device ID from the About box, go to their Web site (on a desktop PC) and enter that ID into a form to generate your registration code. You must then type that code into separate boxes on the device as show here.

I keep all of my software registration codes in another program on my device, so I always have them with me if needed. The annoyance with this registration method is that if I’m installing while not near a desktop PC, I have to switch back and forth between Vehicle Manager and my registration code list. (That’s assuming I already had the code and wasn’t trying to fight with their Web site in IE on the device.) Why? Because I can’t simply copy and paste the entire code due to the separate boxes.

Don’t the developers actually use handheld devices and realize how awkward and inconvenient their registration system is? Sure, it’s a one time process for most people, but it makes the software seem unnecessarily unfriendly.

I experimented with some things and even rolled the driver back to the previous version using Device Manager. Nothing helped and I was still dealing with sleep times of a minute or more. As someone who puts his system to sleep many times a day and shuts down maybe once a week or so, this was not acceptable. So I did something I’ve never done before in Windows Vista (and only twice in Windows XP): I used a System Restore point to revert the system to the way it was prior to the driver update.

To my delight, the problem was resolved and my tablet is now back to entering sleep mode in under five seconds. This was the first time I’d seen a problem like this from a driver update, so I’m definitely going to be a little gun-shy with such updates in the future. It’s nice to see that System Restore worked so well, though I hope to not have a need for it on a regular basis.