Slow Dell Laptop Keyboard in Windows Vista

My computer is a Dell XPS 1330M, purchased January 2008. The computer itself, and tech support, have both been a nightmare since I've purchased them. But, I wanted to talk about something specific, so I'll save the other issues for later.

I noticed recently that typing on my computer became very sluggish. I would type a sentence, and I would have to wait a few seconds for the text to appear on the screen. It didn't matter what program I was in: Firefox, IE, Notepad. I'm a fast typer, but no other computers I've ever used (whether older versions of Windows, or several versions of Linux, or Solaris) have had this problem unless there was a huge memory hog. I could not identify a big memory hog through the Task Manager. Deleting temp files and defragging did not help.

I found the solution on another blog. The problem is the Dell feature that allows you to access media without booting into Windows - called MediaDirect. I disabled the InstantOffice feature through the settings inside MediaDirect (which is on my start menu), and immediately I could feel the mouse was less sluggish (I hadn't even noticed it was sluggish). I tested typing in Notepad, and it felt fine. No reboot was necessary, although I did anyway for good course - it is Windows after all. No problems with typing since then! Admittedly it's only been a day.

Interesting to note that the problem began around the time I bought my iPhone. Shortly after buying it I moved all my computer's contacts into Windows Contacts, which makes it available to InstantOffice. I think that's what made it so slow. The author of the post I referenced above wrote that the next day his computer became sluggish again, and removing MediaDirect fixed it for good. For me, simply disabling it did the trick.

My New Blog

Being both a software developer and a regular computer user, there are problems I encounter for which I sometimes spend hours searching for answers. My goal for this blog is to document the answers I eventually find or figure out to those problems, with the hope that it will help someone else with the same problem.

If you find something useful, or have a better way to solve a problem, feel free to comment!