Beginner questions: brightness/buttons/touchpad

Hi
I have zero laptop experience. Laptop model:Satellite A135-s2276 on vista home basic/premium.

Several questions!

1. The screen is wayyy tooo bright for me. I tried Fn+F6 ofcourse, it works but its still too bright. Any tools to calibarate or something to reduce brightness/contrast. I do a lot of reading btw

2. The media player button doesn't works, the browser button opens exploder instead of my default browser(Opera). Many other Fn buttons don't seem to do anything and there doesn't seem any way them can be configured. Help!

3. I have assigned the corner areas of my touchpad to certain tasks(middleclick), while this works most of the time, sometiems it just stops responding and only after I press a few keys that it works again. Similarly the scrolling area sometimes stops responding.

4. Possible to switch off the screen without closing the lid. I just want to close the display not put it to sleep.

5. [solved]What percent of battery will be consumed in the above state

6. [solved]I want a lil more geeky control over my powersettings (and laptop in general), any apps? Not the default balanced/power saver things.

7. leftclick/rightclick buttons are annoyingly hard to press. Help!

Thanks - feel free to give one line answers/flames

 

1.) there is usuall some brightness adjuster keys on the keyboard that are used with the fn key. for me its the fn key and the up and down arrows.
2.)meadia buttons are factory set to use default programs ie IE6/7 ect. there should be a place to configure these keys, but since I'm not familiar with that model, all I can suggest you do is consult the user manual or wait for more replys.
3.)it's probably system lag.
4.)that's in power settings. right click propperties/screen saver tab/power settings or power.
5.) it's a significant gain, that's all I know.
6.) try NHC
7.) most likely they will ease up over time. if not-wireless mouse.

hope this helps.

 

Done, but even after this its still too bright. I found a workaround though: alt+shift+prtScr in vista

Thats was what I was looking for . THanks!
and it claims to be able to adjust LCD brightness . Will report

 

****, NHC gives a BSOD on vista...
you would think after so many jokes they could atleast change the colour.

 

I hope that NHC fixes this because I plan to install it when I eventually get around to getting Vista.

 

I installed an old version of NHC (1.) , no BSOD there but most setttings seem disabled in it.

i meant I was looking for something like the power button on my CRT monitor

 

grizzly:

Would you mind posting your windows experience index (right-click on computer and select properties)? I have a same laptop and mine are way too low I think.

My base score: 2.3

Proc: 4.5
RAM: 4.2
Graphics: 2.3
Gaming Graphics: 3.0
Primary Hard Disk: 4.1

 

@legowarez: I'll make your day!
mine are
This is from memory as I am using xp right now

base : 2

Proc: 4.5
ram: 2 (512mb)
Graphics: 2.3
Gaming: 3
hard-disk : don't remember but it was probably around 4

i got the laptop for 550$ btw

 

so did the laptop come with vista preinstalled or did u install yourself on top of xp???

as for #4 its easy to do, go to start meny, control panel (enable classic view), power options, then on the left it says "choose what closing the lid does".

for #2 u cant do much, hard to change the settings of the buttons to the left of the keyboard, will open IE, and in media player play,stop,ffwd, etc. will work, still wont open up media center as it used to on xp.

#1 the screen can be dimmed by pressing fn F6, if the toshiba utility is present (prob wont be if u upgraded from xp), will have to install it

 

Wonder if anybody is still reading this post, but i have the same problem with my notebook screen too 'sunny' especially at night even though i have already set the brightness setting to the lowest.

This is how i tweak my system to lower the contrast.
Control panel ->display setting-> Graphic properties-> Color correction
Here actually allowed me to further lower down the brightness of my notebook.

By the way my system is vista business. Hope this tip can help the rest of you who are also having the same problem.