Nest Learning Thermostat unboxing, installation and setup

Got my Nest thermostat installed. It is really an amazing product.

Installation-wise, it is pretty straight forward except for getting the anchors into my drywall. There were two problems: the holes from my old thermostat were around the same location which meant I had to reuse them; and there was a piece of metal (presumably the metal box) on the inside which was probably less than an inch deep, so I had to shorten the anchors provided:

Once I got the anchors into the wall, installation was a 5 minute job:

How cool is this?

It is wifi enabled and it has a trackwheel interface (coincidence Tony Fadell?)

It is a pretty cool product. It will definitely pay for itself on energy savings. You can see more pictures here: http://t.co/Xw5AxHcK

Enabling Broadcom USH Fingerprint reader on Windows 7 64-bit for DELL Latitude E6500

I recently upgraded my Latitude E6500 from XP to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. One of the 2 drivers that was not recognized out of the box was the one for the fingerprint sensor.

My first stop was obviously the Dell Latitude E6500 Drivers and Download page from DELL Suport, selecting Windows 7 64-Bit as the Operating System:

I tried with and without my Service Tag. After googling for a while, I found out that the driver is included in the "Dell Security Device Driver Installation Package for 64-Bit Operating Systems". It was hard to find a link to download the latest version of this pack which was compatible with the Latitude E6500 and Windows 7 64-bit, but I finally found it here.

The latest version as of 8/24/2010 was version 1.4.056, A18 released 6/28/2010 and the downloaded file name was: Dell_ControlPoint-Security-D_A18_R269916

You will need to download and install the Dell ControlPoint Security Manager, which includes the EMBASSY Security Center required to use the fingerprint sensor to log into Windows. That too was difficult to find

Latest version as of today was version 1.4.00004, A18 released 7/28/2010 and dowloaded file name: DELL_CONTROLPOINT-SECURITY-M_A18_R276445.exe

You may also want to update the ControlVault firmware (the installer recommends it). I did it just to be safe, though I'm not sure if it was really required. Latest version: 14.x.132.0, A17 released on 5/3/2010

I'm not really sure why these versions and not listed on the Window 7 64-Bit drivers page for E6500, but it sure took me a while to find them on the DELL Support site. I was ready to give up on the fingerprint reader, but I can now confirm that it works prefectly using Windows 7 64-Bit on my Latitude E6500!