Toyota Touch hidden menu

Keep SETUP button pressed while turning on and off the headlights 3 times:

Here's the hidden menu.
The "Next page" button leads to this screen:

No items are selectable here.

EV: share the fun

Driving the Yaris Hybrid is a relaxing experience.

Its ability to run only with its electric motor in the city traffic is rewarding.
There's an EV indicator on the driver's dashboard that lights up when the gasoline engine turns off and you're moving only on electric power.
It's a kind of a satisfaction switch: it turns on and bang! You're instantly gratified.
It's a feeling that must be shared: everyone should know that!
So it's a shame that the EV indicator is only on the dashboard: it should be visible from the outside also.
Stick it on the rear glass and make it glow when moving on electric power!

So who's following you can say: "Damn, he's moving effortless while I'm here wasting my gasoline".

Nvidia: the way it's meant to be driven.

There's a thread about this on the Hybrid Synergy Forum here.

Yaris Hybrid 12V battery

It's under the back seat, but its panel is kept in place by a couple of these plastic pegs:

You'll need a little screwdriver to extract the peg and his surrounding ring.

Here is it, removed from its housing.

Now it's possible to remove the plastic cover.
I've found it easier to start from the side of the seat, pulling to detach the cover.

Here is the 12V battery:

Lesson learned: always keep a screwdriver in the car, in case you'll need to charge the 12V battery while on the road.
Shame on you Toyota: why not just use a tool-less retention mechanism?
Every car driver, hybrid or not, has some story to share about low batteries, so access to the 12V one should be as easy as possible.

Yaris Hybrid engine threshold

On the Yaris Hybrid power meter, there's a mark that, when crossed, causes the engine to be turned on.
If you keep your accelerations below that "waterline" you can travel with the electric motor alone (if the battery is charged enough).

Here is the mark, highlighted by the red arrow:

Yaris Hybrid power meter

First trip with the Yaris Hybrid

Getting home from the car dealer, across the city.

Moving Windows 7 user homedir

A brand new Windows 7 install puts the Users folder on the C drive.
My C drive is an SSD, so space is at premium.
I moved my homedir to the secondary HD this way:

• Create a new administrative account called "admin".
• Reboot (just to close file locks) and login as "admin"
• Open a command prompt with administrative privileges

mkdir D:\Users
robocopy C:\Users\myaccount D:\Users\myaccount /mir /copyall /xj
rmdir /s C:\Users\myaccount
mklink /j C:\Users\myaccount D:\Users\myaccount

• Logoff an login back as the migrated account.
• Remove the now useless "admin" user.

Note: while deleting the source directory, Windows may complain about CurrentDatabase_372.wmdb beeing in use.
Just stop service WMPNetworkSvc and repeat.

The Intel stock cooler

I've just installed a new i5 processor.
The stock Intel cooler is now the loudest component in my PC.
Louder than my old Athlon X2 4400+ stock cooler.
Why don't they just supply a higher quality cooler with a 200€ processor?