I recently upgraded to 12.04 and have encountered three seemingly random issues that were not present in 11.04. I'm running this on a Toshiba Satellite P205. I do have the Intel 950GMA chipset which requires me to run Unity in 2D, though I am not seeing how this could be the root of any of the three issues. Anyway, here is what I'm seeing right now...

First, my computer has a small wheel / dial on the front for volume control rather than having volume keys. It's incredibly handy. Unfortunately, it no longer works after the upgrade. I've been using Ubuntu since 10.04 and this has not been a problem with any other upgrade, but now suddenly it's an issue. My only volume control is to click the volume icon on the top bar and use the on-screen slider. Very unhandy and very annoying.

Window transparencies. I know this seems trivial, but I really prefer nearly transparent window borders and a slight amount of transparency to the panel itself. Again this was never a problem in previous versions but no matter what I try I cannot get even a speck of transparency going on my window borders. I've set it using everything from compiz-configure, gconf,and MyUnity. When I pull it up it says my window border opacity is 20% or whatever, and yet the reality is that they are solid. It's not an issue with transparency as a whole, because I have been able to reduce the opacity of both the Unity Launcher and the Terminal window. It's just the window borders that are resisting the change.

Likewise, the Unity Launcher is driving me crazy. I understand that they removed "Dodge Windows" from 12.04, but I can't even get the Launcher to hide! I have it set to hide in both Compiz-configure and Appearances / Behavior. I've checked that the auto-hide value in gconf is set to "1". And yet, no hiding. It's constant. When I take a window full size it treats my desktop as the area from the launcher to the right edge of the screen. I guess this is better than having the left side of the window disappear behind the launcher, but I still find the Launcher distracting enough to consider going to gnome3 rather than Unity. I really don't want to do that, however, because the old Launcher was incredibly handy when it would hide and reappear properly.

Any thoughts on any of these three issues would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!