Computing to Go: Windows Vista Mobility Features

Windows Vista is the ultimate version of Windows for users on the go. Whether you use a notearticle computer, Tablet PC, or Ultra-Mobile PC, you won’t get a better mobile experience than what’s available in Microsoft’s latest operating system. This time around, Microsoft has fortified Windows with new user interface, power management, and presentation capabilities, along with a suite of mobile-oriented applications and utilities that tie it all together. We’ll examine each of these features in this article.

Windows Vista on the Road Over the years, Microsoft has steadily improved Windows to better take advantage of the unique hardware features and capabilities offered by portable computers such as notearticles, laptops, and Tablet PCs (including a new generation of tablet devices called Ultra-Mobile Personal Computers, or UMPCs). For the most part, using Windows Vista on a notearticle computer or other portable PC is just like using it on a desktop PC. That is, a notearticle computer can do anything a desktop PC can, and Windows Vista doesn’t offer a limited feature set when you’re using a portable PC. That said, you may want to approach Windows Vista a bit differently when using a notearticle computer. Certain operating system features, such as the user interface or power management plan you select, can impact both performance and battery life when you’re not connected to power, for example. And Vista includes special presentation, security, and networking features that are often specific to portable computers or at least work somewhat differently when you’re using a portable PC. In this article, we’re going to use terms like portable PC, portable computer, notearticle, laptop, and even, occasionally, Tablet PC to describe mobile computers running Windows Vista. For the most part, these terms are largely interchangeable in the context of this article unless specifically stated otherwise.

Working with the Vista User Interface One of the most obvious improvements in Windows Vista is the Windows Aero user interface, which we discuss in Article 4. Windows Aero offers several unique features compared to the other user interface options available in Windows Vista, including translucency, various special effects, and even access to certain Windows features, such as Windows Flip 3D. On the other hand, Windows Aero is hardware intensive and thus can result in poorer battery than the other user interface choices. Thus, the decision whether to use Windows Aero - shown in article 15-1 - should come down to how you feel about battery life, performance, and usability. Before we get to that, however, you should also be aware that many portable computers simply don’t include enough graphical processing power to even run Windows Aero. If this is the case, you will typically see the Windows Vista Basic user interface instead. Windows Standard offers an enticing middle ground between the beauty of Windows Aero and the power management thriftiness and performance of Windows Classic, the low-end user interface that is designed to resemble the user interface from Windows 2000.

So depending on your hardware, your choice might already be made: If you install Windows Vista on a portable PC, and the user interface is set as Windows Vista Basic and not Windows Aero, then you’re out of luck: Your system is not capable of displaying Vista’s highest end user interface. Okay, that’s not strictly true. There is a chance that Windows Vista simply didn’t install the very latest driver for your display hardware. Before diving into despair, consult the documentation for your notearticle, find out exactly which display hardware it uses, and then visit the hardware maker’s web site and obtain the very latest driver to see if that makes a difference. In order to run Windows Aero, you need a DirectX 9–compatible 3D video card with 64 MB or more of discrete graphics RAM, depending on the resolution of your display (64MB is adequate for a 1024x768 display, but you’ll need 128 MB or more for higher resolutions). Virtually all integrated graphics chips - the types that share RAM with the system and are more common on notearticles - are not capable of displaying Aero. The one exception at the time of this writing is Intel’s GMA 950. This integrated chipset works just fine with Aero.

Assuming your machine is powerful enough to display Windows Aero, you might still want to opt for the Windows Basic user interface, because of its thriftier power management. However, Windows Aero is more stable and reliable than other user interfaces because of the way it interacts with the underlying system and signed drivers from hardware makers. Like all trade-offs, the decision is not an easy one. Our advice is to test how your particular system behaves on battery power while using both user interfaces. If the battery life difference between the two is negligible, go with Windows Aero. To change the user interface, right-click the desktop and choose Personalize from the resulting pop-up menu. This displays the Personalization Control Panel window. The first option, Windows Color And Appearance, lets you choose between user interface types. If you click this option and see the dialog shown in article 15-2, then you’re running Windows Vista Basic, and there’s no way to enable Windows Aero short of contacting the notearticle maker and finding a Vista-capable driver. If, however, you see the window shown in article 15-3, then you’re running Windows Aero, the high-end user interface. From here, you can make two changes that will impact the performance and battery life of Windows Vista. First, you can turn off Windows translucency by unchecking the Enable Transparency option. Translucency is a fun feature, but it doesn’t really aid productivity, so this is an obvious candidate for change. The second option is to use Windows Vista Basic instead of Aero. To do so, click the Open Classic Properties For More Color Options link at the bottom of the window. This will display the dialog box shown back in article 15-3. Select the Windows Vista Basic option (and not the confusingly named Windows Standard option) to invoke Windows Vista Basic.

Early in Windows Vista’s development, Microsoft promised that the OS would seamlessly move between Windows Aero, while attached to power, and Windows Basic, while the machine was untethered and running on battery. This feature, sadly, was never added to the final version of Windows Vista, forcing users to manually switch between user interface modes. Curiously, Vista will, however, automatically move between the two environments if you launch an application that is incompatible with Aero. Such applications include many games, but also productivity applications like Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and Apple QuickTime 7.

Power Management Although even desktop-based computers running Windows Vista support various power management features, this functionality is so much richer and varied on portable computers, which is the reason we’re discussing it here in this article. Windows Vista’s power management functionality can be accessed throughout the user interface in various ways, but the easiest way to think of power management in Vista is that it comprises three basic areas: A new notification area-based icon, a Power Options control panel, and a newly simplified set of power plans. We’ll examine each of these features in this section.

Updated Battery Meter Mobile computing users are quite familiar with the battery meter that’s been in the tray notification area since Windows 95. This handy icon has been significantly updated in Windows Vista and can appear in various states, which change the look of the icon. The state you see will depend on whether the machine is connected to a power source, and how well the battery is charged. Table 15-1 summarizes the various icon types you can expect to see.

Although the new battery meter now offers far more functionality than before, you may find it all a bit bewildering. That’s because the new battery meter offers a completely different experience depending on how you decide to interact with it. Here are the various actions you can perform with the battery meter: •

Mouse-over: If you move the mouse cursor over the battery meter, it will display the pop-up shown in article 15-4. This pop-up summarizes the state of the battery and provides a link to access the system’s power plans.

• Single-click: If you click the battery meter icon once, you’ll see the larger popup shown in article 15-5. This pop-up provides the same information as the mouse-over pop-up, but it also enables you to select from one of three preset power plans - we discuss power plans in the next section - and access other power management–related OS features.

• Right-click: If you right-click the battery meter, you’ll see the pop-up menu shown in article 15-6. From this menu, you can access Power Options (discussed later), Windows Mobility Center (discussed later in this article), or click an

option curiously titled Show System Icons, which brings up the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window’s Notification Area tab. From this dialog box you can turn off the battery meter (identified as Power) if you’d like. Our advice: Leave it on if you’re using a mobile computer.

Curiously, if you double-click the battery meter, nothing happens.

Power Plans Microsoft has simplified the power plans in Windows Vista. These power plans are used to manage your PC’s use of its power resources, both while attached to power and battery. There are three preconfigured power plans, but you can modify each of them to suit your needs, and you can even add your own power plans if you’d like. Confusingly, your PC maker might make its own machine-specific power plans as well, so if you purchased a notearticle with Windows Vista preinstalled, you could see additional plans listed. The three built-in power plans are discussed in the following sections.

Balanced This default plan balances power management between power consumption and performance. It does this based on how you’re using the computer at the time. If you begin playing a game or accessing Vista’s multimedia features, Windows Vista will automatically ratchet up the processor speed to make sure you don’t experience any slowdowns. But if you’re just browsing the Web or reading text documents, Vista will slow the processor down as much as possible, conserving battery power. By default, the Balanced power plan turns off the display after 60 minutes of inactivity, and turns off the hard drive after 20 minutes of inactivity while the machine is plugged in. After 2 hours of inactivity, the computer will go to sleep. Under battery power, Windows will turn off the display after 15 minutes of inactivity, and will turn off the hard drive after 10 minutes of inactivity. Windows puts the PC to sleep after 60 minutes of inactivity while on battery power.

Power Saver This plan sacrifices performance for better battery life. It should be used only by those with light computing requirements that are trying to maximize uptime while on the road. Here’s how Power Saver affects your power management settings. Even when plugged in, Windows Vista aggressively decreases the processor speed and display brightness. After 20 minutes of inactivity Windows turns off the display and hard drive, and then puts the computer to sleep after an hour. On battery power, Windows Vista will turn off the display after 3 minutes and the hard drive after 5 minutes. Then, Windows will put the PC to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity.

High Performance The High Performance plan provides the highest level of performance by maximizing the system’s processor speed at the expense of battery life. This plan is aimed at those who spend most of their time playing modern video games or working in graphic-intensive applications. Under the High Performance plan, Windows Vista will turn off the display and hard drive after 20 minutes of inactivity, but the computer is never put to sleep. On battery power, the PC’s display and hard drive are turned off after 20 minutes, and the computer is put to sleep after 1 hour.

Desktop PCs utilize power plans as well. So even though you likely won’t see a battery meter icon in the tray notification area on such a system, it’s worthwhile to navigate into Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options, to ensure that the High Performance power plan is selected. That’s absolutely the most relevant preset power plan for a desktop-bound PC. Scanning through the power plans, it’s likely that you’ll find a plan that at least somewhat matches your expectations. But you don’t have to accept the Microsoft default settings. You can easily modify any of the existing plans and even, optionally, create your own power plans. We’ll look at those possibilities in the very next section.

Power Options Control Panel Windows Vista’s power options are, go figure, configured via the Power Options Control Panel applet, which is available in Control Panel -> Mobile PC -> Power Options on a notearticle computer, or Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Power Options on a desktop PC. Shown in article 15-7, this Control Panel initially presents a choice of the three power plans mentioned previously.

There’s a lot more going on here, however. On the left of the window, you’ll see a number of power management related tasks. If you’re using a mobile computer of any kind, you’re going to want to navigate through each of these options to ensure your system is configured exactly the way you want it. Some of the options listed there are available from the Mobile PC or Hardware and Sound page in Control Panel as well.

Requiring a Password on Wakeup The first option, Require a password on wakeup, can differ a bit depending on the capabilities of your system, and there’s a lot more going on here beyond the password option hinted at in the link. On a typical desktop PC, this Control Panel page will resemble article 15-8. But when you view this page on a typical notearticle computer, you’ll see more options, 15-9. These options are directly related to the additional hardware buttons and features that you get with mobile computers.

Here, you can modify how Windows Vista reacts when you press the power button, press the sleep button, or, on portable computers configured with a lid-based display, what happens when you close the lid. Each of these choices has different settings for when the system is operating on battery power and plugged in.

In keeping with the Require a password on wakeup task referenced on the previous page, this dialog box also includes a single wakeup-related option that determines whether you need to logon again each time the system wakes up after being in the sleep state. By default, Windows Vista does require you to logon again to unlock the computer as a security measure. We strongly advise leaving this feature configured as is, especially if you’re a mobile computer user who often accesses the PC on the road.

Choosing What the Power Button Does Humorously, this option triggers the same dialog as described previously. The top half of the dialog relates to this option.

Choosing What Closing the Lid Does This option, which is available only on portable computers with a lid, also brings you to the same dialog described previously.

Creating a Power Plan When you click this option, you’re brought to the Create A Power Plan page, which is a short wizard you can use to create your own power plan.

1. In the first step, you choose the preset power plan - Balanced, Power Saver, or High Performance - that you would like to base your plan on. Then, you give the plan a name and press Next.

2. In the next phase of the wizard, shown in article 15-10, you determine when the system will turn off the display and put the system to sleep, on both battery power and when plugged in. (Desktop PC users will only see options for plugged in.)

3. Click the Create button to create your plan. You’ll see that your power plan has been added to the list of available plans, as seen in article 15-11.

This is all well and good, but the short wizard we just used doesn’t really provide access to all of the power management options that are available. To modify your custom plan, or an existing preset plan, click the Change Plan Settings link below the plan name. This brings you to a dialog that resembles the second phase of the wizard just described, but with one difference: There’s now a Change Advanced Power Settings link. Click that link to modify other settings.

It would require an entire article to document every option found in this nasty, tree control-based dialog box. But here are a few options we’ve found to make a huge difference.

•Hard disk: Configure the hard disk to wind down after a period of time to preserve battery life. On battery, you want this time to be reasonably low, say, 10 minutes.

•Sleep: Newer PCs support a new type of Sleep mode called Hybrid Sleep, which lets the machine appear to turn off and on almost immediately, like a consumer electronics device. If you have a mobile PC manufactured after mid-2006, it might support this feature, so experiment with enabling Hybrid Sleep. Alternatively, you might want to enable Hibernation, which was a major power management feature in Windows XP. Hibernation is faster than turning on and off the PC, but it also preserves the state of the system so you can get back up and running with your applications more quickly. •

Processor power management: If you have a modern Intel or AMD microprocessor, you can fine-tune how much processor power is used under certain states. This one is for power users only, and it replaces a nifty utility Intel used to ship for its mobile microprocessors. •

Search and indexing: Windows Vista’s integrated search functionality is wonderful, but it can be a real drag on system performance, especially when it’s indexing content. To minimize the impact on your system, especially consider reducing the load that search and indexing can occupy on battery power. •

Battery: The battery in a Windows Vista–based mobile PC is configured to warn you or perform certain actions at specific times, such as when the battery is low or critically low. You can configure these features here.

Choosing When to Turn Off the Display This option triggers the same dialog as described previously.

Changing When the Computer Sleeps This option also triggers the same dialog as described previously in the “Requiring a Password on Wakeup” section.

Windows Mobility Center If you’ve ever owned a mobile PC, you’ve probably marveled (and not in a good way) at the cruddy utility applications that PC makers seem compelled to ship with their hardware. Microsoft feels your pain. So in Windows Vista, for the first time, the software giant has taken the first steps toward creating a centralized management console called Windows Mobility Center for all of this functionality, and it has preloaded the thing with all of the utilities a mobile user could want. Best of all, PC makers are free to extend Mobility Center with their own notearticle-related utilities. We can’t guarantee they’ll be any good, but at least they’ll be easily located if the PC maker develops them correctly. Shown in article 15-13, Windows Mobility Center is available only on mobile computers. You won’t see it on desktop PCs.

Curiously, Windows Mobility Center in no way resembles any of the other applications that Microsoft bundled with Windows Vista. Instead, a set of mobile-related options are arrayed in cubes across an unadorned window that cannot be resized or formatted in any way. These options include Volume, Battery Status, Wireless Network, External Display, Sync Center, and Presentation Settings. Basically, each of these cubes launches a setting that mobile PC users need fairly often. Click the icon in the Volume cube, for example, and the Audio Devices and Themes dialog box appears. Or, you can set or mute the system volume from directly within Mobility Center.

With one exception, all of the options made available in Mobility Center are available elsewhere in the Windows Vista user interface. That one exception is Presentation Settings, which we look at in the next section.

Presentations A-Go-Go Although not a particularly glamorous lifestyle, many mobile users cart their notearticles around the globe, set them up in an unfamiliar location, and attempt to give a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint or a similar presentation package. Notearticles are perfect companions for such users because of their portability. But until Windows Vista, they weren’t particularly accommodating if the presentation was being given on battery power. In Windows Vista, Microsoft has added two major features related to giving presentations, one of which solves the problem mentioned above.

Presentation Settings An obscure but useful feature, Presentation Settings lets you temporarily disable your normal power management settings and ensures that your system stays awake, with no screen dimming, no hard drive disabling, no screensaver activation, and no system notifications to interrupt you. In other words, with one click of the mouse (well, a few anyway), you can set up your mobile PC to behave exactly the way you’d want it to while giving a presentation. To enable Presentation Settings, run Mobility Center as described in the previous section and click the projector icon in the Presentation Settings cube. Presentation Settings is shown in article 15-14. Select the I Am Currently Giving A Presentation option to enable Presentation Settings. Optionally, you can turn off the screen saver (the default), turn off the system volume, and temporarily change the desktop background. Presentation Settings also provides a handy way to configure connected displays, including network projectors. You can also enable Presentations with a single click by clicking the Turn On button in the Presentation Settings cube in Windows Mobility Center. Regardless of how you enable this feature, the Presentation Settings cube will change to read Presenting, and the projector icon will change to an On state.

Using a Network Projector If you’re going to show a presentation via a modern network-based projector, Windows Vista includes a Connect to a Network Projector utility that automatically configures firewall settings and searches for nearby projectors. To run this utility, find Connect to a Network Project in Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories. You can search for a projector automatically or enter the projector’s IP address.

Other Mobile Features In addition to the major new mobility-related features mentioned previously, Windows Vista ships with a host of other technologies that will benefit mobile workers. In this section, we’ll highlight some of these features and explain how you can best take advantage of them.

Offline Files and Folders In Windows XP, Microsoft introduced a feature called Offline Files and Folders that allowed mobile users to mark network-based files and folders so that they would be cached locally, using space on the mobile computer’s hard drive. When the mobile PC is connected to the network, the local and remote versions of the files and folders are synchronized so that they are always up to date. When the user works away from the network - which can be a corporate network based on Active Directory or just a simple wireless home network - they can access these remote resources even when in a disconnected state, just as if they were connected.

Offline Files and Folders is a wonderful idea, and it’s been made even better in Windows Vista. It works almost exactly as before, as we’ll outline, but now Windows Vista uses Delta Sync technology, first developed by Microsoft’s Windows Server team, to speed synchronization. Delta Sync works on the sub-file level: If a user changes part of a document, for example, only the changed parts of the document need to be synced to the server. Previously, the entire document would need to be synchronized. To set up Offline Files and Folders for the first time, use the new Network Explorer to navigate to a location on your network that contains files or folders you’d like to cache locally. Then, right-click the items you’d like to cache and choose Always Available Offline. When you do so, the Always Available Offline dialog box is displayed, 15-15, and synchronize the content to your hard drive.

When the synchronization is complete, you’ll see a small sync icon overlay appear on top of the lower left of the folder or file you just synced. This icon overlay indicates that the item is available offline. To remove this association, right-click again and uncheck Always Available Offline. In Windows XP, Offline Files and Folders were managed via the Folder Options window. Now, in Windows Vista, you manage these relationships in the new Sync Center, which is shown in article 15-16. The Sync Center is used to manage relationships between Windows Vista and portable devices (like MP3 players and PDAs) as well as offline files and folders. It does not, however, manage relationships with network-based media devices, like other PCs, Xbox 360s, and Media Center Extenders. No, we don’t know why either. Regardless of how many network-based files and folders you make available offline, you will only see one item, titled Offline Files, in the main Sync Center display. If you doubleclick this item, you can dive into the partnership detail, and see separate items for each network share that contains shared files and folders. Or, you can click the Sync button to manually synchronize with the server, or click Schedule to view and manage the sync schedule. The schedule is managed via a simple wizard-based application that lets you schedule synchronization at specific times or in response to certain events, such as when you log on or lock Windows, or when your computer is idle.

If you take your system on the road and modify network-based files and folders, they will be synchronized with the server when you return. Should there be any conflicts - such as what could happen when a file is edited both on the server and in your local cache, you’ll be given the opportunity to rectify the conflict in a variety of ways, most of which are non-destructive.

Windows Meeting Space In a nod to the peer-to-peer technologies that have been sweeping across the PC industry since the Napster phenomenon of a decade ago, Windows Vista includes a new peer-topeer service called Windows Meeting Space that is oriented towards collaboration, not stealing music. (Presumably any technology can be used for good or evil.) Windows Meeting Space enables you to share documents, applications, or your entire desktop with other network-equipped Windows Vista users near you, and can automatically set up an ad hoc network if no wired or wireless network is available.

428 Part V: Mobility To use this ad hoc network, however, each user would need to have a Windows Vista–equipped machine with a properly configured wireless card. Meeting Space is most often used by notearticle users for this reason, and it’s useful when coworkers are together in a coffee shop, airport, meeting, or hotel and need to collaborate, even when there’s no wireless network (or when the network in question requires a usage fee). To start Windows Meeting Space, you need to first configure the new People Near Me service of Windows Vista, which helps Vista identify other users near you - both physically and on the same network subnet - that meet the technical qualifications of Meeting

Space. The first time you run Meeting Space, you’ll be prompted to configure People Near Me with your name and various other options, 15-17.

After People Near Me is configured, you’ll be presented with the main Windows Meeting Space application window, as seen in article 15-18. This window enables you to start a new meeting or find other meetings in progress nearby.

To start a new meeting, click Start A New Meeting. Then, provide a name, passphrase, and, optionally, other meeting-related options as prompted. Then, a new Meeting Space will be shown, with panes for sharing applications or the desktop, people nearby, and handout downloads (  15-19). From here, the person who started the meeting - called the meeting presenter - can share applications or his or her entire desktop, and the display will be remotely routed to each participant (maximize the window for best results). You can also pass electronic notes to each other, as with an instant messaging (IM) application, and participants can copy documents into the Handouts well so that other users can download them.

Windows SideShow A coming generation of Tablet PCs and notearticle computers - and, we’re told, even desktop computers and servers - will soon sport a new kind of auxiliary display that lets you access certain information on the computer, even when it’s asleep. These auxiliary displays will initially be most interesting on mobile computers, and they’ll come in color and black and white versions. Here’s how they work: Auxiliary displays access a feature in Windows Vista called SideShow to display small gadgets, similar to those used by the Windows Sidebar (see Article 6), that provide limited access to various applications and services in Windows. You’ll see a Windows Media Player gadget that will let you play music in your Windows Media Player 11 media library, and an e-mail gadget that will help you read e-mail. All of these gadgets work when the laptop’s lid is closed, and they require very little power, and come on instantly. And although Microsoft will no doubt include a number of gadgets in Windows itself, we can expect third parties to come up with their own gadgets as well.

The bad news about Windows SideShow is that you need very specific hardware to access this feature. You can’t add on an auxiliary display, at least not elegantly, to a mobile PC. So you’ll need to get a brand-new mobile device with an integrated auxiliary display in order to experience it for yourself.

Improved Support for Tablet PC Hardware If you’re using a Tablet PC computer - a notearticle computer that typically comes in one of two form factors, a convertible laptop or a true slate-type tablet - or a notearticle computer with Tablet PC–like hardware, such as a touch screen, digitizer screen with stylus, or a compatible external writing pad, Windows Vista includes a wide range of functionality related to handwriting recognition, pen-based input, and the like. We discuss these features in Article 16, which is devoted entirely to Tablet PCs and other computers that have Tabletlike hardware.

Summary There’s no doubt about it: Windows Vista is the most capable and feature-packed operating system yet created for mobile computers. Thanks to new features like Windows Mobility Center, Presentation Settings, network projector support, Windows Meeting Space, and People Near Me, and massive changes to power management, Windows Vista will keep any mobile computer humming along nicely with a wide range of new and improved functionality.