CHAPTER 24

CONFIGURING WINDOWS 2000 FOR MOBILE

COMPUTERS

Lesson 1: Using Offline Folders and Files

When the Network is down, or when you are on the road and your laptop is undocked, offline

folders and files allow you to continue working on files that are stored on shared folders on the

network. These network files are ached on your local disk so they are available even if the

network is not.

Configuring Your Computer to use Offline Folders and Files

Before you can use offline folders and files, you must configure the server or network share and

your laptop. My briefcase, if working on Laptop, synchronize with server when you connect to it.

Synchronizing Files

File synchronizing is straightforward if the copy of the file on the network doesn’t change while you

are editing a cached version of the file. Your edits are incorporated into the copy of the network.

Configuring Synchronizing Manager

Open Windows Explorer, click the Tools menu, and then click Synchronize. Notice that you can

manually synchronize your offline files on the network by clicking the Synchronize button. You can

also configure synchronize Manager by clicking the Setup button.

• When I Am Using This Network Connection. This option allows you to specify which

network connection.

• Synchronize The Following Checked Items. This option allows you to specify which

items you want to synchronize.

• Synchronize The Selected Items While My Computer Is Idle. This option allows you to

turn synchronization off or on during idle time.

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Lesson Summary:

• Working with offline folders and using Synchronization Manager make maintaining the

versions of files cached on local computers and network servers or shares easy to keep

synchronized.

• Before you can use offline folders and files, you must configure the server or network share

and your laptop. You can use Synchronization Manager and the various sets of options

available for synchronizing files.

Lesson 2: Configuring Power Options

The Power Options program in the Control Panel in Windows 2000 Professional is important to mobile

computer users. This utility allows you to configure power schemes, Hibernation mode, and the APM

specification.

Configuring Power Schemes

Power schemes allows you to configure Windows 2000 to turn off the power to your monitor and your

hard disk, which conserves energy when you aren’t using your computer temporarily.

Your hardware must support powering off the monitor and hard disk for you to be able to configure

power schemes.

Using Hibernate Mode

When your computer hibernates, it save the current system start to your hard disk, and then your

computer shuts down. When you restart the computer after it has been hibernating, it will return to

its previous state. Restarting to the previous state includes automatically restarting any programs that

were running when it went into Hibernate mode, and it will even restore any network connections

hat were active at the time. You are locking your work station. You will be prompted for your

password to unhibernate!

CAUTION Many commercial airlines require you to turn off portable computers during certain

portions of your flight. Hibernate mode might make your computer appear to be turned off, but

it is not. You must shut down your computer to comply with these airline requirements.

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Configuring Advanced Power Management

Windows 2000 supports the APM 1.2 specification. Using APM helps reduce the power

consumption of your system. To configure your computer to use APM, you use the Power

Option program in Control Panel.

Start/Settings/Control Panel/Power Options/Apm tab/Properties.

NOTE: APM is available only in Windows 2000 Professional. It is not available in Windows

2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter.

If your computer doesn’t have an APM-BIOS installed, then Windows 3000 will not install APM,

and the Power Options Properties dialog box will not have an APM Tab.

If your laptop has an ACPI-based BIOS, you can insert and remove PC cards on the fly and

Windows 2000 will automatically detect and configure them without requiring you to restart your

machine. This is known as dynamic configuration of PC cards.

Hot and Warm Docking/Undocking means you can dock and undock from the Windows 2000

Start button without turning off your computer.

Hot Swapping of IDE and floppy drives means you can remove devices such as floppy drives,

DVD/CD drives, and hard disks, you can swap devices, or you can do both, without shutting

down your system or restarting it. Windows 2000 automatically detects and configures these devices.

Lesson Summary:

• Power Options program in Control Panel allows you to configure power schemes,

Hibernation mode, and the APM specification.

• Power schemes allows you to configure Windows 2000 to turn off the power to your monitor

and hard disk, which will conserve energy.

• Restarting to the previous state includes automatically restarting any programs that were

running when it went into Hibernation, and it will even restore any network connections

that were active at the time.

• Using APM helps reduce the power consumption of your system.
• If your computer doesn’t have an APM-BIOS installed, then Windows 2000 won’t

install APM, and the Power Options Properties dialog box won’t have an APM tab.