The Mobility Centre is one of those Vista features that once you find it and start using it you will wonder how you ever got along without it.
The first thing you need to know is how to get to it. You can of course find it in the control panel, or if you enter “Mobility” into the Start search box you will find it. However there is an easier way, the keyboard shortcut Windows key + X. That is fine if you are docked or in laptop mode on a convertible; but for tablet use I recommend assigning a hardware button to launch the Mobility Centre.
When you launch the Mobility Centre you are presented with a collection of tools that are useful to – well mobile users... hence the name. The tools available will depend on your hardware. For example of your display driver does not support rotation, that tool will not be shown. In addition I understand that the mobility centre will be extensible for OEMs so your hardware manufacturer may add in their own tools.
For those of you on a small device you will be interested to know that he dialog will resize itself if the screen is not wide enough – for example if you are using a small in portrait mode. This is the sane dialog when I rotate my LS800 into portrait mode.
Something that is not instantly obvious when you launch the Mobility Centre is that each icon is in fact also a button that takes you into an associated control panel application for more advanced configuration.
Here’s a rundown on what’s available in my Mobility Centre.
Brightness
Use the slider to adjust the brightness. Clicking the icon takes you into the brightness settings for the current power scheme.
Volume
You can mute the PC and use the slider to adjust the master volume. Clicking the speaker takes you into the sound control panel applet, so you can modify playback and recording devices.
Battery Status
View your remaining power or change your power scheme. Clicking the Battery icon launch the Power Options dialog. Matt Faulkner has a good post about Vista Power Schemes over on GBM.
Wireless Network
Shows you your connection status and allows you to enable or disable the WLAN with a click. You can also click the signal strength icon to go to the Connect to a Network wizard.
Screen Orientation
Click the Rotate screen button to cycle through your screen orientations. Clicking on the icon will take you into the Tablet PC Settings control panel applet with the “Display” tab selected.
External Display
Click here to enable or disable the external monitor. Clicking on the icon will take you into the Display Settings dialog. There you can change the position or screen resolutions of your screens if need be.
Sync Centre
Your one stop shop for all your OS sync tasks. Click on the Sync Settings button to configure offline file and mobile device sync settings. This could be a future post in itself.
Presentation Settings
Enable or disable Presentation Mode. This will certainly be a future post cause it is so cool!