Windows 10: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Chapter 12. Tablets, Laptops & Hybrids

If its recent experiments with Windows show anything at all, it’s that Microsoft is betting on the future of mobile. Fewer and fewer computers will be tethered to desks. More and more will be carried around—and most of them will have touchscreens. Microsoft believes that so strongly that it’s designing all its new apps to have big, fat, widely spaced buttons for finger touches.

But touchscreen friendliness isn’t the only nod Windows 10 makes to easing the lives of road warriors. This chapter covers a motley collection of additional tools for anyone who travels.

Battery Saver

It’s common for smartphones to have a battery-saver mode. That’s where the phone, upon dropping to a low level of battery remaining, switches off a lot of nonessential background activities and features to save power. The screen dims, there are fewer animations, email and Facebook don’t get checked in the background—all in the name of extending your phone’s battery long enough to get you through the day.

And now the same feature comes to Windows laptops and tablets.

You can turn it on manually by opening the Action Center (+A, or tap on the taskbar, or swipe in from the right on a touchscreen) and hitting “Battery saver.”

Or you can do it the long way: Open →→System→Battery. ...