Windows Mobility Center: A Useful Tool In Windows 7 I Just Recently ‘Discovered’

I use Windows 7 Home Premium on my laptop (which is my main computer) and like to think I am well versed in its workings. Friends and family are often amazed when I tell them about different shortcuts that I have been using in various incarnations of Windows for years and which I don’t even think about anymore. However, I am often astonished as to how many things there about the Windows OS (Operating System) that I simply didn’t know about and how much better of an experience they make my in my day-to-day use of the Windows OS.

One such thing I stumbled upon not too long ago was the “Windows Mobility Center” (pictured at the top) and it happened completely by accident. It occurred a little after I had written my post “How To Change The Network Adapter Priority In Windows 7” and I am sort of happy I learned about it afterward because if I had known about it before I never would have done the research for and written that first post. If you read that post, part of the root cause of why I had looked for a way to switch the adapter priority was because I was leaving my WiFi on all the time so I could leave the Bluetooth on all the time as well but I found it was slowing down my connection speed because my computer was preferring to use the WiFi connection over the hardline connection. Now that I found Windows Mobility Center the problem became pretty much completely irrelevant. Why? Well, as you can see in the top picture, the Windows Mobility Center gives a user easy one button access to turn WiFi on or off in its top right corner.

Facebook Messenger Beta For Windows 7 – I *LOVE* It!

I recently read about the release of a special beta of the new Facebook Messenger for Windows. This program for Windows 7 is standalone (it does not require your browser to be open) and yet leaves your Facebook Messenger open. Facebook Messenger aka Facebook Chat is honestly one of the primary reasons I still keep Facebook open on my computer and in my browser and this new little program gave me one less tab open in Chrome which I must say excited me. Immediately I went to https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-for-windows – the info page about this new tool – and downloaded this application for my computer via the page https://www.facebook.com/about/messenger which is linked on the “Help” page.

One huge thing – which seems simple but this is a program which solves a pure #FirstWorldProblem – is that because the program sits in your Windows 7 taskbar (at the bottom of the screen between the “tray” – where the time and date are – and the Start menu button) it responds like any other opened program or application. It lights up yellow (or whatever color your theme defines) and you can actually really notice it and find it easily. As well, I am a huge fan of Windows shortcuts. One of my main go to Windows shortcuts has always been ALT+TAB to quickly switch between running programs. Because my Facebook Messenger is now an entirely different entity running on my computer in of itself I can now quickly switch between, say, writing a blog post like this one and chatting all without touching the mouse! So much more efficient I love it!!!

If you are running Windows 7 and the messenger/chat is one of the primary reasons you use Facebook I highly recommend downloading this program.

How To Change The Network Adapter Priority In Windows 7

For a while after I got my Windows 7 computer I had no idea why it preferred to keep connected to my home wireless network over the wired network but that seems to be the default setting that Microsoft uses. Finally after scouring the interwebs I found the answer – it is very much the same as doing this in Vista so if you know how to do that you can probably stop reading. The problem with the wireless connection being preferred vs the wired connection for me is that the wired is a faster than wireless. As well, for me when I hit the “Turn off wireless connection” quick key on my laptop it turns off Bluetooth as well which is often annoying. Today, I thought I’d share with you the solution for telling your computer which network connection it should prefer.

Two things I thought I’d mention before we begin:

1. To be clear, for this post I am using Windows 7 Home Premium with Service Pack 1 installed and all images and screen caps come from that version.
2. All images can be clicked on to be full sized. They are downsized only so they can fit in the constraints of my WordPress blog’s theme.

First things first. You got to get to the network settings! Go to the Start Menu and click on “Control Panel” on the right hand side.

For the purposes of this post I am going to assume things are set to default settings so your Control Panel should be organized by ‘category.’ Now that you are in Control Panel you will see a number of different categories for setting on your computer as shown in the screen cap below. You are going to be looking for – as highlighted below – the “Network and Internet” category and click the line which reads “View network status and tasks.”

Once you click there you will be brought to the “Network and Sharing Center” which will look something like the image below. Notice how I am connected to two different connections at once for the internet and the basic network information says from my computer to the internet there are “multiple networks.” But none of that really matters right now because we are quickly going to be moving out of this screen. On your left hand side of the screen you’ll see the option (highlighted in red in the picture below) to “Change adapter settings.”