Figure 13-12: AT&T Wireless has adopted the Metro design style for its own Windows 8 connectivity experience.
Further Configuring a Cellular Data Connection
As with a wireless (Wi-Fi) connection, you can right-click (or tap on and hold) a cellular data connection to view additional options. These include the following:
We’re not sure why this isn’t enabled by default for a cellular data connection, since it is such useful information. Our advice is to enable it and, especially on connections with a limited data allowance, keep an eye on usage.
• Show/Hide estimated data usage: This option is actually a toggle. When it’s enabled, you’ll see a data usage estimate whenever you select the connection.
• Set as metered/non-metered connection: This option is enabled by default for cellular data connections, meaning that Windows 8 correctly treats such networks as metered. A metered connection is one that is limited to a certain amount of bandwidth for a certain period of time, typically a month. Most wireless carriers offer tiers of service, with monthly allotments of 250 MB, 2 GB, 5 GB, and so on. So most users will want to ensure that their device isn’t sopping up the available bandwidth each month. And this is where Windows 8 provides some interesting functionality.
When you’re connected to the Internet with just a metered connection, Windows 8 changes its behavior to be less data hungry. For example, Windows Update will not automatically download updates in the background, even if you have Auto Updates enabled (as you should). There’s no exception to this: If Microsoft feels that a security update is particularly important, it will enable the downloading of that fix regardless of the connection type.
And just in case it’s not clear why this ability to configure a connection as metered is important, consider this example: In the writing of this book, your authors of course spent a lot of time testing things—a process that involves reinstalling Windows 8 again and again and reconfiguring the OS from scratch to ensure that the behaviors we see and describe aren’t colored by other user or application configurations. While doing that for this chapter, the process of updating the OS and the bundled Metro-style apps (through Windows Store) consumed an entire 250 MB monthly cellular allotment in about half an hour. The ability to configure a metered connection isn’t just useful, it’s necessary.
• Forget/Remember this network: Cellular data networks are configured to be remembered by default. If you’d like to forget the network for some reason, you can do so.
• View connection properties: Choosing this option displays an old-school desktop-type configuration window, as it does for wireless networks. However, there is one useful option in this window when used with a cellular data connection: You can enable a PIN for the PC or device’s SIM card to help protect against theft.
Comparing this list to that of a wireless network, you may have noticed that the Turn sharing on or off option is unavailable. This makes sense since a cellular data connection, by definition, cannot connect you to your local network. It is instead used to connect to the Internet directly and thus will always be public.
Using Airplane Mode
Like a smartphone, Windows 8 actually supports a useful Airplane Mode toggle that instantly disables all of the wireless (Wi-Fi and cellular data) connections in your PC or device without requiring you to fumble with multiple interfaces, as you did in previous Windows versions.
You access Airplane Mode from two different locations. The easiest is the Networks pane (Winkey + I, Network). As you can see in Figure 13-13, it’s the toggle right at the top of the pane. So if you’re on an airplane, literally, or wish to otherwise disengage the various antennas in the device to preserve battery life, this is your go-to toggle.
Figure 13-13: Airplane mode is available from Networks.
You can also access Airplane Mode from PC Settings under the Wireless entry. As shown in Figure 13-14, this interface lets you toggle Airplane Mode as you would from the Networks pane, but you can also individually toggle the availability of specific wireless (Wi-Fi plus cellular data) connections.
This is dramatically simpler than with previous Windows versions. Before, you had to find the Network Connections explorer and then manually disable each device individually.
Figure 13-14: From PC Settings, you can enable Airplane Mode or configure individual wireless connections.
Sharing Files, Media, and Printers at Home with HomeGroup
Prior to Windows 7, most home users with two or more PCs would employ a simple strategy to easily share files over their home networks: They would simply configure each PC with at least one user account with the same username and password. This way, they wouldn’t need to enter a username and password combination each time they accessed a shared folder on the other PC.
This type of workgroup networking scheme worked well enough but it also required users to understand how to actually share folders, too—a process that was fairly arcane even after the addition of a Simple Sharing functionality in Windows XP Home Edition. So with Windows 7, Microsoft finally moved to formalize a simpler method for sharing resources on a home network, which included not only files, but also printers and digital media (for streaming purposes via Windows Media Player and Media Center). Dubbed HomeGroup, it was one of the nice, consumer-oriented innovations in Windows 7, though we suspect it was underutilized in that release.
HomeGroup sharing didn’t replace the old-school workgroup-style sharing technique, and that’s still true in Windows 8. This means you’re free to share as you’d like. But in Windows 8, HomeGroup sharing is more desirable than ever, thanks to the addition of Microsoft account sign-ins, as you’ll soon discover. But first, let’s review what HomeGroup sharing is all about.
Microsoft’s use of the word HomeGroup may seem inconsistent because the word appears variously as HomeGroup, Homegroup, and homegroup throughout the Windows user interface. However, Microsoft tells us this is all by design. The word HomeGroup is a trademarked term and refers to the sharing feature itself. A homegroup, meanwhile, is the generic “thing” that is created by the feature. And if you see it spelled as Homegroup (with a capital H but a small g, that’s just because it’s a title or other place in the UI where an initial capitalization is required. Seriously, they told us this. And yes, they really believe it.
HomeGroup sharing works much as it does in Windows 7, though as part of a wider effort to streamline, well, virtually everything in Windows 8, it’s no longer an option during Windows Setup. So you’ll need to create—or join—a homegroup after you’re done installing Windows 8.
HomeGroup allows you to easily share three items that, prior to Windows 7, required three different interfaces. They are as follows:
• Libraries: Previously, you could create individual folder shares to share documents and other files, but now you can share these through your various libraries—Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos—and individually determine which ones are shared. This is more powerful than sharing individual folders for many reasons, but one obvious reason is that since libraries by definition aggregate multiple physical locations in the filesystem, what you’re really sharing are discrete groups of files (or documents) rather than individual folders.