Work With The SideShow

Vista supports a secondary display (ideally on your laptop's lid, as on the cool Asus W5FE) for you to get quick access to e-mail, photos, calendar info, and music files. And that's just scratching the surface. SideShow info can be stored and accessed in two ways: either from the hard drive, which takes longer and involves caching, or directly from a flash component in your system—quicker, but space is limited. The flash component shows up as a separate drive in Windows Vista that you can drag and drop MP3s and photos to. Some gadgets require use of the hard drive; you won't be able to access them if the system is off. Instead, put it to sleep, and set Vista to wake every 5 minutes, updating e-mail, calendar, and other gadgets that rely on an Internet connection.