Getting and Staying Connected with Windows 7: Phones, Devices, and Tablets
- Connecting Devices to Windows 7
- Syncing Your Phone
- Syncing Your MP3 Player
- Moving Files from a Flash Drive
- Setting Up Your Drawing Tablet
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
)
This chapter shows you how to connect your devices and sync your files by exploring these tasks:
- Connecting devices to Windows 7
- Synching your phone
- Synching your MP3 player
- Moving files from a flash drive
- Setting up your drawing tablet
Today we live in a connected age. We listen to music on our computers, our phones, and in our cars. It seems as if we’re forever moving documents from our work PC to our home computer and over to our laptop, and maybe sending them to our mobile device before we’re through. We type, doodle, paint, speak, and meet on just about every conceivable piece of technology, gathering information from our browsers, tablets, phones, and more.
All this connection is a great thing, but sometimes getting all the different pieces of technology communicating can be a bit of a headache. This chapter shows you how to connect your various devices to Windows 7 so that you can share files easily and get on with other, more creative tasks.
Connecting Devices to Windows 7
One of the challenges of being the program everybody wants to plug in to is that you need to be able to accommodate all kinds of different hardware and software. This means that even though Microsoft offers several ways devices can connect to Windows 7, the hardware manufacturer—the company that manufactured your mobile phone, for example—must provide the driver needed for the device to recognize the specific Windows 7 tool designed to help the device sync up.
This means that Device Stage, for example—the newest and smartest connectivity utility offered by Windows 7—is available for your device only if the device manufacturer has created the necessary driver for the device to be able to use Device Stage.
So depending on the device you’re connecting to Windows 7 and the drivers available for that device, you may see the following:
)
Device Stage, which was introduced in ch02, “ch02,” helps you sync your device to Windows 7 and share photos, music, files, and more.
- Windows Mobile Device Center is a utility that was first made available for Windows Vista and now is part of Windows 7. If your device requires it, you need to download Windows Mobile Device Center from Microsoft Downloads. (You learn how to do that later in this chapter.)
)
Yes, it’s a little confusing, but the bottom line is this: Make sure your Windows Updates are turned on so that you always have the most current version of Windows 7. Chances are that the most important drivers you need to keep Windows 7 communicating happily with your devices will be updated automatically through the Windows Updates you receive. But it’s a good idea to check your device manufacturer’s website regularly or use the steps in the “ch02sec2lev7” section in ch02 to make sure you have the most recent version of the driver available for your device.