Power Management is an application which lets you adjust energy saving related behavior of the KDE desktop. You can typically access it via the Battery Monitor tray icon, which changes according to the type of the current power supply. Other way to open its configuration dialog is through the Kickoff Application Launcher: Applications+Configure Desktop+Advanced+Power Management.

Click the Battery Monitor tray icon to access options to configure its behavior. You can choose one of five displayed power profiles which best fits your needs. For example, the Presentation scheme disables the screen saver and the power management in general, so that your presentation is not interrupted by system events. Click More... to open a more complex configuration screen. Here you can edit individual profiles and set advanced power management options and notifications, such as what to do when the laptop lid has been closed, or when the battery charge is low.

System Monitor (also called KSysguard) gathers measurable system parameters into one monitoring environment. It presents the output information in 2 tabs by default. Process Table gives detailed information about currently running processes, such as CPU load, memory usage, or process ID number and nice value. The presentation and filtering of the collected data can be customized — to add a new type of process information, left-click on the process table header and choose which column to hide or add to the view. It is also possible to monitor different system parameters in various data pages or collect the data of various machines in parallel over the network. KSysguard can also run as a daemon on machines without a KDE environment. Find more information about this program in its integrated help function or in the SUSE help pages.

Use an IMAP account for storing your e-mails in the office network. Then access the e-mails from the workstation using any disconnected IMAP–enabled e-mail client, like Mozilla Thunderbird Mail, Evolution, or KMail. The e-mail client must be configured so that the same folder is always accessed for Sent messages. This ensures that all messages are available along with their status information after the synchronization process has completed. Use an SMTP server implemented in the mail client for sending messages instead of the system-wide MTA postfix or sendmail to receive reliable feedback about unsent mail.

There are several utilities suitable for synchronizing data between a laptop and a workstation. One of the most widely used is a command-line tool called rsync. For more information, see Глава 23, Copying and Sharing Files.

With the largest range of these wireless technologies, WLAN is the only one suitable for the operation of large and sometimes even spatially separate networks. Single machines can connect with each other to form an independent wireless network or access the Internet. Devices called access points act as base stations for WLAN-enabled devices and act as intermediaries for access to the Internet. A mobile user can switch among access points depending on location and which access point is offering the best connection. Like in cellular telephony, a large network is available to WLAN users without binding them to a specific location for accessing it. Find details about WLAN in Глава 20, Wireless LAN.

Bluetooth has the broadest application spectrum of all wireless technologies. It can be used for communication between computers (laptops) and PDAs or cellular phones, as can IrDA. It can also be used to connect various computers within range. Bluetooth is also used to connect wireless system components, like a keyboard or a mouse. The range of this technology is, however, not sufficient to connect remote systems to a network. WLAN is the technology of choice for communicating through physical obstacles like walls.

IrDA is the wireless technology with the shortest range. Both communication parties must be within viewing distance of each other. Obstacles like walls cannot be overcome. One possible application of IrDA is the transmission of a file from a laptop to a cellular phone. The short path from the laptop to the cellular phone is then covered using IrDA. The long range transport of the file to the recipient of the file is handled by the mobile network. Another application of IrDA is the wireless transmission of printing jobs in the office.