When you need to switch a network setup, you can do it directly from here. Click a new location. If you're currently network-connected, you'll most likely get a prompt about reboots, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

If you're network-connected, you'll get a prompt about reboots. Click picture for a larger image.

You can let it manage the reboot, or you can do it yourself. Even better, if you have a "plug and play" type PC Card network adapter that you can switch off, you can often switch locations without a reboot being required, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

Under certain conditions, you can switch locations without a reboot being required. Click picture for a larger image.

It seems that NetSwitcher can detect active network connections, and if there aren't any, you don't need the reboot. So, you insert the PC Card again, and away you go. That's a big part of how I was able to get connected to the Lotusphere network so quickly.

NetSwitcher itself
Figure D shows the opening screen for NetSwitcher.

FIGURE D

Here's NetSwitcher's opening screen. Click picture for a larger image.

You can see that it uses a tabbed interface to get to the various pages of settings. At the top is an option to enable existing setups to be loaded, so that you can either apply them directly or edit them. The important buttons on the right are the Save and Apply buttons. Save saves the current settings. Apply pushes the current setup into the computer and makes it available.

Just below the top selection is the line, "RIGHT CLICK the mouse here for the NetSwitcher QuickMenu." This, obviously enough, enables the QuickMenu. The neat thing on the displayed list is the Manage Locations option. The resulting dialog enables you to delete locations, but more importantly, it enables you to export and import complete setups to file. Thus, you can share a working location with another NetSwitcher user, or a network administrator can use it to create and distribute setups.

Whenever you start NetSwitcher, it loads itself with your computer's current network settings. The first time you do this, you should immediately save these so that you have something that works to go back to should it all go horribly wrong. Once you've done that, you can then use these tabs to create, save, and apply new setups, or you can use the all too familiar Network control panel to set up new network settings. Then you just capture and save them with NetSwitcher. I prefer to use NetSwitcher alone to create new setups, merely because the tabbed interface reminds me of all the things I need to set up, and it does it in one place. Frankly, it's a lot easier than messing about with the Network control panel applet.

Now I don't plan to go through all of NetSwitcher in this article, but let's look at some of the tabs in more detail.

The General tab
The General tab, which you saw back in Figure D, shows the computer details, time zone, and default printer for the current location. When you're creating a new location, just over-type this stuff to suit. If you need to add location-specific printers, you may well have to be connected and logged on to the network at that location to be able to specify a printer. Be prepared to have to come back to this page after a successful connection in order to be able to complete this entry.