I wrote an article about this topic for Microsoft a while back, and got an e-mail from someone with some tips that are actually pretty useful (rare for one of these sales-type articles). Here ya go:

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Question:

I read one of your postings about running a second monitor with a laptop.

I have a MacBook running OSX and Windows XP. The Mac side has provisions for closing the case completely while connected to an external keyboard and mouse. If I close it while running Windows, the monitor is prompted to hibernate. How can I change this?

Answer:

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Hibernation copies your computer’s memory to the hard disk so that the computer can turn off without shutting down completely. After you’ve put your computer into hibernation, starting it back up only takes a few seconds while it reads the contents of memory from the hard disk.

Hibernation is VERY useful. Unfortunately, it consumes disk space equal to the memory in your computer. I have 2GB of memory in my laptop, so keeping a hibernation file uses up 2GB of valuable disk space. Because of this, many people choose to turn hibernation off.

Here’s the catch: Windows Vista doesn’t provide a user interface for turning hibernation back on after you’ve turned it off (wha…?). Fellow MVP Alun Jones discovered this and found the solution: an administrative command prompt. These are documented in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 920730, How to Disable and Renable Hibernation on a Computer that is Running Windows Vista. Here are some easier instructions, though:

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Remote Desktop lets you control another computer across the network. To use it, first enable Remote Desktop on the computer you want to control. Then, follow these steps to connect to it:

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Remote Desktop is a very cool tool that enables you to connect to your computer’s desktop from another computer across the network or even the Internet. The most common use for this is when people work from home and they want to run applications on their office computer–it’s typically much easier to use Remote Desktop to connect to your office computer than it is to try to connect to install every application, shared folder, and printer on your home computer. If you want to connect to a computer at your office, contact your IT department. IT will need to configure your computer and make changes to the firewall.

If you want to connect to another computer in your home across your network, follow these steps (you’ll need access to an administrator account):

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