Connectify, your Personal Hotspot

This nice program is in Beta 0.4, but quite useful and working great so far. You need Windows 7 on your laptop or netbook and only some few WiFi cards are actually supported. It allows you to have your fixed local network SSID and to connect your mobile phones with it, even if your not logged in to a hotspot. Nice for exchanging data with your iPhone or using it as a remote to do presentations with your netbook.

After install it is uses autostart and keeps its status from the last boot. This is important, as you may not always want to use it. You can select the SSID of your choice, set the security level and you are ready to go. Besides logging in to your local access point the wired network adapter can also be used. Operation works smoothly. Had no problems so far. Updates come frequently and even now stabilty and usabilty is quite reasonable. Really simplifies your life a bit if you are on the road and want to keep your devices in sync.

PANs (personal area networks) did not take off for a long while and I never understood why. Always typing in new passwords for the actual access point to be used on all your devices is really a mess and takes a lot of time. Also the remote control app usage of your iPhone was quite limited or not possible, if both devices were not logged in into the same access point.

All in all more freedom for the use of your own devices and a real highlight betweeen all the upcoming new tools for Windows 7.