Wi-Fi sharing utility Connectify 1.0 launches, remains free

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Jos

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A few weeks ago we were telling you about a nifty little utility called Connectify that promised to seamlessly turn any Windows 7 laptop into a wireless access point. Available as a public beta at the time, Connectify has now rolled out its production ready 1.0 release, which fixes a handful of bugs and adds support for even more wireless cards, improves its system resources management and -- best of all -- has kept its free status.

Sharing your Wi-Fi connection with Connectify is pretty straightforward. Once installed, simply create an access point name, give it a WPA2 encrypted passphrase and choose the net connection to share. Windows 7 is required on the notebook acting as a wireless hotspot, but any wireless-equipped device, including handhelds and other notebooks running whatever operating system can jump online without any additional software.


Your friends won't see an "ad-hoc" network but rather a full blown Wi-Fi access point served up from a virtual cloned version of your wireless network adapter. The software enables users to save money on multiple Wi-Fi connections while on the road and still get all their devices online simultaneously. It can also serve as a rough and ready solution to extend the Wi-Fi range of your home network without buying a repeater router.

Rather than charging for the Wi-Fi sharing functionality as initially expected, further down the road the company plans to provide a number of value added services within the software that will be made available for a small fee.

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That's great! I'm currently stealing internet from a friend of mine in another dorm room, now I can steal it, bump the signal for myself, and play on my ps3 and xbox without a prob :D
 
Im just wondering if when allowing such a thing to happen would slow down your own internet.

I have many laptops and PC's in my house (7 in total, 6 wireless and 1 cable) also on top of that, i have a PS3 and a Xbox 360 all wired to the router, when we all connect using my wireless connection, we are all practically fighting to get some share of the internet and then it eventually crawls to a halt, sometimes the connection even goes. I have a 10MB connection, and come January im gonna upgrade to the next Virgin package, which i think is 25MB, so if i was to install this piece of software and allow other people to access it like friends, would it slow my internet down? Im thinking it will. So in my eyes to some people its a stress saving piece of software but to me its useless and would only cause more problems.
 
Pretty cool app. Thanks for the tip. My roommate and two friends of mine just tried it out and we saw no change in speed.
 
Why Does This Only Work On Win 7? do u know if its a hardware or software issue? or just a way to get you to upgrade?


Thanks!
 
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