Few years ago a little-known feature called Virtual Wi-Fi was crafted by Microsoft's research group as a way to "virtualize" one wireless card as several separate adapters in Windows. The project was discontinued in 2006, but some of the code apparently made its way into Windows 7, and now at least one company is taking advantage of it with a new application that can turn any laptop into a wireless access point.

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very interesting concept, although I can't think of many times i would personally find it useful. Anyone with a good example I am all ears.

Seems pretty cool, but I can't exactly imagine making use of it.
If there's a fee involved, there's no way I would bother toying around with it either, even to find a use for it.

wow that's so cool, my wireless router is in the basement, so I'll be able to make my brothers wireless laptop in the middle floor, connect to my laptop in the second floor of the house and hopefully have a better single there then to the router? awesome

This sounds great! I would beta test this. I can't see how the project got discontinued in 2006.
It would be just as cool back in 2006. I think this would be a great use of that old laptop in a low spot in my house. I can also see using it with a cell phone and a laptop . I can't wait to see all of its applications it could be used for. I will download it now.

It definitely could come in handy whenever you have to pay for expensive Wi-Fi (an airport, for example) and want to share that connection with others... or perhaps even to extend your Wi-Fi range at home.

Wow, this is pretty awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if this was an accident on Microsoft's part, though I would not be surprised if it was intentional either. MS seems to be making some good choices as of late, I'm pretty impressed.

I can see this being very useful, mostly in the ways that Jos mentioned.

I had no idea how this could be useful until i read this comment. Seems like a good idea, especially sharing expensive connects (at least fron a consumer's point of view, don't think the network admin are going to like it very much).

That's cool, but how is this any different than setting up an ad-hoc network? I've done this a number of times with Vista, and it's also available in XP. It's simply a wireless connection with Internet sharing on.

THIS IS NOTHING NEW....

This feature has always existed in windows. If you had internet plugged into any computer via ethernet and that desktop or laptop also had a wireless nic, all you had to do was right click on the icon for the wireless device, go to properties, and under the sharing tab, select the checkbox that says "Allow other users to connect through this computer's internet connection." Then make sure the output nic is the wireless device and there you go. I guess small minded people who hated vista for no reason never had the opportunity to enjoy that option.

It is great to see progress like this. Any new ways to connect are always desirable.

To Deso: You can get a repeater router (for wireless g only) and it would use a lot less power than keeping a laptop on all the time. It would also cost a lot less if you're buying new.

I really support this , im using Windows 7 right now and im soo happy . When i had a problem on XP , everytime i turned my PC on i had to restart my modem to get some connectivity ! This is totally awesome !

Seems very nice. I wonder why is this Window 7 dependent? Why can't it be implemented in other OSs (obviouslly, with more code in the application, compensating for less OS support)?

From a bit of reading on the Connectify FAQ you don't have to have your laptop hooked up via a hardwire ethernet connection. You can use your wireless connection, with the same network card, and then re-broadcast it as a new wifi hotspot.

Also, I believe you could do what you are talking about on Xp Pro.

I am always iffy about wireless hotspot's because they usually aren't very well protected. The cool thing about this is that it encrypts it with WPA.

Windows 7 so far seems to be very well executed and what Vista should have been. A lot of cool features that even third parties are already taking advantage of.

I could of used this last year when I was hosting a LAN at home and was needing to extend the range of my wireless network.

But yeah, is there any reason this is Win 7 exclusive?

When it stays free, i'd def. have a use for it.

I'm getting a small netbook to be a bit more mobile than with my current 15.4". When i'm home it's running 24/7 most of the time and this would save me some bucks for a wireless router.

Somehow I doubt that you could get Windows 7 to run on an old laptop. If it can run Windows 7 then it's good for far more than a simple access point.

It's a nice feature to expand your wi-fi connection. This could be more important than 802.11n It's another good reason to buy windows 7.