The techie firm Nomadio has discovered that there is an unfinished feature incorporated into Windows 7 that can basically turn your laptop into a Wi-Fi hot spot. Cool!
What Nomadio did was use this feature to develop a beta application called ‘Connectify’ that you can download free of charge to do just that, create your very own Wi-Fi connection that you can share with your friends and family and anyone else you want.
Apparently the feature was implemented by Microsoft’s research group during the development of Windows 7 as a way to “virtualise” one wireless card as several separate adaptors.
This project was abandoned back in 2006 but the work that had already been carried out became part of Windows 7 as “Native 802.11 (Virtual Wi-Fi) object identifiers (OIDs).
“A year ago, Microsoft talked a lot about this as a big feature in Windows 7,” said Alex Gizis, the CEO of Nomadio.
“But driver support didn’t get finished. The low-level code is in there, but the driver-level stuff isn’t. And there’s no app or setting in Windows to turn it on.”
So basically the feature was half done and all it needed to complete it was software from Nomadio and hey presto, you’re very own personal Wi-Fi hotspot.
How Connectify works is that it allows a laptop running windows 7 to “tether” other devices to a single internet connection by turning the laptop into a Wireless router. I like the sound of this.
“There are a lot of neat scenarios where this comes in handy,” said Gizis. “For example, people can use a wireless printer without any setup, which usually requires that you first plug the [wireless] printer into the computer with a USB cable so it can select the network.”
You could also connect your phone and other computers or devices to the network even if the other computers aren’t running Windows 7, provided of course that the laptop acting as the Wireless hotspot is running Windows 7.
Now although it’s free for the beta version of the software at the moment, Nomadio are likely to charge for a full version when it’s ready for release apparently in about 6 weeks time.
“I think we’ll end up with two-tier model, one that’s free, potentially ad-supported, and then sell a full version,” said Gizis.
Nice one!
If you want to find out all the latest news on tech why not subscribe to our RSS feed?
Leave a Reply