Those of us who have ever traveled with laptops will be familiar with this problem: The cost of Wi-Fi or wired Internet access at hotels is typically exorbitant, and gives you only a single user login that doesn’t facilitate any sharing. This is often frustrating, should your room mate also own a laptop, or if traveling in a group.

On top of this, most smartphones these days have Wi-Fi capabilities, which can be used to either access e-mails or download files; Wi-Fi access for these devices can yield tremendous savings in long distance data rates. And we haven’t even mentioned the many gadgets with Wi-Fi only access, such as the iPod Touch, the initial models of the Apple iPad, or dedicated Internet tablets such as the JooJoo.

Carrying a small wireless router will help resolve the issue, of course. However, that is one more device to carry, and who wants to be stuck with lugging around yet another piece of hardware and its associated power adapter? In addition, this solution won’t help share (non-free) Internet connectivity at a cafe.

How does Connectify work?

Enter Connectify to help alleviate the above situations. The free software application “virtualizes” the wireless adapter so that it can be used concurrently to connect to an access point (AP), while also simultaneously serving as an AP. It depends on internal code residing within later versions of Windows however, and hence will only work on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (or later). Windows 7 Starter Edition is also not supported, as it lacks some of the features Connectify utilizes.

Being able to operate in standard AP mode will require that the wireless device is supported; otherwise, only Ad-hoc mode will be available, though its ability to connect to an AP simultaneously is not affected. Pretty much all the newer devices are supported though, so that shouldn’t be an issue. You can check out the full list ofsupported devices here.

Read the full article here at Tech Republic

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/networking/?p=2591&tag=nl.e102

The suits designers have actually have medical applications in mind. Something more awesome that the science fiction versions. Imagine being infirm and then suddenly stronger, Or being a health worker who could suddenly lift patients safely – alone.

So take a look and enjoy. This isn’t far from being released.

Not Another Password Generator!  Ah, you may cry that but ours is a little different,

it will not only generate secure passwords but with our tool you can send it TO BE PIMPED!

yes you read correctly it will PIMP up your password to make it even more secure!

So download our FREE password tool and get Pimping today!

Download Here

.

Here’s my take on the two sides. Conservatism is an essential part of computing. A bad change to a computer system can be very costly indeed, but I also feel that it is also best to take each product on its merits and apply it to your own needs. As a product I still feel that Windows 7 exceeds previous versions of Windows. Does it meet your needs – well only careful consideration can tell you that. In fact this is why we are putting a number of businesses in a room with Windows 7. We are hoping for an open and frank examination of the system against business needs. Its all about putting information in the hands of the people who need it.

Talking about information here is today’s Windows 7 video, have a look at Latika talking about responsiveness and safety in Windows 7

Want to learn more? Click to get details about our Windows 7 launch event

Media broadly speaking refers to music, TV, films, games.  Not that much for business there you might thing but remember that media also includes things like plans, maps, designs, photographs, graphics, and logos. I’ve been revising a series of graphics and photographs recently and I do find keeping track of my work much easier. Previous versions of Windows did this, but only reasonably well. Vista was a step forward but its Windows 7 that makes things good. I think I now find it easier to handle this type of work than I have done on an Apple Mac.

Enjoy the video. There’ll be another along tomorrow.

I hope you find this interesting.

Image by nDevilTV via Flickr

Out for about a week now is Microsoft’s latest foray into anti-virus software. This time around the software is a free download designed for the consumer end of the market (with Forefront Security staying in place as a provider of Enterprise level protection).  So that’s the first thing you need to remember – this is a product designed for consumers. It’s big competitors being the ever present Norton, or the much beloved provider of free antivirus software – AVG.

I wanted to be sure about who could use this so I checked out the licence agreement. Security Essentials is licensed for use in your home or for a home based business. So this is not for you if you run a large office,  but if you are a home based business –as many freelancers are then you can use this. That’s a good distinction that Microsoft has made. Many free offerings are only free for home use, which makes it a little confusing for anyone who works for themselves from home. Security Essentials immediately gets over this by allowing in all home based businesses. In this economy that’s a lot of people; so by making this product freelance friendly Microsoft are looking to score a lot of friends.

As for the real important practical stuff – well it looks and reads like a lot of other products. It handles viruses, spyware and other assorted malware via a real-time protection system. So nothing new here. It has an interface that won’t challenge anyone used to using antivirus software. So its a case of so far, so good. It also installs easy enough – particularly if you download from Internet Explorer – in fact the download is IE friendly so if you do decide to install Security Essentials its a good idea to do it via Internet Explorer.

So what do we think. Well it looks like a plausible piece of software, but I’d like to use it a little longer before drawing a final judgement. Once I’ve used security essentials for a while – I’ll report back with a more conclusive review.

You may be wondering what providers of free antivirus software are doing now that Microsoft is stomping into their territory. Well AVG for one aren’t taking it lying down. They’ve just launched version 9 of their software and added the new feature of shortened link scanning to protect against accessing a malicious site via a shortened URL. This is good news for Social Media fans where short URLs are common place.

If you’d like to know more about Microsoft Security Essentials take a look at: http://www.microsoft.com/Security_essentials/

Ok this is not a product yet, but the rumour is that this is a late prototype. That should mean that it is not far from actually being released. Of course you can never can be sure of release dates with Microsoft. The first impression is this – Microsoft has come up with a tablet concept based upon reading, writing and organising information. To be honest this is what a tablet should do. It should be comfortable to hold in your hand, adding new content should be a breeze and it should synchronise with all of the essential workaday information held on your main computer. The touch of sharing work with named others is also nice. Too often we rely on email for sharing information. Email isn’t a great tool for this, and although there are other ways of doing this, unless it is set up for you most people take a the path of least resistance this. Its a problem that is technically nearly solved, socially not so, devices like this are a step towards more intuitive sharing.

You must guess that I like the look of this. It’s a step beyond carrying a smartphone, its not the overkill of carrying a laptop but it does look genuinely useful. I can imagine using this in a meeting, I can imagine sitting on the sofa with a glass of wine and doing some reading with this. A laptop is possible but not so comfortable or personable in both situations.

Who knows it may even be part of the evolutionary path towards the mythical paperless office.