Make your Windows 7 laptops a wireless hub with Virtual Wi-Fi

Sharing your Windows internet connection via software has traditionally been a tricky business. There are programs that can help you do it, but they’re often awkward to set up, and prone to complicated security and reliability issues, so most people don’t even try.

But that could all be about to change, thanks to a new Windows 7 laptops feature called Virtual Wi-Fi.

The idea is a simple one: the operating system can virtualise any compatible wireless adapter, to make it appear as though you’ve as many additional adapters as you need.

The effect is dramatic. Once it’s set up, then any Wi-Fi compatible device that can connect to you – another desktop, laptop, or an iPod Touch, say – will immediately be able to get online, by sharing your internet connection through a duplicate of your wireless adapter.

Getting this working isn’t too difficult, either, as long as you can get over the first hurdle: finding a virtual Wi-Fi-compatible driver for your wireless adapter.

Intel’s latest 32-bit and 64-bit drivers now include support, as do various others for Atheros, Broadcom, Realtek and other big players, but these don’t apply to every chipset. Check the support site for your wireless adapter to see what’s available.

If you’re in luck and manage to find and install an up-to-date Windows 7 driver for your adapter, then the next step is to set it up, and for that you’ll need an elevated command prompt. Click Start, type CMD, right-click the Cmd.exe link and select “Run as Administrator”.

Now type the following command:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=MyNet key=MyPassword

and press [Enter]. Replace “MyNet” with the name you’d like to use for your custom network, and “MyPassword” with a password that’s a little harder to guess.

Still at the command line, type

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

and press [Enter] to fire up the virtual adapter.

Now click Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Centre > Change Adapter Settings, right-click your internet connection and select Properties. Click the Sharing tab, check “Allow other network users to connect…”, choose your virtual Wi-Fi adaptor – and that’s it.

Any nearby Wi-Fi enabled device should see a new network appear with the SSID you defined above. They’ll be able to connect to it using your password, and can then immediately share your internet connection.

While it’s worth knowing how to do this manually, if it’s something you do often then you’ll probably prefer a simpler solution.

You could speed things up a little by creating a batch file to run the netsh commands, perhaps, but for a really easy life we’d recommend you install Virtual Router. It’s compact, free, and will automate the whole process for you with the minimum of hassle.

Thanks to Techradar.

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #8

With USB sticks responsible for many recent security scares, Microsoft has decided to tackle the issue head-on with Windows 7 laptops. BitLocker To Go effortlessly encrypts any external USB drive by right-clicking on the drive’s icon and entering a suitably secure password. You’re given the option to save and print out a recovery key, which can be used to access data on the drive should you forget the password.

The USB drive can also be automatically unlocked on your mainPC, to save entering the password every time, although this obviously makes it less secure. Microsoft promises that BitLocker To Go will offer read-only support on older versions of Windows – for now, encrypted disks appear as full, inaccessible drives on Windows XP and Vista.

IT departments running the forthcoming Windows Server 2008 R2 can set a group policy that forces employees to encrypt the drive before they can copy company data to the disk, which should help prevent data leaks and the need for more drastic security measures, such as locking down USB ports.

Microsoft has boosted BitLocker support for internal drives, too, with PC hard disks also encryptable at the right-click of a mouse (Windows 7 will automatically create the hidden boot partition). Whether BitLocker will be restricted to Enterprise and Ultimate versions of the OS, as it was with Vista, remains to be seen.

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #7

The Action Center is the new Security Center for Windows 7, along with other notifications such as updates and access to the improved troubleshooting and recovery using restore point facilities.

Basically, it is everything Windows usually annoys you with, rolled into one place with one icon in the notification bar. If you find the alerts irritating, you can check out this tip to make the Windows 7 Action Center less annoying.

Action Center certainly is one of the very useful features added to Windows 7 providing various options to troubleshoot and fix computer problems. It’s not exactly sexy, but it’s a welcome addition for all Windows 7 laptops.

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #6

Ignore the snow outside, it’s all about Windows 7 at the moment, and Microsoft seem to be doing all white at the minute.

Another nifty little feature available on Windows 7 laptops is the ‘Problem Steps Recorder’. This lets you record a particular problem you are having with your computer so you can send it to someone who may be able to help.

Click ‘Record’, and a screenshot is taken with every mouse click, allowing comments to be added in between if required. These screenshots (and comments, if any) are placed in a well-formatted HTML document that is placed inside a zipped folder on your desktop – ideal to be attached to an email.

Pretty damn cool!

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #5

Open the Fonts window in Windows XP and Vista and you’ll see the font names, probably with icons to tell you whether they’re TrueType or OpenType, but that’s about it. Windows 7 laptops see some useful font-related improvements.

Open the new fonts window and you’ll find a little preview for every font, giving you a quick idea of how they’re going to look.

The tedium of scrolling through multiple entries for each family, like Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Bold Italic and so on, has finally ended. There’s now just a single entry for each font (though you can still see all other members of the family).

And there’s a new OpenType font, Gabriola, added to the mix. It’s an attractive script font, well worth a try the next time you need a stylish document that stands out from the crowd.

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #4

If you’re blessed with a laptop, you can use the efficiency calculator to get Windows 7 to generate loads of useful information about its power consumption. Used in the right way, this can help you make huge gains in terms of battery life and performance. To do this you must open a command prompt as an administrator by typing ‘cmd’ in Start Search, and when the cmd icon appears, right-click it and choose Run as administrator.

Then at the command line, just type in ‘powercfg -energy’ (without quotes) and hit Return, and Windows 7 laptops scan your system looking for ways to improve power efficiency. It will then publish the results in an HTML file, usually in the System32 folder. Just follow the path it gives you to find your report.

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #3

Part three in our look at jazzy new offerings in Windows 7 laptops.

There are those times when you inevitably have to burn an ISO file (such as when you have to copy a downloaded Windows 7 beta or RC) to a DVD.

With Windows 7 you do not need to download third-party software (some of which are pretty confusing to use). Double-clicking on an ISO file will take you to a window that allows you to change the disc burner drive. Click ‘Burn’. After a while, your disc is ready.

Simple.

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #2

Part deux in our mini-series looking at the cool new features available on Windows 7 laptops.

If you do create a Homegroup, Windows Media Player allows you to stream music directly to another computer. So, instead of listening to music through your measly laptop speakers, you can wirelessly stream to the 7.1 Surround Sound Speakers of your PC in your living room, without stepping away from your laptop.

Nice.

Here are a few reminders to make your HomeGroup experience as smooth as possible:

- When using a homegroup, make sure all the homegroup PCs are turned on, connected to the network, and not sleeping or hibernating. It might seem pretty obvious that if a PC is turned off, you won’t be able to access the shared files on it, but it’s easy to forget that—it’s happened to me before!

- If you use a laptop from work when you’re at home, be aware that domain-joined computers can join a homegroup and access files and printers shared by other people, but for security reasons they can’t share their own files and printers.

- If you change the homegroup password, enter the new password on all the other homegroup PCs right away. That way, all the PCs stay “in sync.”

Windows 7 vs Vista – new features for Windows 7 laptops #1

With Windows 7 laptops, you do not have to slam your head against your desk in the same way when Vista refused to run an XP application.

For those XP applications that do not work under Windows 7, you can download XP Mode free from the Microsoft website and run XP applications in an emulated XP environment in Windows 7. Imagine Parallels on Mac OS X without the need to fish out money on an extra OS.

Aimed primarily at small businesses, the virtualization layer is designed to help ease the transition for those still running programs that don’t work properly with Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

To use the compatibility layer, users need to be running Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, or Windows 7 Ultimate.