connectify - or how to turn your windows 7 computer into a router

I recently came up against a small problem.  A friend of mine uses a usb wi-fi dongle/modem/stick and wanted to be able to share their internet connection.  

I did a bit of research and found that it could be done via a series of command prompts, but even to me, who is an experienced user, these commands looked daunting.   However I saw an article on this piece of software called connectify.

I downloaded it, got a second laptop out and tried a connection to the internet from the second laptop going through the firstlaptop which was connected to the internet.   I had to do a little bit of playing around to get everything working, but yes, you can use your windows 7 laptop as a router (but it must have at least service pack 1 installed).

 Now I have found that if you have a usb stick modem, its best just to install the usb modem software on one machine(the host machine)  as trying to get the connections correct is troublesome if you have the modem software on a client machine as well. 

You also have the choice of creating a secured or unsecured connection using connectify, but we should remember that this is just a small coverage area.

connectify will insist on the connection name being connectify-<somename> where the default is connectify-me.    You can also see each client that is connected and disconnect them at will. 

You can upgrade to the pro-version for €29.99 which will give you some more features like file-sharing and I assume you can have your connection without the connectify- bit included.  Even this is still cheaper than the hardware option which is above €70.

typically you need a wireless card (built into your laptop) and a usb dongle modem on your host computer

Depending on your windows 7 network card, you may see a notice saying no ap mode supported.  If you do not see this message, then you only need one network card (as the card can act as an access point).

Download Connectify Lite here

Its excellent for what it does and I suspect the pro version may be worth buying but this is a free software blog so we will only comment on the basic free features.

There are limitations to this softwares use. It advises its best to use an access point connection and I should add that I have only successfully connected windows 7 operating systems