Quick overview:
Anyone who travels frequently knows the problem: you connect your laptop to a paid hotspot or the LAN connection in the hotel or at the airport and pay a completely overpriced fee for 1, 2 or 24 hours:
If you have no other choice, you pay the fee and can use the Internet with 1 PC. Other devices - such as your spouse's notebook, smartphones or portable games consoles - are left empty-handed. So should you pay for one Internet connection per device? No thanks!
Windows Tweaks reveals how you can use Connectify (now available in version 2.1) to share every incoming Internet connection on your notebook with other devices. It doesn't matter whether you connect to the paid Internet via the network cable or WiFi. Microsoft already had a solution to this problem in an early beta version of Windows 7: every incoming Internet connection can also be shared with other devices via the "Virtual WiFi" functions. However, the function was removed due to time constraints.
The clever developers at Connectify have finished what Microsoft couldn't do in time. The program "Connectify 2.1" turns your Windows 7 notebook into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. This is how it works:
1. install Connectify and click "Finish" at the end of the wizard to start the program. Then click on the Connectify icon in the taskbar and select "Easy Setup Wizard".
2. click on "Next" and select the WiFi adapter that you would like to use to create the hotspot. In the next step, enter a name of your choice for your WiFi hotspot and click "Next" again.
3. make sure that "Access Point, WPA2-PSK" is used as the hotspot mode in the next step. This is the most secure method and also the only way to share an incoming WiFi connection with other users.
4. now choose a password to protect your personal WiFi hotspot and click on "Next". Now comes the most important step: select the connection via which the Internet reaches your PC. In the example, the notebook is connected to the hotel network via LAN. This means that "LAN connection" is the correct setting.
5. that's it! Click on "Next" and "Finish". This will start your own WiFi hotspot, which you should now see with all other devices:
On other PCs....
...on cell phones...
...or even on games consoles!
If you want to extend the range of your Wi-Fi even further, then it is also worth improving the range of the router. You can do this with a Wi-Fi extender. You can find the best ones in this article.
Have fun saving money...
Sandro Villinger
On Windows Tweaks you will find time-saving tech guides for PC, software & Microsoft. For a stress-free digital everyday life. Already we have been "tweaking" Windows since 1998 and just won't stop!
