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Sharing thoughts and ideas on business, security and photographyUsing your Windows 7 Laptop as a mobile hotspot #in
Posted on February 07, 2012Summary : This provides a way to share a connection (wired or 3G) from your laptop via wireless to other devices such as iPads, tablets or mobile phones.
Since I bought my iPad i don’t use my laptop (running Windows 7 Professional) as frequently, especially while travelling. I take the laptop with because there are some things that just don’t work as well on the iPad, but most nights the iPad allows me to check mail, read websites and just do enough of what needs being done. Both my laptop and iPad have a Cell C 2Gig / month prepaid card in them. As a result of the above usage patterns I am finding that in the last 2 months I have used up my allocation on the iPad by the end of the month while having unused bandwidth “lost” on the laptop.
I started looking around for a way to be able to share the bandwidth between the two more dynamically. There are hardware options to get a mobile hotspot, and these are available for as little as R700, however, this is yet another device to carry around and I already have too many, so for now that wasn’t the best option.
Google pointed me to a few software hotspots, I downloaded a few, but they all had limitations (such as only the “Pro” version being able to share a 3G connection) or wanted payment, which for software I hadn’t heard of and couldn’t test I wasn’t keen on.
After a little more searching I found the good news that Windows 7 has the functionality built-in. The only downside is that there is no GUI for this functionality. It requires a couple of DOS commands to be entered at the command prompt. No worries though, they can be scripted into a batch file which you can keep on your desktop and then just run as required (though it must be run as administrator).
The specific commands required are :
netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=AAA key=BBB netsh wlan start hostednetwork pause netsh wlan stop hostednetwork pause
Note that the specific name of the connection you are creating must be inserted in the first line where I have AAA and your chosen key replaces the BBB.
Create a batch file (wifihotspot.bat) on your desktop, cut and paste in the above lines, edit the batch file, replacing the names with your choice. That is it. You should now be able to run the batch file (as administrator) and share your connection. To do so, just right-click on the batch file, select Run as administrator and away you go. Simple and effective.
The pause statements are to show you the status after the network is set up, and then to allow you to leave the batch window open until you want to shut down the network, press a key and it’s off. If you prefer you could split this into two separate batch files for an “on” and “off”.
On my machine I get the following responses when running the batch file:
C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=AAA key=BBB The hosted network mode has been set to allow. The SSID of the hosted network has been successfully changed. The user key passphrase of the hosted network has been successfully changed.
C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan start hostednetwork The hosted network started.
C:\Windows\system32>pause Press any key to continue . . .
C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan stop hostednetwork The hosted network stopped.
C:\Windows\system32>pause Press any key to continue . . .
Enjoy, and please share any enhancements, improvements or problems being experienced.
Temporary mobile internet access in Spain (Valencia)
Posted on November 10, 2011Getting access to the Internet when travelling can sometimes be easy ( when the hotels provide free wifi) and other times prove to be tricky and expensive, especially when using roaming access from your cell phone.
Ahead of the current trip to Valencia, Spain I did some research and found a few options for prepaid 3G access. All the cell providers had options, including Vodafone and Yoigo.
In practice life was not so easy, the language barrier and shop assistants who were not into playing charades left me without access after going into numerous shops.
Finally I came across some websites who suggested Carrefour. I headed across to the closest one (near the city of arts and sciences) found a slightly more helpful assistant and picked up a Carrefour Movil prepaid Internet sim for 5 euros. They accepted my South African drivers license as ID since my passport was at the hotel. The SIM has no credit preloaded, so I loaded on another 10 euro. This gives 100 meg of data a day for 1 euro a day, and uncapped 128k speeds after the 100 meg.
At first the SIM didn’t work, but after manually creating an APN with “carrefourinternet” as the APN and all worked great. Mobile hotspot on Android 2.2 meant access could be shared between the iPad Laptop and other mobile devices. 100 meg gets used up quickly but the uncapped 128k works well enough and we are getting through about 250meg a day. For 1 euro that’s a bargain and much better value than the 20 euro a day fee at the hotel (only HTTP browsing is free).
Whenever travelling, try get a local prepaid SIM, you will certainly save yourself a packet.
Which Kindle to buy as a South African (updated May 2012)
Posted on June 30, 2011I have posted a few times in the last little while around my challenges in buying ebooks from Kalahari, then on converting ebooks for use on the Kindle, and more generally on buying ebooks in South Africa.
In response to one of these posts I received a question from Henriet van Rhyn, covering the most obvious question which I hadn’t covered : “Please advise which Kindle to buy, seeing that there are so many versions available on Amazon these days. ”
I answered in the the comments to the post where Henriet posted the question, and after some thought decided it makes more sense to convert this into a full blown post. So below I repeat what I had put into the comments, with a few minor adjustments and ammendments.
Looking at Amazon on 29 June 2011 (Updated 25 May 2012) (as a South African), there are 5 (were 3) different Kindles to choose from. I don’t bother listed local re-sellers as I haven’t found any of them to be competitive and Amazon just make it so easy to order from them.
- Kindle (WiFi) = $109 (6″ screen) (was $139)
- Kindle Touch (WiFi) = $139 (6″ screen) (newly available)
- Kindle Touch 3G = $189 (6″ screen) (newly available)
- Kindle Keyboard (3G+WiFi) = $189 (6″ screen) (unchanged price)
- Kindle DX (3G+WiFi) = $379 (9.7″ screen)
- Kindle Fire is still not available in South Africa
As a USA resident you would also have the option of buying an advert subsidised Kindle for $114. This model is pretty much the same as the WiFi version ($139) but with adverts displayed at various points. Since this is not an international version and can’t be purchased here in SA I don’t cover this any further.
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