Does anyone else remove or disable 3rd-party software that controls wireless on laptops? I prefer to just have Windows manage it so that all of my portable machines are consistently configured. Also, I just dont want anything unnecessary running on my machines.
Windows – Pros and Cons of removing/disabling 3rd-Party Wireless Software
wifiwindows
Related Solutions
Are you looking for something like this?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/setup/adhoc.mspx
It's called Ad-Hoc wireless networking and it can be used to connect PCs to each other (and to the internet via ICS) without a router.
Best Answer
My experience is mainly with Windows XP on this. I strongly prefer using the built-in Windows Zero Configuration utility because:
I can control it with Group Policy and configure PCs with various SSIDs and security settings automatically.
It will properly authenticate with WPA/RADIUS or WPA2/RADIUS environments during boot to allow group policy, startup scripts, etc, to operate prior to logon.
I can give a consistent tech. support experience to users reporting problems because I am very familiar with the built-in functionality.
It isn't flaky like some third-party tools that I've used-- the built-in functionality isn't particularly sexy, but it works.
The built-in functionality gets patched whtn the OS gets patched and doesn't create another item for me to support w/ patches.
The only "con" that I'm familiar with is that "WiFi Catcher" functionality on some Dell units is tied to their cruddy 3rd-party software. Failing that, I haven't had any problems.
Edit:
If you're reliant on a feature of a 3rd-party wireless manager program to set specific settings when associated with a particular SSID you might want to look at "Net Profiles" (see http://code.google.com/p/netprofiles/). It's an open source utilitiy that can set proxy settings, execute scripts, and make lots of other changes based on the association of a wireless NIC with a given SSID. (I do wish it was tied into the Windows "Network Location Awareness" service, but that's a minor gripe...)