Wi-Spy

Here’s a handy little utility for laptop owners. It’s called Wireless NetViewand its sole purpose in life is to show you all of the wireless networks in your immediate vicinity. But wait, I hear you cry, my PC can already do that, using the built-in Windows utility or the one installed by the wireless adaptor. All true, but this one goes a whole lot further, drilling deep into the connection or access points properties, tell you all sorts of useful things about its real time and average signal strength, signal quality, authentication algorithm, security status, channel number and frequency, MAC address and much, much more. Okay, so maybe most of this information is only of interest to geeks and hackers, but it’ll give you something to do the next time you’re stuck at the airport, surfing for a free connection.

Wi-Fi On Radar

Here’s a wireless utility with a difference. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor generates a radar-like display to show all of the wireless networks in range of your laptop. By translating relative signal strength into range it shows, in a rather eye-catching way, which ones are likely to give you the best connection. For obvious reasons – unless you have a rotating and highly directional Wi-Fi antenna on your PC the display cannot tell you which direction the access point actually is, but it looks great. Versions of Wi-Fi monitor are available for Windows Mac and Linux, and the only catch is the XP version requires that you install Yahoo Widget Framework, which adds another 15Mb to the download, (the Vista version installs as a sidebar Gadget)