Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) had a tweet today about an open source virtual router for WiFi sharing (http://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/) (via @crpietschmann). This reminded that before I upgraded to Win 7, I found that my Lenovo W500 (best laptop ever) had support in Vista for creating a personal WiFi network using the Intel adapter.  I dug a little deeper to see if this also works in Win 7.

The latest version of the Intel WiFi drivers (v13) do include support for Intel's My WiFi technology, which allows you to turn your laptop into a wireless router, allowing up to 8 computers to connect, while maintaining your wireless connection to the Internet. (BTW ' I downloaded the Intel 5150 drivers first, without realizing that I have the 5300, to find that the 5150 does not support this feature).

To do this, your W500 has to have either the Intel 5300, 5100, or 1000 WiFi adapter.

You'll have to download the large driver package from Lenovo (around 78 meg), and choose the custom install, because My WiFi support is not installed by default:

After installation, you will find My WiFi under Intel PROSet Wireless

You then have to enable My WiFi support:

There are a few options for adding devices, some supporting WiFi Protected Setup:

Manually adding a device though show a scary security passphrase:

You can change this though by adding a new Profile:

Adding a new profile allows you to set the SSID, security settings, etc:

It'll give you a really long encryption key by default, but you can change it here:

They'll even let you set the default channel:

Options will even let to change what DHCP settings it's going to use for your connected clients:

How well does it work? I don't know yet, once some of the other laptops in the house aren't being used, I'll try it out, (BTW, none of these settings are for my actual setup, so just incase you know where I live, this info won't help you). :)