[General Topics] Menneisyys:
It compares to the other contender in this category, WMWifiRouter, pretty well. The drawbacks (as of the current, 1.5 alpha) version are slightly (albeit not much) higher power consumption and the complete (!) lack of DMZ / port forwarding capabilities (please see THIS and THIS for an explanation; THIS, THIS and THIS also shows some real-world consequences of these problems). The latter means that, while all clients will work on the notebook, some specific functionality like RTSP streaming or Internet Relay Chat DCC chat / send initiation simply won’t work. If you plan to access your notebook in this way, for the time being, it’s really-really preferable going for WMWifiRouter instead. Or, ICS Control, if you don’t mind the somewhat less intuitive interface requiring some intricate knowledge of Windows Mobile networking.

1.1.3.1.2 WMWifiRouter

This (as of current, tested version, 1.07; note that at the time of writing not even closed betas of the forthcoming, major breakthrough version, 1.20 were available) is, currently, before the DMZ / port forwarding and the slightly higher power usage issues of WHS are fixed, without doubt the best Wi-Fi tool for Wi-Fi connection sharing, as long as you don’t want to learn how ICS Control needs to be configured. It’s commercial and is available HERE. While its starting / stopping the network connection can be a bit on the slow side compared to the alternatives (including WHS), this can certainly be lived with.

A very useful feature of WMWifiRouter is Crash recovery, which even "kicks in" at bootup time, checking everything is restored. Once it happened to me that the sharing phone no longer handed out local IP addresses to the clients and they, consequently, couldn’t access the Internet. (Interestingly, the desktop Windows XP SP3 didn’t display any error message; only Windows Mobile. I was lucky to have noticed the error message on my iPAQ 210 acting as a client; otherwise, I would have had a hard time finding out what the problem was.) Explicitly running crash recovery fixed the issue.

It has a LOT of goodies only fully-fledged, external access point hardware; for example, you can define port forwarding rules. (This is also supported by the free ICS Control, by the way.)

1.1.3.1.3 ICS Control

This free(!) title is way more complicated to use than the previous two titles for casual users. (For example, you need to manually enable Wi-Fi for Wi-Fi-based internet sharing to work – the previous two titles do this automatically.) However, once you learn to master it, you’ll find it pretty nice as it offers almost the same functionality as the above-mentioned, commercial titles. Sure, you don’t get for example usage statistics (which WMWifiRouter offers), but is still pretty nice. Also, it works on pre-WM5 AKU3 devices (WMWifiRouter and WHS only works on devices with WM5 AKU3 or later – that is, models that already have the new, Internet Sharing-based architecture).

People that started using Wi-Fi connection sharing before the user-friendly WMWifiRouter / WalkingHotSpot - that is, folks that followed my old tutorial - will surely find this application easy-to-use. Other users, however, might want to go for the commercial alternatives instead. If you’re a newbie and don’t want to learn the secrets of network configuration via ICS Control, prefer WMWifiRouter (or WalkingHotSpot, if its port forwarding / DMZ issues are fixed).

1.1.3.1.4 WinMo power consumption benchmarks

Below is a HTC Trinity (with the original, official WM5 AKU 3.3 ROM) showing the transfer of a 7.4Mbyte file (Firefox 3.0) via BT PAN first and, then, Wi-Fi (using WMWifiRouter) second.

As can clearly be seen, operating in Wi-Fi mode consumes way more power. The case is, incidentally, the same with the HTC Universal (running Tomal’s latest, 7.7 WM6.1 ROM). There, using Wi-Fi introduces about 150…200 mA additional Amperage, compared to the plain BT DUN / PAN or USB usage.

1.1.3.2 Symbian s60v3

There are two different products for the Symbian s60v3 operating system. (Note that, now that the competing Symbian platform, UIQ is officially declared as a dead-end, I don’t review UIQ products, only s60v3 ones.)

1.1.3.2.1 WalkingHotSpot

The Symbian version of this application, as with the Windows Mobile one, is pretty much recommended. It’s considerably better than the current, 2.0 version of JoikuSpot Premium, the most important alternative. Hope the bugs / problems of the latter will be fixed really soon.

Note that, as with the WinMo version, the trial version of WalkingHotSpot is severely restricted: if you have more than one device you’d like to use it with, you’ll only be able to do with the first one you use WHS with.

1.1.3.2.2 JoikuSpot Light / Premium

As with WMWifiRouter on Windows Mobile, it comes in two (a free Light and a commercial Premium) versions. Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no trial of the Premium version – this should be fixed. (Yes, I’ve long been pushing the importance of providing preferably time- but not functionality-limited versions of applications [but not necessarily games] so that prospective users can give them a try and don’t need to rely on sometimes overly biased, ad-like reviews. Of course, you won’t see any disguised advertisements from me of apps that don’t have a trial version at all. The mileage of some other reviewers, however, may vary.)

(Joiku Premium showing three clients connected)

The free(!!!) Light version is a perfect choice for anyone only wanting to browse the net and not use any kind of non-Web-based messengers (like MSN Messenger) or (again, non-Web-based) mailer applications trying to access the Net via the native POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols. (Again and again, Web-based frontends will work.)

The commercial, just-released Premium, currently, as of version 2.0, compared to the Symbian version of WHS, has some drawbacks, which the otherwise excellent and overly user-oriented (it’s worth checking out their Web site – they have an excellent forum with a lot of customer service feedback) Joiku folks will hopefully soon fix.

1.1.3.2.3 Power consumption benchmarks

Below is a Nokia N95 Power Profiler screenshot showing the downloading of a 24Mbyte file, followed by some idling to see the idle power consumption. The four test setups are separated by a vertical white line. (Note that the white vertical line in exactly the center of the screen isn’t one of them.)

The cases are as follows:

1: N95 standard, built-in Bluetooth dial-up. The transfer speed was about one-third of that of the Wi-Fi / USB case; hence the much longer in-transfer section. Note that, after the transfer (during idling), the power consumption periodically fluctuated between ~0.25W (with backlight on) and 1.3W. Note that fluctuation isn’t necessarily the case in all cases – in another test, I’ve encountered far less fluctuation with BT DUN and far more with WHS. That is, pay more attention to the minimal power consumption.

2: WalkingHotSpot (WHS): as can be seen, during transfer, there is about 2.8W power consumption (I’ve made several more tests to make sure it’s indeed around 2.7…2.8W and is indeed much higher than with USB / BT DUN and definitely less than with Joiku Light); while idling, about 1.20W.

3: USB (using Nokia PC Suite to connect): slightly more power-consuming (but, of course, about 3… 3.5 times faster) transfer and a bit higher idling power consumption than with Bluetooth DUN; however, the latter doesn’t show idle fluctuation. (Again, don’t be mislead by fluctuation!)

4: Joiku Light (shows two transfer tests to make sure the speeds are correctly benchmarked): the highest (about 3.3W) in-transfer power consumption of all. There seems to be more fluctuation while idling – but, again, don’t be mislead by their frequency (with other benchmarks, there may me much fewer peaks).The minimal idle power consumption is about the same as with WHS – that is, about 1.20W. Note that I’ve repeated the tests with Joiku Premium, with, unfortunately, very similar results.