Productivity Portfolio

Recently, one of the places I work installed a secure wireless network. I was elated as it provided freedom. I no longer had to worry about finding an Ethernet jack and cable. All I had to do was change my TCP/IP configuration and I was set to roam. Of course, that freedom stopped when I returned home. I needed to reverse my configuration to work with my home network. On several occasions, I either failed to switch my settings or mistyped a value, which created problems.

In reality, I'm lucky, as I don't have many alternate locations to configure. I have my home network, an office location and various wireless hotspots. In contrast, some people have a half dozen work locations with differing environmental settings such as domain names, time zones, printers and so on.

If you deal with two or more locations, you can benefit from these net switcher utilities that create a profile with your configuration settings. Then you can easily switch between locations by activating a profile with a few clicks.

SwitchPro comes in two versions. The free version is fully functional, but allows two profiles. This is ideal for people who have simple networking needs between their home and office location.

The program is clean and simple and creates a profile in a snap. Once you click the New button and type a profile name, the program reads your current network configuration.

The left section of the panel allows you to act on a profile. The right section presents a tabbed interface for a Local Area Connection and Wireless Connection. You can also configure drive mappings.

There are two ways to activate a profile. The first method is by highlighting the name and selecting Activate profile from the Profile menu. You can also activate a profile by using the icon in the system tray. Depending on your system, this can take a minute.

URL: http://bd-computer.de/en_switchpro.php

For those mobile users who consider themselves road warriors, Plug and Browse handles numerous configuration settings in addition to network setup. The company has thoughtfully laid out these settings in a familiar Windows XP style. These settings include:

• TCP/IP Network Connection Settings
  • IP, DNS, WINS
  • Internet Connection Sharing
  • Internet Connection Firewall with port mappings
  • Enable/Disabled state of Network Adapter
• Internet Explorer settings (5.x and higher)
• Outlook Express connection settings
• Windows Messenger connection settings
• SMTP server
• Mapped network drives
• Computer Name and Domain or Workgroup
• Dialing location
• Default printer
• Time zone
• Windows Hosts file
• Windows XP SP2 Firewall Settings
• Wireless network card security settings (WEP)
• Firefox and Netscape proxy settings

Apart from the above listing, there were some other features we found helpful such as the scripts section. This section allowed us to either execute a script or program before or after we activated a profile.

As with SwitchPro, activating a profile is easy because you only have to double-click the profile in the Locations area. A small progress bar will appear followed by the Activation Report. This report provides details of errors or warnings. This report prompted us to change some of our settings such as disabling our network card for our Home profile.

The company also provides good help resources. You can view an 8 minute online demo from their website highlighting most features. In addition, Plug and Browse includes a context sensitive help file. When you perform any of the advanced tasks, you can click the question mark icon from the title bar and then click on the element to open its help page.