W7 & Thinkpad Access Connections

What exactly is the purpose of this program other than a pretty GUI? Does it improve my wireless signal strength? Does it make wireless speeds faster?

I use this laptop at home 90% of the time and am currently only using the default W7 wireless program/driver... should i still install AC?

 

when enabled, it runs in parallel with the windows 7 network configurator. I used it once and found that it takes longer to connect than when it was off.
I guess access connections is mostly useful if you're always on the go and have to frequently connect to different wifi hotspots.

 

I find it useful because I use an embedded Verizon modem for WWAN as well as my agn card for wi fi and Access Connections manages both for me.

Although my verizon has its own software and Win 7 has its own and you can use them separately as well.

Perry

 

I have verizon too and I use a combination of W7 and VZAM although VZAM will allow me to connect to wifi as well. I uninstalled Access Connections. I can't justify the hard drive space.

 

I don't think it uses a lot of hard drive space, but regardless, I just reinstalled Windows on my computer and I'm not bothering with Access Connections. I found it to be crappy for managing my wifi connection. It would take forever to connect, sometimes it wouldn't connect, sometimes it would connect to access points with very low signal strength, etc. If you use wifi roaming (having multiple access points in a given area with the same SSID) and you move a lot between them (IE, a college campus) I strongly recommend that you don't use Access Connections to manage your wifi connection. If you use WWAN and other types of wireless (and even wired), then it's great because it can switch between them automatically, but I simply can't use it because of all the problems I've had with it.