Good realtime wifi display

Pros: It didn't screw up my system's existing wifi controller upon installation, like another app did. Has visible, real time monitoring of ambient wifi conditions, great for troublehsooting multi-Access Point installations or for locations with heavy 802.11b interference. Also distinguishes between different access points broadcasting the same SSID, by their MAC addresses (and, theoretically, allows you to connect to each by specifing the AP MAC address).

Cons: I wish it had bound to my laptop's (Lenovo P60 Thinkpad) internal wifi card a little better. It works at first and then stops giving accurate readings and cannot successfully disconnect from one signal and connect to another through it's own interface. I found a workaround of rebooting, connecting to the signal I wanted to diagnose with the windows wifi interface, and then firing up WirelessMon to get the details. From that point, I would simply close the program, connect with the windows interface, and then re-load the program to do the diagnosis (without having to reboot). If I didn't jump between access points I could still see most of the real time stats in the signal list anyway.

Posted: 18-May-2007 07:12:26 AM

Mistakenly removed Brother network printer drivers

Pros: Works quickly and is stable.

Cons: This was my favorite Registry Cleaning program for about 3 years, until I found it would mistakenly remove Brother network printer drivers on either Windows 2000 and Windows XP computers. I now use ToniArts EasyCleaner 2.0.6.380, (which is now available here on download dot com). It's fast and flawless. I also found that on initial scans of computers WITHOUT Brother printers installed, EasyCleaner would find more invalid registry entries than TweakNow RegCleaner, (and safely remove them, of course).

Posted: 07-Aug-2006 06:36:21 AM

Used to be my favorite until it flagged the wrong reg entries

Pros: I have to admit to using it consistently for years (until it finally flagged something as 'safe to delete' that wasn't). Good interface, runs fast, and is stable. It was very hard to stop using it, as it had been one of my freeware favorites for a very long time.

Cons: Well, it worked for me until I switched from HP to Brother networked printers and multifunction devices. Right after doing a on original-CD install of a Brother 7820N MFC Laser printer/scanner/etc, it flagged pretty much the entire group of Brother installation keys as 'safe to delete'. As it had never given me false positives before, I went ahead and deleted the 4 dozen or so objects and the printer immediately stopped working. After a full uninstall and reinstall, the printer worked again and RegCleaner found the same 4 dozen Brother keys to delete. I then went looking for a registry cleaning alternative, and had to look beyond download.com. I finally found my current favorite, ToniArts' EasyCleaner (2.0.6.380), which found lots of stuff TweakNow RegCleaner hadn't, and DIDN'T flag the Brother Printer's registry keys. (It's working great for me 4 weeks, 9 computers, and dozens of scans later.) BTW, I use Easy Cleaner as one of 11 antivirus/antispyware/cleanup applications I recommend:

Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta1 (last one was v1.0.701)

Ad-Aware SE Personal (currently v1.06r1)

Spybot Search and Destroy (currently v1.4)

Sygate Personal Firewall (currently v5.6 build 2808)

Easy Cleaner (by ToniArts) (currently v2.6.7)

Bazooka Adware and Spyware Scanner (currently v1.13.03)

X-RayPC (currently v1.001),

System Spyware Interrogator (currently v1.3.67)

Spyware Terminator (currently v1.2.00.544).

HijackThis (currently v2.00)

Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition (mine is v8.1) or

AVG Anti-Virus Professional (currently v7.1.362)

Posted: 21-Mar-2006 01:30:54 PM