windows 7 – Jay R. Wren – lazy dawg evarlast

WlanChannelInfo aka Windows 7 Net Stumbler aka Wifi Channel Info

I finally got around to updating WlanChannelInfo. It started because I wanted to play with some .NET 4 beta features and I also struggled with getting a simple net stumbler running. I figured that Windows had to have something better to offer, and it turns out that in windows 7 the WLAN API was updated to expose everything that I cared about. I really only want to see what WIFI channel’s my neighbors are on so that I can move my WIFI AP to an unused channel.

http://wlanchannelinfo.codeplex.com/

I finally updated it to use a .NET release instead of a .NET 4 beta, but when I did, I decided that I didn’t need .NET 4. I just stuck to using 3.5 so that this app will run out of the box on Windows 7. No need to get .NET 4 to run this. I figure my parents might have windows 7 but probably won’t have .NET 4 installed just yet. Maybe someone else’s parents would have the same issue, and since the download is only 19KB… yes, 19KB… since the app is dead simple and does nothing but use existing WPF controls and p/invoke into the WLAN api (via the ManagedWifi.dll also on codeplex) its *TINY*.

Let me know if you find this useful.

Windows 7 mp3 tag editor

I just accidentally found Windows 7’s built in mp3 (and presumably other metadata, exif perhaps) tag editor.

I looked for this thing for what felt like hours over the past year. Eventually I sucked it up and downloaded mp3tag, but its still nice to know that this is there for the next time.

Normally when browsing my mp3 files I see a window that looks like this:

See that summary pane at the bottom? Select a file with editable metadata, like an mp3 and resize that pane. Then click one of the metadata values.

Wow, I wish that had been more discoverable. –1 point for Windows 7 for making that far from intuitive, but 1 point for Windows 7 for having the feature.

Windows Home Server backup database

I’m seriously thinking I should change my backup strategy. I use Windows Home Server for one thing and one thing only, Backups. Sure the file share stuff is nice, but I already have a Linux server with samba with my file shares. WHS lovers will say I should migrate, but all I see that gaining me a day or so of copying files and no real benefit.

I recently got a new laptop and when adding this into the mix I had to add more storage to my WHS. I did, and after doing so I got this:

What good is a backup system if it loses your backups? Not much good IMO.

Windows 7’s backup is very good now and I think I may benefit from just using it rather than WHS. I’ll duke it out with WHS one last time, but I won’t be recommending it to Mom, Dad or Grandma anytime soon.