Network Magic alternative

[Midnight Rambler]

I managed a 3-PC home network with Cisco Network Magic Pro v. 4.9x.  Just added a fourth cleint, a Thinkpad running Win 7 Pro 64-bit and after installing NM on the laptop, found that Cisco discontinued the program and shut down its sever used to register NM (to elevate the free version to pro).  The free version of NM isn't worth the disk space it occupies so am looking for a NM alternative I can install on all four clients.

Googled "network magic alternative" but found only Spiceworks Desktop as a viable alternative.  Issue is, Spiceworks is not exactly user-friendly and is geared more toward IT professionals, not home network administrators.

Any suggestions?  Thanks.

[40hz]

I think you may be out of luck. AFAIK Network Magic was unique. So unless you wanted to get into the so-called 'pro' network software market, Cisco's orphan was it. Untangle Gateway used to have a PC-hosted version that did much of what NM did. But they discontinued that awhile back. Untangle is strictly a 'dedicated box' installation these days.  

[Midnight Rambler]

You're probably right.  Still, was hoping some program available on this site would suffice.  Guess the demand isn't large enough.

[40hz]

I did some additional checking and I've been told the official replacement product for Network Magic is something called SMART-Wifi. Info here.

Apparently Cisco has taken an appstore approach (like everyone else lately) with this - and it only works with certain Linksys/Cisco "smart" routers so I don't know if this is helpful to you.

Probably worth a look at least.

Luck!