JiWire has released a public beta of its latest software package: offline hotspot finder, Wi-Fi profile manager, and VPN client: JiWire and Wi-Fi Networking News have an editorial and advertising partnership, so I won't pretend to be unbiased here. You'll note under category below that "self-promotion" is one of the items checked.
Nonetheless, I like SpotLock, their new free software package. Windows XP even with Service Pack 2 is a bit frustrating to use for managing connections to Wi-Fi networks when you work in many different places with the same machine. SP2 is a big improvement over prior releases, of course, but SpotLock offers the kind of granularity and configuration control that one would hope Microsoft could have baked in.
SpotLock handles WEP, WEP + 802.1X, and WPA-Personal, but doesn't yet have WPA + 802.1X (WPA-Enterprise) support, which should only affect a very small number of users who would use WPA-Enterprise but not have VPN support.
SpotLock also incorporates JiWire's hotspot directory, putting the database on your Windows machine. The directory can be updated when you're online and used without an Internet connection. There's a button that lets you restrict results to free locations.
The VPN client uses IPsec, a method that's harder to implement but is more secure that PPTP. By contrast, newer VPN-for-rent services have switched to SSL-based VPNs that tunnel all traffic but use encryption as strong as that found IPsec.
The software is free to use and the VPN client is enabled for a trial period. After that point, it costs $4.95 per month for $49.95 per year.