BY JULIO OJEDA-ZAPATA -Pioneer Press - Sept 5th, 2005

Whether you're in a hotel room, a boardroom or your own bedroom, portable wireless routers are a great way to turn any broadband connection into the wireless kind.

One of these is Belkin's soon-to-be-released Wireless G Travel Router. The $80 gizmo (www.belkin.com) works very well for creating password-protected 802.11g-based Wireless Fidelity networks anywhere wired broadband exists. Its small size — about the length and width of a playing card, if thicker — means it goes anywhere.

But we ran into trouble when testing the device's other wireless features.

It can be hooked up to a computer without Wi-Fi capabilities, for instance, so that machine is able to join an existing wireless network. But Belkin's set-up software didn't finish the job on our test Windows PC, so we had to tweak obscure computer and router settings with a techie's assistance.