If you subscribe to Internet data services from your cellular carrier and want to make use of that connection on a notebook PC, you have a number of possible options. These include buying a cellular modem, springing for a new notebook that's got one built-in, or, if it supports tethering, using your phone as a modem.

If none of these approaches are feasible or desirable and you've got a Windows Mobile-based, Wi-Fi-equipped smartphone, Morose Media's WMWiFiRouter can give you yet another option. This $29.99 utility makes your cellular data connection available via Wi-Fi, essentially turning your phone into a wireless hotspot.

Compatibility & Setup
Broadly speaking, WMWiFiRouter should work on any Windows Mobile 6 or 5 (the latter with AKU 3.3 or higher) device that has Internet Sharing enabled (you should find it in the Accessories folder). On the other hand, given how carriers tend to tweak their hardware, compatibility can't quite be guaranteed.

A fairly extensive list of compatible devices is provided at support.wmwifirouter.com/devices/, though it's important to note that no device is "officially" supported—the list was gleaned from user feedback, not developer testing.

We put WMWiFiRouter through its paces on a T-Mobile Dash running Windows Mobile 6; a device on the compatibility list, albeit with the caveat "Works for some users, but not for others (60%-40%)."

We didn't have any difficulty getting WMWiFiRouter installed on the Dash (you can do it via .EXE or .CAB). During the install process, we did receive a warning message saying that the software might not display correctly since it was written for an earlier version of Windows Mobile, but we didn't experience any subsequent display problems.

When you run WMWiFiRouter for the first time, a setup wizard walks you through the detection and configuration of the phone's cellular data and Wi-Fi connections. This is not an entirely automatic process and the settings to chose won't necessarily be obvious to the non-technical, but WMWiFiRouter's online documentation is helpful in this regard. (WMWIFiRouter supports encrypted Wi-Fi, but only via the antiquated WEP.)

Making Connections
Once connection settings have been configured, you can specify which of the five available connection methods you want WMWiFiRouter to use. When we selected the cellular to Wi-Fi connection type, WMWiFi router automatically launched and linked the Dash's two connections, a process that took about 30-40 seconds.

Once complete, we were able to locate and successfully connect to the Dash's ad-hoc Wi-Fi network using a Vista notebook (both with and without WEP encryption turned on). An extra 30 seconds or so later, the PC was obtained a DHCP-assigned IP address from the phone and we could access the Internet.

In our testing, web browsing performance via WMWiFiRouter ranged from OK to excruciatingly slow, which we attribute to the Dash's lackadaisical EDGE data connection. A connection speed test at www.speedtest.net reported as high 221Kb/sec down and 49Kb/sec up, but we also experienced periods when browser page requests were met with chronic 504 "gateway timeout" errors even though all wireless connections were up and running. (The 504 errors suggest WMWiFiRouter was waiting for responses from the EDGE network.) Bottom line-- while WMWiFiRouter may be usable with WMWiFiRouter in some cases, for best results you'll probably want to use a 3G connection.

In addition to the cellular to Wi-Fi connection method, WMWiFiRouter supports several other connection types like cellular to Bluetooth and cellular to USB. We successfully used both of these connection types on the Dash, though the cellular to Bluetooth mode works only if your phone supports the PAN (Personal Area Networking) Bluetooth profile.

You must also manually pair your phone and PC prior to using this connection. WMWiFiRouter's Internet connection performance was the same irrespective of which connection method we used.