I now have a desktop computer that I acess the internet through dialup.  I'm getting a laptop that has "Wifi" and would like to use the laptop throughout the house.  Is it possible to hook up a wireless router with a phone line to my desktop,  in order to send a wireless connection to my laptop?  Thanks, Jim

   The short answer is no, you cannot hook up a phone line to a wireless router.
   Theoretically, you could hook up your desktop computer to the wireless router and then access the desktop computer from your laptop and use the desktop to go online.  I say theoretically because I don't think Windows allows you to do that.  If you had software that allowed to run your desktop computer from your laptop, then I think that you could use the dialup on the desktop computer to access the internet through the wireless router but I would think that it would be awkward and very slow.

If you add a second NIC card to the main computer and enable Internet shareing, you can connect the router and make it work. You would need to leave the dialup connected at all times, or go to that machine and log on before trying to use the Internet on the laptop.