It's not supposed to be like this any more. Wireless by now is supposed to be easy and ubiquitous. The days of torturous installs and configurations should be well behind us.

At least that's what I thought. And it certainly is the seductive promise held out by Linksys, the Cisco subsidiary and leading wireless hardware vendor.

The problem started when my older Linksys Wireless-B router -- the one in my home office -- went out during a spring storm, and after several failed attempts to get it working again, I decided to upgrade and get the Linksys Wireless-G router. It has better range, it's more modern and, best of all, it has "push button wireless setup."

Plus I know this attractive feature works because I have an identical "push button" Linksys router in my house (my office is located in a separate building on my property, hence the need for two routers). And that router always has been easy to reconfigure after something (usually weather-related) knocked it off-line.

So the new one should be just as simple, right? One would think so. However, not only did the new router fail to set up at the push of a button, its presence on my property somehow seems to have taken down my other wireless router, the one that was operating. Now the push-button procedure doesn't work on that router either, and all of this is driving me crazy.

In the meantime I can connect right through my DSL modems. I'll figure out the problem too (I suspect it might have something to do with my DSL account password, which I inadvertently may have changed), even if it means the dreaded call to Linksys customer support. Then I'll be up and running with both routers. You'll see.

But really, I just want to push a button.