Background: I have a corner office cabinet in my house that houses my old computer and monitor and printer. I now have the sweet laptop for work, and when I come home I have to use it on the kitchen table because there is no space in the cabinet. Also, I have my PDA, printer, digital camera, etc connected to my old computer which ALSO happens to have about 60gigs of stuff on it (old company files, TONS of pictures, etc).
What I want: I’d like to remove the monitor (thus giving me space to set my laptop) and have 1 cable to connect both computers. This cable would allow me to see the 2 HDD’s of the old computer and use all the ‘stuff’ connected to it.
I’m semi-computer savvy (have even setup LAN’s using Linux and Exchange) but am looking for a simple solution. Whatyagotferme? Would a simple male-to-male USB cable do the trick? A crossed LAN cable?
Windows XP Pro on both computers with spare USB and LAN ports.
A crossover cable is the way to do it. XP will detect it when plugged in and (normally) set it up semi-automatically, or you can do it manually if you want. Set the various drives and the printer to be shared, install the printer driver on the laptop, and you should be sorted.
…also, with XP Pro, you can control the old computer’s desktop remotely, so you don’t need to plug the monitor back in to set up new things. (RealVNC is a free piece of software that’ll do the same for other systems.)
Why not a wireless network? It’s likely the most expensive solution, but once it is set up it becomes the easiest. No worrying about plugging stuff in or unplugging to leave, just start up the laptop and you’re on the network.