I-Tunes Home Sharing, what am I doing wrong?

Factual Questions
1

Or alternately: is there a better way to do this without an I-Pod, of which mine is currently dead, having gone through an entire permanent press cycle in the pocket of my jeans.

But I digress.

I have a new spiffy laptop from work, which also functions as my personal device. I have about 14 Gigs of music that I want to transfer. Apples’s Home Sharing looks like just the ticket. But, I have both on here, I’m signed into the same account on both, all the Preferences are set right, yet both tell me there’s no other users connected.

I COULD, if I felt like wasting a lot of time, do what they also suggest, which is to burn 18 kajillion CD’s and transfer. Or, can I use a thumb drive with more capacity to do it in fewer steps.

Or should I just go buy the Nano I’ve been coveting and use that?

2

Are both computers in the same Workgroup on your home network.

Is file sharing turned on?

3

Oh. No they’re not - at home, or at work (where I am trying this from now)

Re-reading their instructions, this seems to be a key point.