connected laptop to PC

Is there anyway to easily plug my laptop into a pc? Using a Ethernet cable?

What kind of software do i need?

If both PCs have an ethernet port then all you need is a crossover cable (rather than an ordinary network cable).

CLICK (they have several different lengths).

Then what do i do? I have a crossover cable :)

Plug it in!

Give each PC an IP address - 192.168.0.1 and 192.168.0.2 should do it (Right-click the network and choose 'TCP/IP', then 'Specify an IP address'). Make sure both PCs are set to the same workgroup (defaults to MSHOME in XP, WORKGROUP in Vista), reboot, and that should do it.

So i can use the neightbourhood network shared folder thingy to transfer files?

yep, provided you have file/printer sharing enabled.

Cool, thanks dave!

Would something like this work cross platform, say Ubuntu and Windows 98?

Yes, to a point:

You'd essentially have a network with two computers on it, and can do anything network related supported by the computers in question.

Two catches:

- under Ubuntu you'd need to be able to do SMB (Samba) network mounts in order to be able to connect to a share on a windows PC, which may need additional components to be installed / configured
- Under Windows 98, you can only connect to a network resource with the login credentials of the user that is currently logged on -- you can't specify an alternate username. Not really a problem, but you will need to make sure that that specific user/pass has access to the share on the host. (Under Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista you can authenticate with any credentials, but not under Windows 9x)

In some cases you also need to be in the same workgroup as well, I noticed this under XP and Vista.

Being in the same workgroup helps, but isn't necessary. Most times it just takes an age to recognise there is a share available.