Laptop Question/help.....

Is there a way to transfer files from my laptop to my desk P/C. If what is the best way, and what do I need? I have USB on both if that helps.

sure Donny...
Copy and paste, or drag from one to the other if hooked together. Of, if all else fails, copy from Lap to Floppy and save from Floppy to hard drive in pc.
Eddie

Dnj,

You can use a special USB cable that allows transfer between your two pcs.
Another way is to use a utility like LapLink and use either USB/Serial/Parallel to perform your transfer.

If you have ethernet cards on both machine, you can also use a cross-over rj45 cable to transfer. All you have to do is enable file sharing and connect to the ip address of one of your PC.

Simpler way ? Maybe an external zip drive or cdrw will help.
Hope this helps.
Claude

All of the above will work. But if you know the basic connection and won't mind opening the case of your pc, the cheapest one you can do is remove your laptop's hard drive and connect it to your desktop pc's secondary master controller where the CD ROM drive is connected. All you need to buy is a small IDE connector for your 2.5 laptop's HDD to fit on a ribbon cable. The cost is not more than $5. Disconnect the CDROM drive and connect the small hard drive. Don't do this if you are not confident of doing it. This is what I do to save some money for my next keyboard.

I have a small 20GB USB hard drive that serves as a "go between" drive and as a backup unit. It's about the size of a cigarette box, and just has a usb port in it. It's great to have a backup of all the important files on the job, and it's easy to swap files at home - just pull ONE cable out, and reconnect to the other pc.

Uncle Dave, do you have a mini usb hard drive about the size of a marker pen? Man, those are pretty expensive. Or you hve a cable connector just like the one below.

Model: UD-100
USB to IDE / ATAPI Adapter Cable

you can get a drive box for less than $100 if you have a spare hard disk yourself. I have an addonics that is usb2 capable, and a usb2 pcmcia interface card. With 20 Gig in the laptop, and 30 Gig in the drive box I am not going to run out of space or backup capability.

usb is a bit slow if transfering a few GigaBytes of wave files, so usb2 is a great improvement, limited more by the hard disk time than the interface.

I used to use laplink all the time, but find it terribly slow now, and the direct cable connection in windows can do just the simple job of tranferring files just as well.

ethernet is the best cable connection but relatively expensive and complicated to set up. cheapest has got to be a crossover parallel cable and direct cable connection?

Quickest way is with ethernet connector rj45. If you have an ethernet card in your PC and one in your laptop, a crossover cable works really great and its fast.

The easiest way is to buy a harddrive 2.5 or 3.5 and put it into a USB external box. I got a Datafab 2.5 enclosure for only $39.99 at www.mwave.com MDL-2USB. They used to have a 3.5 enclosure also for $49 I do not know if they still have it or not. I upgraded my laptop drive to a larger one and use the old one for backup and exchange between my laptop and PC. Depends on how often you exchange files. If you find your going to need to transfer files often to your pc, then maybe setting up an ethernet crossover cable is in order.

-Linda

Nope - Mine's just a small, blue plactic box. It's just a little bigger then the HD itself. It was $175 new, and fires right up as a new "letter" drive. Nice package, and has a little carry bag that fits the cable and the drive. Small enough to rest at the bottom of the case I carry the pc in !

f.y.i. the PenDrive is a flash memory USB interface "fat pen" shaped thing, available in various capacities from 4 meg to 128? 256? It got mentioned in UK PcPro magazine. Manufacturers website is http://www.pendrive.com/intro.php. Pity about the spelling!

Here's the best alternative; USB PC to PC Network Cable TCP/IP. No need to buy NIC.

Go to this site: http://www.usbgear.com/usa/item_166.html
They have one for $39.95



Part NO: usbg-300

Features :

USB PC TO PC Network Bridge Cable
This unique cable allows you to easily construct a network via USB port and share all the resources such as files, printers periperals equipment and more.
Overview
The USB PC to PC network Brige Cable provides a quick and wast solution to network up to 17 USB computers via hot Plug & Play technology without adding any Network Interface Cards.
It is suitable for small offices, home offices, mobile users, and network gamers. With the USB PC to PC Network Bridge Cable users can play multi-player games, share files,printers, peripherals equipment and more.
Support TCP/IP, NetBEUI, IPX/SPX protocols
Full NDIS Driver Implementation
No external power needed
Complaint with USB specification version 1.1
USB full speed connection
Support Windows 98
Hot PnP for easy use <

true, but you get what you pay for, ethernet is much faster. All depends how much data you need to transfer and how long you want to wait...

Ethernet is the way to go in my opinion, IF your laptop has an ethernet connection (most have them built in these days..)

estimated costs;
el ceapo pc card $ 20,--
utp cat5 shielded cross over cable $ 6,--

cheap and fastest solution.