Robert said:
If you are using two laptops one (Inspiron) with Windows XP Home edition
and the second (Latitude) with Windows Professional, both with USB ports and
both with Network adapters, can you transfer files from the Inspiron to the
Latitude through the USB ports or the network connections with a Cat 5
cable?
1) Through the network ports via file sharing. If the interfaces are
10/100BT Ethernet, try a crossover cable. Manually set up an
IP address on each side (because as described, there won't be
a DHCP server in the picture). You can make one PC 192.168.1.1
and the other 192.168.1.2 for example.
For the sharing part of it, you can try here.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814004
2) A USB EZ transfer cable, can be used to connect two computers
Careful -- some only run at USB 1.1 (12megabit/sec) rates, like this one.
There a USB bridge chips that do this at only USB 1.1 rates, or at
USB 2.0 rates. Each company provides their own software for these
kinds of designs.
http://www.coolgear.com/productdetails1.cfm?sku=EZ101&catid=112,585&cats=112
This one operates at USB 2.0 rates. Naturally, the actual
transfer rate is influenced by a number of things (like the software
used to drive the cable), so data will not go flying across this cable
at 60MB/sec.
http://www.coolgear.com/productdetails1.cfm?sku=USBG-VISTALink&catid=112,106,160&cats=
A user manual for that USB2 bridge cable. For some reason, this
product is emphasizing Vista and WinXP -- if you have computers with
some other OSes involved, you may want to look for a slightly older
product. Or look for different drivers for it. Prolific.com.tw PL-25A1 Chip.
I notice this manual doesn't even mention a network stack ? So
maybe this one only comes with the "FTP application" for transferring
files.
http://www.goodway.com.tw/en/prodimg/manual/an2230.pdf
This third one, I can find on another site as well.
http://www.coolgear.com/productdetails1.cfm?sku=CANET103&cats=106&catid=508
http://www.vpi.us/usb-link.html
Driver PClinq software. Using 7ZIP to extract this software,
the networking software is very complicated looking (many
install files).
http://www.vpi.us/download/usb2-link-v.zip
*******
The Ethernet option is less intrusive. The PCLinq/EZ Link/EZ Transfer
cable concept complexity, depends on which transfer method is being
used. The above driver will give you some idea what kind of
software is involved, and whether you want all that cruft installed
in your OS.
Paul
