Help with basic networking

[resonance]

I really have no idea about this although I'm sure this is one of the most newbie questions available.

I just bought a notebook and want to hook it up to my desktop pc for file transfers. My extremely rudimentary networking knowledge tells me to buy a PCI ethernet card for the desktop and a PCMCIA ethernet card for the laptop and hook them up. But I want a little advice from the Ars'ers who I think really know these stuff.

Is this what I'm supposed to do? Are there any things that I need to watch out for while buying the cards? What brands are reliable? Thank you for any answers.

Dumbfounded,

rez

 

[resonance]

Thank you very much, that does clear up a lot of things. I don't have USB port on the desktop, it's a rather old model. Thanks a lot for the brand suggestions.

rez

 

[resonance]

Thank you very much for the info.