File transfer between 2 laptops

stefano

My wife has an old Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop, which is probably 5 yo, and has a Celeron processor. The laptop is extremely slow and can take 25 minutes to boot up. I would like to transfer all her files onto my notebook, and her files include loads of university assignment of medical nature, as well as research projects. What would be the best way to transfer the files? I was wondering if it was possible to connect the 2 laptops via a USB to USB cable and operate the old laptop through the new notebook.
Your expert help is greatly appreciated.

Woby_Tide

Connect them both to your router wirelessly or if possible by ethernet. Assuming teh workgroups is the same you should eb able to see each laptop within windows explorer and the probably just some tweaks to the sharing permissions to copy teh stuff

macman

What's the total file size involved? If it's mainly Word files, then even hundreds of pages occupies very little disk space. Just use a USB flash drive (they go up to 16GB now), or copy to DVD/CD.
But surely if these are critical files, she already has a back up made? Any 5 year old hard drive is on borrowed time and could fail at any moment.
You can't connect USB to USB in that way.

Kalahary

You also can't plug each end of a standard ethernet cable into both laptops. You need a cross over cable, or transfer files over network connecting both laptops to the router/switch/hub.

You could also try installing dropbox and transfer files over LAN sync, but USB drive would be best.

stefano

I guess Flash Drive it is