On Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:33:41 -0400, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:

A fellow I know, but never met. He's got two computers.
Desktop running XP, and laptop running Vista. He wants to
copy a couple gb of files, from one to the other.

So far, he's been copying some with a flash drive, and dump
them onto the other computer. It's taking a long time.

Suppose he takes a USB cable, from one computer to the
other. Would each computer show up as another drive, to the
other? Use windows explorer to click and drag and drop? Send
the data through the USB cable.

And what if one of the computers was turned off? Would the
USB cable provide enough power to spin the other drive, and
allow the data transfer?


A hub will do the job. It can be Ethernet or USB. Both machines need
to set up a shared folder and Vista has some security options you may
need to change for it to be visible on the local LAN. If there only a
couple files, a flash drive is the way to go. There may be a
crossover cable that can be used for two computers, instead of a hub.
A USB cable can supply a few watts of power, not enough to power a
typical PC.