[andrewas]

IF, and its a big if, you have a serial crossover cable, you can run a 'network' of sorts through the COM ports. But I've never actualy been able to make it work. It will be very slow, not all that much faster than dialup modem.

If you have a PCMCIA ethernet adapter, it should be able to plug into pretty much any laptop. Any RJ45 (big phone jack) connections on the laptop are probably for an internal network card, you should be able to run a standard network through that. winXP should pick it up easily, winME might barf on it, but youshould be able to coax it into working.

Or you could get a USBN ethernet adapter that you can also run a standard network across.