I need to move data as painlessly as possible from a thinkpad to an ibook.

February 23, 2004 2:57 PM

I have a new ibook, and an old thinkpad. I need to move data as painlessly as possible to the new machine...[more inside]

I can burn cds using a usb 1.0 burner, or I can try and get my buslink usb hd to show up in win2k (it is loaded, but won't show up in "my computer") but I also have wireless on both machines.

Is it possible to connect my thinkpad directly to the ibook, wireless to wireless, without using ftp?

Otherwise, I'll set up ftp on the ibook and just drag stuff over.

posted by mecran01 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Response by poster: I should add that I am taking both machines home, where there is no broadband, otherwise I would choose the ftp option. It would be great if there were some way to network them directly. Both have ethernet cards too, and usb ports of course.
posted by mecran01 at 3:06 PM on February 23, 2004

Response by poster: Sigh. What I should have asked above was,

"What's a cheap way to network an ibook/10.3 with a thinkpad/win2k to each other?"

I'm losing Ask.mefi karma here, I know...
posted by mecran01 at 3:09 PM on February 23, 2004

Using wireless, what you want is called an "ad hoc" network. If you go into Airport setup in OS X, it's called "Compter to Computer."
posted by Aaorn at 3:14 PM on February 23, 2004

Would a a crossover cable do the trick?
posted by treebjen at 3:47 PM on February 23, 2004

Apple has licensed this software "Move2Mac" which is probably what you want.
http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/move2mac/

It costs money but is the most painless process.
posted by gen at 3:56 PM on February 23, 2004

Response by poster: I ended up just burning 4 gigs of data at 4x. It wasn't too painful. The information about ad hoc networks might prove useful in the future, however. Thanks! I just wasn't man enough to mess around with Samba.
posted by mecran01 at 4:15 PM on February 24, 2004