What's the cheapest way to get internet access to a 2nd computer? (laptop)

[Red]

My mom is taking her compaq laptop on vacation this summer. The laptop has wireless and an ethernet socket.

She is visting her parents in Florida.... they have an older computer hooked up to a cable connection. No hub or anything, I think the cable modem has a single cat5 cable that runs into the computer's NIC.

What is going to be the cheapest way to get internet access to laptop? I was thinking something along the lines of purchasing a separate NIC ($10) and running a cat5 cable (couple bucks?) to the laptop.

The computer down there has win98. Would the extra NIC + cable work with her xp laptop? What are other cheap options? Thank you!

 

[johnjkr1]

It would be far cheaper and easier to just buy a internet router. $10. Plug the cable modem into the uplink, plug the two computers into the other ports. That is much easier than opening up an old computer and fighting the "internet sharing" portion of an old OS, if you grandparents computer even supports that. (You can not just have two nics and then "share" the internet. You must have software to share it, either ICS as part of windows, or some other software)

 

[BlackMountainCow]

I guess the cheapest way would be to hook the laptop to the PC via one of these special USB cables that work like network cables. They are around 15$ here in Germany.

 

[gsellis]

The internet router is not only cheaper now, but cheaper later. Setup the firewall settings, and it saves those long distance phone calls about removing this or that worm...

 

[Metron]

One Cent Solution

Plenty more if you check...

Metron