I've recently built a PVR based out of a small 2.4 GHz Celeron computer running Win XP.

My main purpose for building this thing was to watch the recorded content on my laptop while on planes. I started out burning said content onto DVD but have since found that to be overly bulky when traveling and would like to switch to transferring the files directly to my laptop's HD before departing.

The PVR records at a high quality (about 1.5 GB per hour) and as such creates huge files. As you can imagine, transferring the files over WiFi would be time-consuming, but at the moment, that is the only way I could do it. I do not have a router with wired ports to connect that way (I have an Airport Express).

Both computers have FireWire and USB 2 port but I am at a loss as how to get the computers to recognize one another using these connections. There is a software solution I am looking at called FireNet ( www.unibrain.com ) but would rather not spend the $20 if I didn't have to. I would hope if XP has FireWire and USB support, as well as networking support, that FireWire networking could be coaxed out of it.

Any tips?