My brother-in-law has an HP laptop and a Dell desktop. He has Wi-Fi on the laptop and is running an Ethernet cable from the desktop to the Wi-Fi router to get internet service.

He wants to pull scanned documents off of the desktop computer by using the laptop. I assume there's no way to put what's on both computers on one screen so he can drag and drop files between them.

Is there an additional software package that would do what he wants, or is he better off just using a flash drive to pull files from one computer and put them onto the other one?

Dropbox might work pretty well for this. Put the same account on both computers and then drag the files to a shared folder on the desktop and they will sync to the laptop.

Flash drive sounds the easiest.

He can email it to himself from the desktop and open it on the laptop. But that takes up bandwidth.

Same as saving it to Google drive or another cloud service.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Flash drive sounds the easiest.

I"m with Rey on this. I've done this in the past -- copy everything to the flash drive (external hard drive, even), then copy it from there to the laptop, sorting as necessary.

Doing so eliminates the files ever leaving your house -- I'm cloud-reluctant.

I'm going to suggest that he spend $70 and buy a 1TB portable USB hard drive.

Copy files from computer A onto the drive.

Copy files from the drive onto computer B. Easy peasy.

THEN, leave a copy on the drive as a backup. I'm certain that he doesn't have any sort of backup scheme, given the basic underlying question.

Further, he should create an ongoing backup scheme using the newly purchased drive to capture new files as he created them.

Easiest way is definitely a USB drive - copy files onto drive then from drive to new system

Other option is cloud service like drop box or even Microsoft - I do a family plan for office 99 per year for up to 5 members in your family and you get 1 TB of drive space using One Drive per member. Buy, setup one drive, copy files to one drive then on other computer setup one drive and it will sync folder(s) and file(s) chosen across both devices. My wife and I both use - including Office to update our budgets online etc

Last option is connect using file explorer but its a bit much for the less technical crowd, if both systems are on same network and as an example the files are on the C drive of a computer named MYPUTER then you would open file explorer and browse to \\MYPUTER\C$

the $ tied to the drive letter is the hidden administrative share - when it prompts for the username and password you will use the username and password(if there is one) of the destination/source system you are connecting to

ETA
- we use one drive setup on all our systems, for me I have three I use for home - and one drive is setup on all three and all three have the files locally stored under teh one drive folder structure I setup and they are synced in the cloud One Drive - pretty much a backup if a local laptop/desktop dies. I can access those files from any system with internet access

I do the same at work for all users, all locations using One Drive - although I use backup software to backup the local and the cloud versions

One more idea: try using your smart phone as a USB drive. Scan the documents, connect phone to computer with USB / charging cable, copy over folder, disconnect phone, connect phone to other computer and copy folder to destination.

Are you saying he wants to scan documents using a scanner on the desktop while sitting at the laptop? That would require some sort of Remote Desktop application.

If you’re talking about just transferring files from the desktop to the laptop and they’re both on the same network, then share the file folder on the desktop, mount it on the laptop, then do a drag and drop from the shared folder (desktop) to a local folder (laptop). No cost and it will run at whatever speed your network can produce.

quote:

I assume there's no way to put what's on both computers on one screen so he can drag and drop files between them.

Of course you can.
Assuming both computers are on the same LAN then as mentioned above just create a network connection via share and then drag and drop from the file explorer.
A lot of people have a problem with network connections and shares but it's not really difficult.
Not going to document it here but plenty of tutorials on the Internet.

PS in the olden days the Flash Drive thing (back then it was a floppy) we called "Sneaker-Net".
I'll let you figure out why.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
I'm going to suggest that he spend $70 and buy a 1TB portable USB hard drive.

Copy files from computer A onto the drive.

Copy files from the drive onto computer B. Easy peasy.

THEN, leave a copy on the drive as a backup. I'm certain that he doesn't have any sort of backup scheme, given the basic underlying question.

Further, he should create an ongoing backup scheme using the newly purchased drive to capture new files as he created them.

THIS!

I'd sure try USB TO USB.
like I do my phone and it shows up like an external.

Direct network connect between the 2 machines. Then it is drag and drop.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

quote:

I assume there's no way to put what's on both computers on one screen so he can drag and drop files between them.

Of course you can.
Assuming both computers are on the same LAN then as mentioned above just create a network connection via share and then drag and drop from the file explorer.
A lot of people have a problem with network connections and shares but it's not really difficult.
Not going to document it here but plenty of tutorials on the Internet.

PS in the olden days the Flash Drive thing (back then it was a floppy) we called "Sneaker-Net".
I'll let you figure out why.

^This. Once setup, this is a simple drag and drop affair.

Smschulz has the answer. A simple network share. If that’s too difficult, then your brother really should be buying Macs.

If you’re going to bother with an external USB drive, then at least get something like a Synology DS120j so you can have a (very basic) NAS. Then you can use Synology Drive and have a Dropbox like service, a backup drive, and a way to share files without having to unplug anything to effect a share.

Note: I don’t know the budget, but I’d recommend at least a four bay NAS if you can afford it. A Synology DS920+, or similar, is just the ticket for a home server.