Thinkpads Forum

I want to use an old laptop (380ED or 770E) running Win98SE,
as keyboard, mouse and monitor for a desktop P4 running WinXP Pro.
I want to connect both directly using a crossover Ethernet cable
(no internet).
Is TightVNC the best option to do this? Will the control be slow or
sluggish, since the laptops have much slower processors?
Thanks for any insight.

I find VNC bothersome regardless of the cpu used, even on a direct gigabit connection. I'd try RDP (Microsoft Remote Desktop) if you can get it on 98, but I think it's XP only though.

I have used VNC on a 266mhz before without problems (same performance as a faster comp).

Here is the RDP client for win2000 and earlier: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/down ... entdl.mspx

Thanks for the excellent and helpful information.

Will enabling Remote Desktop on the XP computer,
make it more vulnerable, when I connect that computer to the internet?

Not too bad if you are behind a router but there is always some risk involved when enabling remote control of any kind.

I agree with the others; I'd go with Remote Desktop since it's already included with XP pro (XP Pro can act as a host).

I am doing almost the exact same thing using a 365x (P1 166mhz, 72MB of RAM, Windows 98 SE) connecting to a file server/web surfing machine running XP Pro (Athlon XP 2000+, ~600MB of RAM). However, I am connecting them using a router/switch instead of a direct crossover cable. In fact, I am posting from it right now.

Microsoft has the RDP Client available as a free download for Windows operating systems as far back as windows 95 (I believe carbon_unit already linked to it).

There is a little bit of choppiness when loading new pages and scrolling down, but its not too bad. I'm pretty sure the 365x I'm using only supports 16-bit PCMCIA (non-CardBus) cards, so I think my 10/100 NIC may be reverting to 10mbps instead of 100 since it can be used with 16-bit and 32-bit slots. I am running Firefox, so a lighter browser might help.