Preparing for my new laptop, help please

[Oxyminus]

so I bit the bullet and ordered a new laptop, that should be arriving in the next 1-2 days. and am getting ready to move my PC life over to it, and have a few questions if anyone would be so kind as to help me out.

1. I need to move some files (photos, documents, some but not all of my music, some videos etc) from my current PC to the laptop. is there anyway I can do this wirelessly? my current pc is the "host" pc on the wireless network in my apartment. if not, what would probably be the least painful method (as of now my backup is using my flash drive)

2. kind of a play off of the first question. since my router is currently hooked to my current computer, how do I keep my network running when that computer will shortly no longer be there?

3. basic pc-care. whats good software/habits to use nowadays to keep your pc oh so fresh and oh so clean from viruses, adware, and all that junk. I know this one is silly, especially since I know my way around a computer, but I've been running the same junky rig for the past 6+ years and stopped trying to take care of it after a while lol

thanks everyone =)

[Cephius]

1) Yes, once both PCs are on the network, find the IP of the new computer and browse to it's C drive by opening a run prompt and do "\\192.168.1.whatever\C$" without the quotes. You need to enable remote access before you can do this. Then just drag and drop whatever files you need and they'll transfer over the wireless network.

2) As long as you're using a router, your PC can be off and the router will still assign wireless IP addresses. You should be fine.

3) Use a firewall and anti-virus all the time, and keep a spyware scanner handy. Use firefox with no-script and/or ad-block to help enhance your security. As for which antivirus are best, there are a lot of threads on this. Symantec Corporate is probably the best, and AVG is good for a free client. There are links to free security software in the sticky in this forum, check em out.

[Norellicus]

1) Yes, once both PCs are on the network, find the IP of the new computer and browse to it's C drive by opening a run prompt and do "\\192.168.1.whatever\C$" without the quotes. You need to enable remote access before you can do this. Then just drag and drop whatever files you need and they'll transfer over the wireless network.

Using the administrative share is a hugely bad idea, because in order for it to be accessible to another machine in a workgroup, you'd have to give 'Everyone' modify rights to that share, which makes it wide open for hackers. Best bet is to make a shared folder (doesn't matter where) as a depository of sorts, give THAT folder Everyone access, and then move the files from the depository once copied.

[Cephius]

Using the administrative share is a hugely bad idea, because in order for it to be accessible to another machine in a workgroup, you'd have to give 'Everyone' modify rights to that share, which makes it wide open for hackers. Best bet is to make a shared folder (doesn't matter where) as a depository of sorts, give THAT folder Everyone access, and then move the files from the depository once copied.

It's not like he's going to leave this on, and assuming his internal network is reasonably secure, he's not going to get hacked like this. You could do a single share too yeah, but it's extra work and I don't think it matters since he's going to be doing this for a few hours tops.

[Norellicus]

Do you have a software firewall running on your system? Why? Your router should be good enough, right?

(I did miss the fact that it was a one-time deal though, so you're right it probably wouldn't be a big issue. It's still bad practice.)

[Oxyminus]

got everything up and running pretty smoothly. thanks for the help everyone