Software router i suppose

[Casper]

On a differnet note, I have got a 266MHz pentium 2 dell laptop with 64mb or ram,I tried win98se, win2kpro on it, and both were so slow booting and doing anything it was unfunny, so for a lugh i thought ill install xp, should be funny, u could have knocked me over with a feather it boots in no time, and is very responsive, i was flabbergasted, never expected it to be more responsive than win98 on such a low spec machine

The Windows XP boot time is a bit of an illusion since they moved the loading of a couple of things (such as services) to after the desktop has popped up. So you see the desktop quicker but it's rather unresponsive until everything's been loaded.

I also noted a speed increase, especially in games, when I installed XP on an old AMD K6 450Mhz instead of Windows Me, so they've definatly improved it.

[Casper]

JJ wrote:
I do a similar thing, just bridge the two connections, and the run winmx on the gateway machine and use realvnc to control it

I would recommend using the built-in Remote Desktop to control Windows XP unless you have an OS other than Windows (such as AmigaOS or Linux) that needs to control it since it's much faster that RealVNC. Just right-click on "My Computer", select properties, go to the Remote tab and check "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer". There are Remote Desktop clients for all Windows versions on the Windows XP CD. It's already installed in XP under Start Menu / All Programs / Accessories / Communications / Remote Desktop Connection.

If you're worried about security, just add a rule to the firewall to allow only local addresses to connect to port 3389.