Joinung two machines by an ethernet cable

[Palustris]

Simple words please. I am not that computer literate!
I have a new machine running W7 and an older one running Vista. I wish to join the two together for a short time to transfer fils from the old to the new. Told I could do this by joining them together with an Ethernet cable. Done this, and so what now?
And yes I know I could simple down load the stuff from the old machine on to a Flash drive, but I have only one monitor and swapping from one to another is a bit of a bind, especially when you are confined to a chair.

[ChuckFickens]

You can't just join two computers together with a straight through Ethernet lead.

Ethernet leads are designed to connect a computer to a hub/switch/router. to connect two computers together directly you need a crossover Ethernet lead.

if you have a broadband router the easiest way is to connect both computers to the router, then they can be made to talk to each other.

Are you able to do this?

[Palustris]

We have only got Dialup (cannot have Broadband by any means). How do I know if the Cable is a crossover type.?

[Vagrant]

Examine the ends of the cable - you can see coloured core wires inside the clear plastic headshell - there are 8 cores, 4 solid colours, Green, Orange, Blue and Brown, and 4 where these colours are striped with white.
On a straight cable, the same colours will be in the same positions at both ends.
On a crossover, positions (counting from left) 1 2 3 and 6 (looking at the plug with the cable pointing downwards and the brown core in position 8 to the right) will be different.
The colours are difficult to see, but the easiest one to see is probably solid orange - on a crossover, it's 2 at one end, 6 at the other.
If you don't have a crossover, you can buy a converter for just over 1 pound: http://www.play.com/P...516256|cat:Networking

[ChuckFickens]

I''ve just read the question properly.

if it's only for a short time, then to connect and setup both computers to network together is going to need far more switching about of your one monitor then using a memory stick.

use the memory stick as it's a one off.