Laptop

I'm in a funny predicament.
For my 21st birthday I received a very nice desktop computer from my dad's side of the family. It works extremely well, and I enjoy using it, both when I have work to do and when I want to sit back and play.
However there's one thing I need to change about it.
It doesn't have wi-fi hardware.

Thankfully, the desktop is actually my cousin's husband's old computer, and being the technological legend he is, he had sent it down with a USB wi-fi aerial.
But sadly... My desktop is quite some distance from the router, so unfortunately Internet crawls at a snail's pace if I try using the USB aerial.

Before the desktop arrived, I had been surfing the Internet on a dusty Acer Extensa 5220 laptop due to my brand new laptop kicking the bucket from a corrupted hard disk/hard drive. Needless to say I wasn't as happy using the laptop that refused to run anything that was developed past 2005 after driving a race car of a laptop.
Through some act of God or latent technological prowess I was able to somehow able to share the internet from the laptop to the desktop using a simple Ethernet cable. I was at the very least, chuffed. I resumed my studies with renewed vigour thanks to my ability to have access to a good computer 24/7.

The course finished in mid December, and soon after I made my way up from shaky Christchurch to sunny Auckland to get a summer job so I could fund the student lifestyle when I started my studies in Snells Beach. For obvious reasons I just took the laptop. On Christmas Eve I got a job trial as a kitchen hand. I passed the gauntlet and soon started working afternoons 'til late. While battling my way through minimum wage an internship at a design firm descended from the heavens into my lap thanks to my parents. The only catch was that I would be getting 6 hours sleep a day for about 10 days due to when I was rostered at the kitchen.

Somewhere along the sleep deprived line something horrible happened to the laptop...

A hinge on the screen broke off.
Since then the laptop's acquired a sort of lean to it, as if it was created with some kind of deformity. Air pockets have since appeared beside the power button, wires are poking out where the hinge disconnected. The laptop started shutting off from overheating far too easily until I loosened the screws on the bottom. The screws fell out for some weird reason so I've resorted to using tape... A whole epic saga of wear and tear has happened to the laptop that it's almost impressive. If my old laptop was an iPhone then the Extensa 5220 is one of those indestructible Nokias.

The thing is that since I've started my course this year, I've heard at least seven different notes of concern about the laptop, ranging to "Woah" to "I think someone went into your room and broke your computer while you were out". Also during the course my laptop's IP has gone from static to dynamic so that I could use the internet in my room...

And now... Much to my dismay, the Internet connection will not connect from my laptop to my desktop.No matter how much I trawl through the Internet in hopes of discovering some way that Windows XP and Windows 7 can work together... It's useless. I've never been a victim of parents divorcing but I imagine this is what it feels like. Daddy Desktop isn't talking to mummy Laptop and I'm stuck in the middle wondering if it was because of something I did.

Ah well; sod it. I'm taking the desktop up to Auckland.