I did get M$ Dial-Up Networking to work at one time so that I could access files on my home PC from work, but it was rather balky and over ordinary phone lines quite slow for anything but text files. If anyone has better experiences of DUN servers I'd be interested. Not sure how one could implement good DUN security without a lot of hoopla. I've never used PC-Anywhere or Laplink so I'm curious about others experiences.
"Personally I had loads of trouble getting DCC to work" - so did I (and not, I think, what you are looking for).
"..whoever invented the Briefcase should be locked in a padded cell" - agree, but the concept seems sound and perhaps I'm just too dense to work it out properly.
Networking two PCs when they are both in the same location is trivially easy, but not applicable if you "want to be able to link by modem between my work computer and laptop when at home or travelling."
I eventually "solved" the problem by Brute Force - installed a removable hard drive rack in both PCs and just carry the drive (a small spare 5GB one) in it's docking cradle back and forth to work in my camera-bag. All my working files and more fit in with room to spare. I synch by using Directory Toolkit [from
http://www.funduc.com ] which is a quick and extraordinary reliable and versatile tool for directory management. You can even make command-line macros to automate things for a one-click synch. Not expensive, efficient friendly personal product support, regular free updates - an invaluable tool for keeping file sets synchronised on my 3 PC home network and at work. Good for my backups which I can keep offsite - just sock in the disk-pack and off you go.
You could be a bit slicker by carrying a external Zip drive (parallel or USB - the USB one is neater) or (grand luxe) having a Zip drive at either end and just taking the disk(s). 250MB should be plenty unless (like me) you use a lot of hi-res images. The Jaz drives go up to 2GB. Iomega's tape streamers were awful (shame on you Iomega!) but the Zip/Jaz drives seem pretty reliable (don't have one, but several chums do). I'm sure you could use Directory Toolkit with these too. The PocketZip card drive sounds very sexy and even neater but only do 40MB of solid-state storage per card.