I've had home networks for some time now. I originally had
a wired network that had a hub about £30 and wire connection with PC cards overall cost about £100. Today I have a wireless network and I'm about to connect to ADSL. I am using a zoomair 4165 wireless router firewall hub. It was easy to set up, you can use a combination of wireless and it has a couple of wired network ports, a connection for a cable modem or isdn modem, a printer server (you connect your printer to it and all the computers connected to your network can use the printer - all that has to be on is the 4165 and the printer) and you can also use an ordinary dial upmodem via its serial port. I have a zoomair pcmcia card in my laptop to connect it to internet / network via the 4165 and a cable connecting my desktop to the 4165.
Wireless network is much tidier but if your computers are close to the adsl socket and you don't mind the cabling wired networks are dirt cheap by comparison. I've done networks with Linux, win 95, 98, nt4, win2000 and XP. XP won hands down for ease of use setting up.
You should be able to get a wireless router/adsl modem but if either of the computers is close to the adsl connection, a wired connection for that computer may save a bit of cash.
Hope this give some food for thought.
GB2