Lisa.... fantastic to hear from you! Yes, they are both in the same subnet, 192.168.0.X
Yes. The laptop is wireless while the desktop is connected to the internet via a cable.
As for allowing passthrough I can't say. I think so because it was working before my HD crashed on the desktop. Also.... rsync will run between the two computers. The problem is that I can't access the computer through Caja (formerly known as nautilus).
Hmmmmm.... now when I try to rsync it gives me a 'connection refused' when I try to rsync from the desktop to the laptop. This must be because I installed a new OS on the laptop. What do I have to open to get ssh to work?