My powers fail me

Probably the most frustrating thing I have done in many years is trying to network my main computer with my 'new' laptop. After getting the network to work, I set forth trying to get them to share the internet. And, yes it is possible, even working under one IP Addy and no additional hardware. But I think that it is past my stills of just playing around, and unless I really sit down and work on it, it will not get done with out a router (which should take about five minutes to get working). It is just that every time I do something, everything else blows up where I lose my LAN connection, or the internet to my main computer, so alas, I have decided that unless a router appears magically, the lappy will not have the internet while I am at home. Oh well.