Okay, I know it sounds really, really stupid and I'm almost sure it won't work as I've never even heard of anything like this, but as I am a hopeful fellow I'm going to go ahead and ask anyway, mostly as confirmation that I'm stupid and don't know what I'm talking about.

I have a laptop that is pretty much a godsend as that I've always wanted a laptop. The thing is, I want to play The Sims 2 on it and it's so slightly under the recommended specs (amazing for a P3 computer, 'specially laptop), that it will play but it refuses to play any higher than 800x600 on lowest settings.

I have an older desktop computer upstairs that barely meets the minimum specs, but has a better video card because the old one died and it was upgraded. This video card would be all this laptop needs to push TS2 into playing well (there's a utility that comes with the game that tells what on your PC needs to be upgraded for max potential, and the vidcard on this laptop is all that was highlighted).

So, my very, very IMO stupid question, which I am sure you've guessed by now is...

Can I somehow connect these computers so that the laptop can mooch off the desktop and use its resources to make it run faster?

Na!

It's not really a stupid question, as there are similar technologies around. This is generally called "Load Management". CITRIX is a prime example, where multiple users can share the resources of a single server, and they can also be manged and the resources shared evenly between multiple servers.

For what your looking for, using the full resources of your laptop except your graphics, it's not possible... or at least yet. Take in perspective that the game has to load and use the graphics drivers that have been setup on your PC, and use them locally. The game would need to be designed to send that data to another PC. I cant imagine EA for example spending the extra time to develop such a feature, where there is no real demand for it.

Yeah, I knew about Citrix, because I use it for school, but I didn't usually think of it like -that-. I pretty much figured that this was not possible, but I needed confirmation that I wasn't missing out, since I'm not a hardware guru or anything. xD

But the things you said did make a lot of sense. I guess I have to deal with it for now, since upgrading the RAM on this computer alone costs more than it's worth (which I think is silly, because I'd only need 2 512mb sticks, which cost about $150 when my build has 2 1gb sticks for $90), and if there's an upgrade possible for the video card, it wouldn't be worth the money. xDD

Well, thanks. I'll mark this as resolved myself. *powah*