hard drive to laptop connection

Well assuming that you're not a networking expert, I would check out Nortons PC anywhere software. They have newer vs's out for the newer windows OS's

Plus even back in the day when it first came out it was simple to understand, and considering the trend of norton, its probably even easier/better.

Here's a link, check it out.
http://www.symantec.com/pcanywhere/Consumer/

Hope it helps,
Nick

I'm after more of a hardware solution.  I have a hard drive, with no desktop.  ie I brought the hard drive over from another country, thinking I'd be able to plug it in inside my new work computer, but it turns out my work computer is a laptop, and I can't / don't know how to open up a laptop to add another hardrive.  Surely there must be some standard method of attaching a desktop hard drive to a laptop, without the desktop available?

A number of years ago, you could get "docking stations" for your laptop, that would be able to house external hard drives, extra cards etc. That doesn't seem common practice anymore. If your HD is SCSI, you may be lucky to find a usable PCMCIA SCSI adapter, otherwise I think you may be in for some experimenting. Laptops generally don't come prepared to accept an external IDE device. The cheapest way may actually to get a used desktop and put the HD inside that one, then connect the two computers.

Regards
/RID

There are cables available that will adapt a full size ide cable to one that will fit your laptop but I'm not sure whether your boss would appreciate you dismantling your laptop to fit it.

The only other alternative is an external hard drive (parallel or USB1/USB2) solution which is pricey and relatively slow - about £250+ (UK) last time I looked into it.

There are many options.
A simple one is to borrow a desktop, setup a network and copy the files to the laptop.
External drive boxes cost as much as a cheap desktop.
You can get  one for usb, parallel or cardbus connection. Each will need an external power supply.
Even if you open the laptop, it will not supply enough power to run a desktop size drive.

There's also a PC card attachment that you can link an external harddrive to your laptop with.

that's different than "ATAPI models (which require an atapi PC-Card but usually no special drivers)"?

Thanks for all your help everyone.  I'll try the external enclosure via USB/USB2.