networking advice

[phatman76]

I have a laptop and a desktop. I connect my desktop to the ethernet jack and get blazing fast speed, but my laptop's wireless is not fast enough to video chat with people, something i like to do. I was wondering if it is possible, if both systems are vista, to run an ethernet cable from my laptop to my desktop (which has two connection ports in back), and then have the second cable going from my desktop to the wall, letting one or both computers using the wired internet. I have tried a couple times, but its not really worth that much of my time to get working. I don't want to go through the hassle of using a switch, and to get one that wouldn't slow me down would be expensive (my college has obscenely quick networking speeds). This seems like a very basic networking feature that OS's should be able to handle automatically.