An external Hard drive is not a lengthy process- you just copy your data to the external drive, disconnect it, attach it to the other PC, and copy it to the new one.
there is no such thing as a "transfer cable"- a crossover cable is just a CAT-5e cable. (CAT-5 cables had to be made different to be used as crossover cables, but Cat-5e and cat-6 cables work fine without being "special"). what you would do is simply plug each end of the cable into each laptop, and each PC will be able to share files via the standard networking capabilities.
Either go with an external drive or burn your files to CD/DVD, or use a Flash drive.