Network SO SLOW!

[MrNewbie]

I have a laptop connected to a desktop computer with a crossover cable but transferring stuff between them is so slow! Like if I connect to one from the other with ftp and try to send a file to it it will barely transfer at 25kb/s, ssh takes ages to connect, as does ftp and telnet, (I type ssh 192.168.0.2 and it takes maybe a minute before I get a response), yet ip masquerading works fine.
Is there anything I can do to find out what's causing the speed problem and possibly speed it up?
Also nmap takes forever to scan a non-local ip which I guess is caused by the same thing.

[Sweede]

ping your other computer, if you see lots and lots of packet loss (response timed out), then you have a problem. your cross over cable is probably not a cross over cable or there are major problems with it.

your network cards could be b0rk3d also.