FTP or SAMBA

I have at present two laptop computers at home. One, the oldest, runs Windows XP and is used basically for office applications and Internet browsing. The other, that a year old, has also XP installed, as was out-of-the-box, and Kubuntu Feisty Fawn that runs the torrent client and I use for almost everything I must do. I'm at present evaluating the possibilities to join them through the WLAN in a network where to share files and resources. As they are laptops and have no printer I haven't thought about it till now. Anyhow, I guess that the possibility to exchange files between the two laptops and make backups of information to the 250GB external HD I also have could be a great point that would pay the effort. What I'm not yet absolutely sure is if I must set up and maintain a true network system, with shares, smb clients, user accounts... or just put an ftp server to the WXP laptop through which I can transfer simply files from one computer to the other. Another option would be to set a VNC server on each computer and connect to the other if I must do anything and transfer the information always from the windows computer acting as a client to the built-in Linux ftp server... I'll think a bit on it and see what I finally decide!