I have a laptop and desktop (both with ethernet ports) running suse 9.3, and I want to exchange files between them (preferably without networking), is there any application that works well for file transfer. Thanks.

Use a crossover cable connected between both machines.
Navigate to the other machines share and transfer files. You can use Konqueror if you use KDE. smb://machinename or fish://machinename. Or you can mount the shares manually or use smb4k or Lin neighborhood or nautilus will show shares. I think that you could FTP also. I never used SuSE but just connect them and navigate to the share. That would be the fastest transfer rate. You will have to have file sharing enabled on both machines. You can write to the users home dir without being root. You could also connect a lap link cable between each machines parallel port. That will be rather slow though.

whatever you choose u need to network ur machines dude unless u have different internet connection for both machine but that is still a type of network. You need to give ur machines an ip address