Need Some Help Setting Up Remote Connection

Hey everyone!

I will be going back to college in a month and a half and would like to set up some sort of remote connection between my desktop computer at home and my laptop at school. I mainly need file access. I would like to do this in a cheap (read: free) manner. Both computers will be on broadband internet. I tried using FolderShare (free service that Microsoft just bought), but for larger files, it was painstakingly slow (like 7-10kB/s). Is there some way I could set up a direct connection over the internet? I've never done anything like this before and would like some advice as to where to start to get a decently fast connection. I'm sure at least a few of you fellow MGers have had more experience than I with this, so any helpful links or bits of advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
-corndog