The files can be transferred over a network.
There can be a problem with synchronisation.
Depending what you are doing you could use something called "Version Control"[1]. This helps merge independent changes and protects against accidentally overwriting your new copy with an older copy.
If you have a reasonably stable machine that will be on most of the time then you could run CVS or SVN on it as a server and log in remotely to fetch the files. Then you can disconnect, make your changes and then when your ready to resynchronise then reconnect.
You could also try distributed version control such as Bazaar
These version control programs are designed for Computer Source Code but can work with anything, however they work best on text, or text based files. Be careful with things like MS Office (which are binary formats) in CVS, it can have issues if not done properly.
Some Version Control systems
CVS[2]
SVN[3]
Bazaar[4]
Others[5]
Alternitvly you could run an FTP Server[6] or HTTP Server[7] on your computer and copy the files onto your laptop over the network. You would need to add some kind of security to prevent other seeing the files though.
Or you could use SSH[8] (which can provide high security) with SCP[9] over it.
You can use Windows File Sharing but it's likely anyone on the network could see your work and the laptop may not be able to write the files back.
Network file shares are also possible.