[dnanian]

OK... hopefully I'm interpreting your question properly.

Since you're not connecting directly to the PowerBook you should, indeed, use a sparse image as described. Ethernet will be a lot faster than wireless, especially for the first backup.

If you want to restore a single file or two, just mount the image and use drag-and-drop, as you would with any disk image.

If, on the other hand, you want to do a full restore, bring the USB drive to the PowerBook and follow the steps in the Guide with your Tiger DVD and Disk Utility.

Make sense?