Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that with netcardconfig, but the two machines still couldn't ping each other.

I also tried the following (from faqnetwork on setting up static ip):

"ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.25 netmask 255.255.255.0 up"
"route" to check the routing table
"route add 192.168.0.25 eth0"
"route add -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 eth0"
"route add default gw 192.168.0.10 eth0"
"route add -host 127.0.0.1 lo"

and I ran sudo /etc/init.d/network restart after these, but the two machine still couldn't ping each other.

Other suggestions?