> engine for the fast laptop is MyISAM and the slow one InnoDB.
That does not mean that the tables are using different engines -- it depends on how you transferred the data. SHOW CREATE TABLE.
key_buffer_size = 16M -- much too small for MyISAM. See
http://mysql.rjweb.org/doc.php/memory
> innodb_buffer_pool_size of 134217728
That's merely wasting RAM if you are only using MyISAM. It's too small for a 4GB machine if you are using InnoDB.
> When I run SHOW TABLE STATUS both show an Index_length of 1024.
Please provide the output.
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'innodb%';
In particular, innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit is probably set to a 'safe' 1 instead of a 'faster' 2. "1" causes a lot more I/O if you have small transactions.