Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

Networking with Windows

Microsoft Windows may dominate the corporate market, but there are Macs in the offices of America. Mac OS X represents a historic moment in Mac-Windows relations: It lets Macs and Windows PCs see each other on the network, with no special software (or talent) required.

In fact, you can go in either direction. Your Mac can see shared folders on the Windows PCs, and a Windows PC can see shared folders on your Mac.

It goes like this:

Seated at the Mac, Seeing the PC

Suppose you have a Windows PC and a Mac on the same wired or wireless network. Here's how you get the Mac and PC chatting:

1. On your Windows PC, share some files.

   This isn't really a book about Windows networking (thank heaven), but here are the basics.

   Just as on the Mac, there are two ways to share files in Windows. One of them is super-simple: You just copy the files you want to share into a central, fully accessible folder. No passwords, accounts, or other steps are required.

   In Windows XP, that special folder is the Shared Documents folder, which you can find by choosing Start→My Computer. Share it on the network as shown in Figure 13-13, top.

   In Windows Vista, it's the Public folder, which appears in the Navigation pane of every Explorer window. (In Vista, there's one Public folder for the whole computer, not one per account holder.)

   The second, more complicated method is the "share any folder" method, just as in Leopard. Ingeneral, you right-click the folder you want to share, choose Properties from the ...