Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition

Networking with Windows

As a switcher (or adder), this topic might be especially interesting to you. It’s true: Macs and Windows PCs can 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 a Windows PC, 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. As long as nobody has turned off the Guest-access feature, 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 14-12, 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.)

   In Windows 7, there’s a Public folder in each library. That is, there’s a Public Documents, Public Pictures, Public Music, and so on.

   The second, more complicated method is the “share any folder” ...