Chapter 5: Getting the Most from HomeGroups

In This Chapter

arrow.png Setting up the prerequisites for HomeGroups

arrow.png Joining, sharing, and navigating a HomeGroup

arrow.png Making changes to your HomeGroup

arrow.png Sharing with Windows XP and Vista and with a Mac

If you’ve ever used a house key, you know how to use HomeGroups. Okay, that’s Microsoft’s analogy, and the process isn’t quite that easy, but it’s close.

The HomeGroup bundles a bunch of settings in quite a handy — I’m tempted to use the word brilliant — way. When your PC joins a HomeGroup, Windows strips away a lot of the hassle and mind-numbing details generally associated with sharing folders and printers and replaces the mumbo jumbo with a cookie-cutter method of sharing that works quite well, in almost all home and many small-business networks.

All the computers in a HomeGroup share their Pictures, Music, and Videos Libraries, and with an extra click, you can share your Documents Library as well. (See Book VII, Chapter 3 for a discussion of Libraries and instructions on how to make them visible.) The computers also share printers and some other peripherals. ...

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