best way to network a mac on a network with many winXPs

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CMM. - 21 Dec 2004 20:57 GMT

my little sister made the switch to Mac recently and wants to transfer her
old docs from her ThinkPad to her new Powerbook. Her boyfriend said she
should use my iPod mini. i'd like to get her powerbook to be able to browse
our PCs on our home network.

we don't have a server or a domain controller or anything, so its just a
question of getting the Mac to recognize the other PCs on the workgroup, and
connect to them.

i have read a few support docs on the apple website about this and it sounds
like a simple process except i am not sure how to change the "NAME" of the
powerbook. i am not comfortable enough to just go around OS X and modify
random settings (which is how i taught myself DOS and windows over the past
18 years) but when looking at the DHCP client list on my router the PCs had
their names listed next to the LAN IP addresses, but the powerbook was
blank!)

when playing around with a the powerbook connectivity settings i see a
"windows file sharing" option but this sounds like what do u do when u want
windows PCs to browse the powerbook's files. i am trying to do the opposite
(primarily)

when first setting up an XP machine, one of the 1st questions one gets when
doing the initial configuration for the LAN settings is: "give your computer
a name" -- Dell, Gateway, and Sony (who are the 3 manufacturers i am most
familiar with give their systems a weird looking 8 character name that i
always change to something more personal -- but my sisters powerbook says
firstname-lastname-powerbook...

is this the "friendly name" or the actual name of her Powerbook?

what if I wanted to connect her powerbook to my PC which is called (for
arguments sake) CMM and is on workgroup "WORKGROUP" what is the command that
i need to enter in order to look up this PC. incase it matters, she is using
OS X "Panther"

thanks in advance for taking the time to reply.

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Mike Rosenberg - 21 Dec 2004 22:18 GMT

> when playing around with a the powerbook connectivity settings i see a
> "windows file sharing" option but this sounds like what do u do when u
> want windows PCs to browse the powerbook's files. i am trying to do the
> opposite (primarily)

That's correct, and the name of the Mac only matters if you ever choose
to go in this direction.

> when first setting up an XP machine, one of the 1st questions one gets
> when doing the initial configuration for the LAN settings is: "give your
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> is this the "friendly name" or the actual name of her Powerbook?

That's the actual name, and of course you can change it, but again, this
only matters if you ever want to get to the Mac from a PC.

> what if I wanted to connect her powerbook to my PC which is called (for
> arguments sake) CMM and is on workgroup "WORKGROUP" what is the command
> that i need to enter in order to look up this PC. incase it matters, she
> is using OS X "Panther"

Once you've found "WORKGROUP" (presumably using Network from the Go
menu, although there are other ways), double click on the icon and you
should then see a list of computers. Double click on yours and you
should be prompted for the username and password. Enter whatever you've
assigned for these on your PC, and that should be that.

Once your C drive or shared folder is mounted on her desktop, you can
then drag it onto her Dock. Then in the future all you'd need to do is
click on the Dock icon.

Signature

Mike Rosenberg
<http://www.macconsult.com> Macintosh consulting services for NE Florida
<http://bogart-tribute.net> Tribute to Humphrey Bogart
Toyota Prius fans: Check out alt.autos.toyota.prius

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CMM. - 23 Dec 2004 19:19 GMT

In the end connecting the two machines was very easy although it took some
trial and error. the easiest thing i found, is to have the Powerbook try to
connect to the IP address, rather than the computer name of the PC running
winXP. (which will also work once the connection has been established via IP
address.)

once the connection to the IP address is established, the DNS table is
updated to include the Powerbook's Computer name on the PC and the PC's
computer name on the powerbook and they can both search and find each other
without problems.

thanks again for your help!
CMM.

> > when playing around with a the powerbook connectivity settings i see a
> > "windows file sharing" option but this sounds like what do u do when u
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> > what if I wanted to connect her powerbook to my PC which is called (for
> > arguments sake) CMM and is on workgroup "WORKGROUP" what is the

Reply to this Message

Rod Hagen netspace - 27 Jan 2005 10:30 GMT

A great sort of information for this sort of cross platform comms stuff is
http://www.ifelix.co.uk/tech/index.html

Cheers

Rod

On 24/12/04 6:19 AM, in article
6839E424-B295-4DAD-ABDA-74D0CED292C1@microsoft.com, "CMM."
<CMM@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> In the end connecting the two machines was very easy although it took some
> trial and error. the easiest thing i found, is to have the Powerbook try to
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> thanks again for your help!
> CMM.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Other MS Products / January 2005

best way to network a mac on a network with many winXPs