Hey all,

Currently, I've got three computers. One archaic PC (family computer), my laptop (Dell - no clue what mindset I was in when I bought it and, of course, my lovely iMac (primary machine). At the moment, my setup is similar to this:



For those playing at home, the thunderbolts represent the wireless connection. Just to reiterate, the family PC is connected to the ethernet port on the wireless router. The only thing connected to the broadband modem is the wireless router.

At the moment, all computers can access the internet, but not each other. I'd like to be able to access all computers from each other, if this is possible. Also, today I bought a Buffalo 320GB NAS ($69 courtesy of DSE staff offer), and can't get that working, so I'm assuming it's because my network sucks.

Any ideas as to where I would start? I've tried running through wizards, but have got nowhere Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance

through away your PCs and buy macs

Who's giving out the IP address? Is it the modem or the wireless router? I think your network seems like it's setup correctly. You probably need all the machines to have file sharing enabled as it's not by default.

For one, you've got all the right hardware to do so - this is a good start!

By "access all the computers from each other", I'm going to assume you mean that you want to access the computer's files and stuff through each computer? So you can look at your family photos on your family computer from your Mac, for instance?

If that's the case - all you need to do is setup Windows to share files with OSX, and vice versa.

I'm going to assume that all the networking side of things is setup correctly (IP's being given out properly, no conflicts, etc) - if not, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it

With OSX, you can configure what folders you want shared through System Prefs --> Sharing --> File Sharing - just hit the first plus button to add a folder that you want shared. Hit Options to then Share Files using SMB, and tick your account name.

To access your OSX files from a Windows computer, get your Mac's IP address form iStat Menus, or from the Network Utility info for your wireless card. Type this into the Windows address bar as \\192.168.xxx.xxx, and you should then be able to connect after you enter your username and password...

Now, someone else can explain the Windows side of things.

EDIT: Currawong wrote a great tutorial on how to share files between OSX and WIndows Vista. You can read it here.

Originally Posted by Madone

K.I.S.S

Just go to the website I posted, lots of pics etc to make it easy

Nice find. Cheers for the link!

Hey guys, thanks for the help I've got them all networked now! I returned the NAS however, as it's not something I really need. I'll probably just end up getting a Maxtor 1TB HDD from work for $199 next week

Originally Posted by Madone

Get yourself a Time Capsule, then you can put it anywhere on your network. Pricey though!

Nah, have no need for network storage solutions. All my computers use USB, so that's fine :P