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Make the Connection

Windows: To connect to shared Windows files and printers from Windows XP, open My Network Places. The main window will display icons of any file shares you've connected to in the past; if you're networking for the first time, it won't show any. To see what network resources are available to you, click View workgroup computers and click a networked computer's icon to identify the shared resources it has to offer. The computer you're using will also appear there if it is configured to share files or printers. Once you see a shared folder, you should be able to open it as you would a local folder. If no computers appear, don't give up. See "Teach Your OS to Share" for some common solutions to this problem.

Connecting to a shared printer is similar: Open Printers and Faxes, and click Add a printer in the task pane on the left. Click Next to move to the Add Printer Wizard's 'Local or Network Printer' page. Select A network printer or printer attached to another computer, and click Next twice. Browse the network for printers (if none show up, see "Teach Your OS to Share" for tips on jump-starting your network connection). Select the printer you want to add, click Next, and work through the prompts to complete the installation.

Macintosh: If you want to browse Windows file shares via OS X 10.4, choose Go, Network in the Finder. Among the icons displayed in the Finder window should be one with the same name as your Windows workgroup. Double-click it to see the computers with file shares that are currently available on the network. Double-click an icon to display the computer's shared folders. OS X will ask you to enter a password to access the PC's shares, even if none is actually required--simply click OK to proceed. Next, from the pull-down list, select the shared folder you want to connect to (OS X refers to these as SMB/CIFS shares), and click OK. The share will now appear as a link in the Finder's sidebar--click it to display its files and subfolders (see FIGURE 2).

Accessing a shared Windows printer from your Mac requires a few more twists and turns. You should be able to browse to and configure OS X to use a shared Windows printer, but in my experience--and that of others--the Mac OS's graphical printer setup is broken. Based on my tests, the resulting printer connection consistently fails because the printer's address is botched. To fix a jumbled network printer address, click Applications, Utilities, Printer Setup Utility, select the affected printer from the list, click Show Info, and type the printer's correct network address in the location field.

Another way to connect to a shared Windows printer from a Mac is to launch System Preferences, double-click Print & Fax in the Hardware section, click the plus sign to launch the printer browser, press the <Option> key as you click the More Printers button, select Advanced from the pull-down list of printer types at the top of the next dialog box, and choose Windows Printer via SAMBA in the list that appears below it. Enter a descriptive name for the printer in the Device Name field, and then complete the Device URI: address using the format smb://user@workgroup/server/printer, where user is your user name, workgroup is the name of the workgroup the printer is shared on, server is the system sharing the computer, and printer is the shared printer (see FIGURE 3). Select the printer's manufacturer on the Printer Model pull-down list and its model name in the list that appears after that. Finally, click Add.

Linux: To view shared Windows folders in SuSE 9.3 with KDE 3.4, open the Network Browsing icon on the KDE desktop and select the SMB Shares icon in the Konqueror file manager window that opens. After a short delay, you should see icons for all of the Windows workgroups available on your local network. Open a workgroup icon to view the computers that have shares available. Open an individual computer icon to view its shared folders--it's just like browsing the network in Windows XP.

Unfortunately, the KDE Konqueror browser just doesn't talk properly to OS X 10.4's Windows shares. The workaround is to connect to the OS X share explicitly: Launch the Network Browsing link (or choose Go, Network Folders in Konqueror), click Add a Network Folder, select Microsoft Windows network drive, and click Next. Enter a name for the share connection in the Name field, the name of the Macintosh computer you want to connect to in the Server field, and the name of the folder the Mac is sharing in the Folder field (see FIGURE 4). Click Save & Connect; KDE will then prompt you to enter the share's OS X user name and password, after which it will create a link to the folder in the Network Browsing folder.

The process of connecting to a shared Macintosh printer from Linux is easier because both systems use the Common Unix Printing System. The shared Macintosh printer should show up automatically in your list of printers when you go to print in your Linux application.