MAC & PC networking

[Alex]

Just got asked by a friend if I could help sort out his office network. its a small office, 1 router, 1 hub, 4 PCs, 3 MACs and 2 printers.

The way its currently set up is there's 2 workgroups; a PC one and a MAC one. each workgroup has a shared printer connected to one of the computers.

To be honest I have very limited MAC experience but I don't think it should be a problem. The one thing I can anticipate is that there will be problems with shared folders because of NTFS but they have plenty of 1TB external HDs so formatting them to FAT32 could work as far as a common storage place.

As for the printers I have no clue but again I don't think this is a huge problem and I reckon getting a small standalone printer server could help.


Can anyone please offer advice, comment, help?


Thanks!

-Alex

 

[BriGy86]

to connect to PC's from the mac click go and connect to server. you should be able to type in smb://"computer name or IP" then whatever the path is for the share.

shared printers may come up automatically.

when connecting to a mac from a PC keep in mind the share name for the mac is case sensitive. What shares do you want what computers to have access to?

 

[mugs]

FYI, It's Mac, not MAC. It's an abbreviation, not an acronym. If there is a context in which it's really beneficial to get that right, it's networking.

You don't need to format the drives to FAT32. They can be NTFS as long as they're connected to the PCs. The Macs will be able to write to shares that are on NTFS drives, because it's the PC that is doing the writing.

 

[Alex]

thanks the the replies!

its mostly about backups and some centralized documents. they have no server per-se just a win xp box thats acting as a file server and backup location.

so really its a matter of having a share on the win xp box that is readable and writable for company documents and another that only really needs to be writable for backups.

so if there's no secret here with Macs then i guess its safe to say that whoever set them up before didn't really know what he was doing eh?

 

[randomlinh]

Well, they may have had their reasons.. but there's no reason why filesharing shouldn't work. Printer sharing will work, but depending on the printers and drivers, it might have been easier to separate them.

My Canon MP510 (or 530, can't remember) for instance will not let you set any settings for the printer if you share cross platform. If I had it on the PC, the Mac could only print normal, no eco mode, no other settings to pick. Same thing the other way around.

 

[sourceninja]

I'm sharing my printer via airport extreme. it works well for me on windows, mac and linux. File sharing wise, mac supports samba so it has no problems with windows shares and windows has no problem connecting to samba shares.

 

[BriGy86]

If its just simple file shares you want to setup I would recommend setting up a user account on the PC that is the same user name and password as what is used on the Mac. Then give it the appropriate rights. To connect to it, all you'd have to to is type smb://"windows XP computer"/"super secret share"

Did you say there are 2 seperate work groups? you may want to use the IP address instead of the computer name.

As for the Mac share you'll want to look in system preferences and Sharing. the computer name it lists is what you'll want to reference when connecting to it (it's case sensitive too)

as for printer shares I think if you just reference the computer they should pop up. but you may need to install the drivers manually.

 

[Nothinman]

Did you say there are 2 seperate work groups? you may want to use the IP address instead of the computer name.

As long as you have proper name resolution working the number of workgroups doesn't matter.

 

[sjwaste]

If he has some money to spend, I would suggest going with a printer with built in networking. I have a Brother HL-5250DN. Ethernet and duplexing built in, supported out of the box with OSX and Vista. That way no one has to worry about the PC that shares the printer being on and accessible, its just plugged right into the router.

I would also suggest an external drive for the macs used for Time Machine backups. I mean, backing up is even more important with work machines, why not let OSX handle it for you? On the other end, I think Vista's built in backup manager is great as well. Not sure of XP's.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: sjwaste
If he has some money to spend, I would suggest going with a printer with built in networking. I have a Brother HL-5250DN. Ethernet and duplexing built in, supported out of the box with OSX and Vista. That way no one has to worry about the PC that shares the printer being on and accessible, its just plugged right into the router.

I would also suggest an external drive for the macs used for Time Machine backups. I mean, backing up is even more important with work machines, why not let OSX handle it for you? On the other end, I think Vista's built in backup manager is great as well. Not sure of XP's.

Thanks for the tip I was actually thinking of getting a printer with built in networking but I've never heard of "Brother"

 

[BriGy86]

I think HP may be the best bet for driver compatibility with Mac.

 

[Nothinman]

Any printer that talks PS is going to be compatible with just about anything.

 

[bdoople]

Originally posted by: alex

Originally posted by: sjwaste
If he has some money to spend, I would suggest going with a printer with built in networking. I have a Brother HL-5250DN. Ethernet and duplexing built in, supported out of the box with OSX and Vista. That way no one has to worry about the PC that shares the printer being on and accessible, its just plugged right into the router.

I would also suggest an external drive for the macs used for Time Machine backups. I mean, backing up is even more important with work machines, why not let OSX handle it for you? On the other end, I think Vista's built in backup manager is great as well. Not sure of XP's.

Thanks for the tip I was actually thinking of getting a printer with built in networking but I've never heard of "Brother"

I have a brother MFC printer (can't remember the model number) but it's shared on my Vista machine and I connected to it with no problems on my Mac, prints fine. It's a great printer and I'm glad I purchased it.

 

[secretanchitman]

Originally posted by: bdoople

Originally posted by: alex

Originally posted by: sjwaste
If he has some money to spend, I would suggest going with a printer with built in networking. I have a Brother HL-5250DN. Ethernet and duplexing built in, supported out of the box with OSX and Vista. That way no one has to worry about the PC that shares the printer being on and accessible, its just plugged right into the router.

I would also suggest an external drive for the macs used for Time Machine backups. I mean, backing up is even more important with work machines, why not let OSX handle it for you? On the other end, I think Vista's built in backup manager is great as well. Not sure of XP's.

Thanks for the tip I was actually thinking of getting a printer with built in networking but I've never heard of "Brother"

I have a brother MFC printer (can't remember the model number) but it's shared on my Vista machine and I connected to it with no problems on my Mac, prints fine. It's a great printer and I'm glad I purchased it.

same but for me, its on xp. works perfectly for me, as well as file sharing (SMB and just typing in the ip address in xp). im real happy that sharing works across both platforms...