Tag: sharing

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Password Protected Sharing

In the two guides I have written (so far) on sharing files between Macs and Vista PCs, Sharing files between a Windows Vista Home Edition PC and a Mac running OS X Leopard 10.5 and  Sharing files between a Windows Vista Business Edition PC and a Mac running 10.4� I did not disable password protection on the Vista PCs.

This meant that users sharing files needed to enter a password (or have a matching account) in order to access shared folders on the Vista PC.

Password Protected Sharing

However if you turn off password protected sharing it is possible to share files without for the user on the remote computer who is accessing the shared folder to use a password.

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File Sharing with Leopard and Vista

Update: guide now available.

I am in the process of writing my file sharing guide for Leopard and Vista and though similar to Tiger and XP, there are some quite fundamental differences which means it is taking longer to write the guide then I first thought.

I have recommended using the same username and password on home networks for sharing files as it makes it easier to share files.

Now with Leopard you can share individual folders much more easily, which means I may write two separate guides rather than one long one.

We’ll see how it goes, expect it soon.

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Just installed Leopard

Well better late than never I guess…

I have installed Leopard on my iMac (using an external Firewire drive rather than my main drive).

It installed fine, though I find it amusing that Apple’s “about one minute”  can be longer than any other minute, maybe a Time Machine thing?

I have had a quick look and I am quite impressed. I am quite pleased with the performance on my iMac which seems much faster, certainly don’t get the lag I have been getting when changing the volume for example.

Safari 3 is much better and I might just install 10.4.11 on my other Macs to get Safari 3, like the fact I can move tabs.

File sharing looks relatively simple, but quite different to Tiger therefore new guides are essential.

Overall impressed so far.

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Vista Printing Success

The other day I mentioned I was having issues with printing from a Windows Vista PC to a printer on a Mac (running 10.4).

Well you know what I should read my own guides, specifically the guide on Printing to a printer on a Mac running 10.4.x from a Windows XP PC.

In that guide is the clear statement:

Choose the relevant Printer Driver (or click Have Disk and put in the relevant drivers disk). Note that you should only use the Windows driver if you have a Postscript printer

I forgot that you don’t use the Windows Printer Driver, you need to use a Postscript driver.

This only came to light when I decided to use Bonjour for Windows to install the printer and when it came to choosing the correct printer driver, the Bonjour Printer Wizard only gave me the choice of a generic Postscript printer!

And yes it printed, guide coming soon.

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Sharing a Printer

I have been trying to share a printer on my iMac with a Sony VAIO UX1XN running Windows Vista Business Edition (in the main to write a guide for my website).

I was quite impressed by using the Network and Sharing Center (when trying out file sharing which incidently works fine) that Vista recognised the printers attached t0 my iMac.

Windows Vista screenshot

However printing to the printer results in the print job just disappearing…

I have already configured the printer (it’s a wireless Canon MP600R) so the Vista PC can print direct to the printer, so printing is not an issue. This is much more a theoretical exercise to see if the UX1XN running Windows Vista can print to a shared printer on a Mac.

Initially I thought it might be because I hadn’t actually shared the printer on the Mac, but even doing that didn’t work.

I am not 100% sure of the reasons behind the lack of printing, but I suspect that because it is a wireless printer may be part of the problem.

Next thing to try is a printer connected to the Mac via USB and share that, I am expecting that to work.

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Sharing Files

On my main tech website I have a what others have called “useful” guide to sharing files between Mac OS X and Windows XP.

Sharing files between an XP PC and a Mac running OS 10.4

Of course one of the key issues for me now is that Microsoft have released Vista and Apple have just released Leopard (10.5) which means that my guide is out of date by two operating systems.

I do now have a Vista PC, but it is running Vista Business Edition which is “tweaked” for networking by Microsoft, whereas the Vista Ultimate Home Edition is not, therefore I think I am going to have to write two guides, one for Business and one for Home.

However I don’t yet have Leopard, partly as there isn’t a huge amount there for me to upgrade, but also I am not sure if all my peripherals and applications will work under Leopard. I remember having issues and problems when I upgraded my old G5 PowerMac from Panther (10.3) to Tiger (10.4) and some applications stopped working properly.

So eventually I will be upgrading my guides once I have bought the new operating systems.