What is the best solution?

[ethernet]

Background:

1 New DELL Windows Laptop (Integrated Wi-Fi) w/ Windows XP

1 Old PowerBook G3 Laptop w/ OS 8.6 ...(Planning on purchasing a New Mac)

Wireless Office Environment

Problem:

File and Print Sharing (What's Best Solution?)

Solution: ????

Anything would be greatly appreciated... :rolleyes:

Edited July 27, 2003 by ethernet

[the evn show]

Toss airport cards in the macs (or mac compatible 802.11 pci cards in the old g3) - run os 9 or x

Toss link-sys cards in the PC

buy a base station

Either install PC maclan on the PC and use AFP to share files/printers or

Install OS X on all the macs and use SMB to share files/printers between everything.

I went the second way (though I only have newwer macs) so that if any friends bring over a PC they can plug into my network and access all the resources.

[ethernet]

Modified my first post...the mac is a powerbook (both are laptops) ...what wireless would work on an older powerbook?

"the evn show", Thanks for your help none the less. :)

[the evn show]

You might try some of USB wireless adapters. I have a friend using one on his wintel notebook and it works very well with Windows and FreeBSD so I suspect that mac os compatible ones exist as well.

Your old powerbook should have a pcmcia card slot - you could use one of those. Linksys has cards that work with OS X - they're given out free at my school when you sign up for wireless network acces.

The Dell: if it has standard 802.11 then it should be able to network fine right out of the box. If it's using the Intel centrino wireless stuff - to the best of my knowledge that's not compatible with anything and it will also require either a USB or PCMCIA 802.11 adapter. (If this is untrue I'm sure someone will correct me).

The software won't change - either run os x on your mac, or get PC-maclan installed on the windows machines. Either way will work equally well.

[ethernet]

:laugh: :rofl: :D the evn show....thanks sooo much for your quick replies!!

I've also found more info searching for PC MacLAN.

Cheers