Adding a mac to pc household?

Question

we already have a Toshiba laptop pc and wireless internet through comcast, and an HP printer/scanner hooked up to the pc.

i'd really like to get a macbook with airport but have many questions about sharing the internet connection with the pc as well as the printer. also, can some of the files from the pc be transferred directly to the mac? what else besides the laptop will i need to buy? if you are knowlegeable about this, can we eamil?

Answer 1

We have a mixed Windows/Linux house. We use a gateway router connected to our cable modem. The cable modem acts as the internal firewall and router. Our computers can talk to each other and they can also both access the internet.

Since Mac is Unix under the hood, you should be able to transfer your files using ftp or another program. I'm sure Mac even has Samba, allowing Windows shares to be viewed directly.

I'm really not sure, however, about accessing the printer through the PC. I know it can be done, I've just never gone through the effort of doing it myself.

Answer 2

macs usually work quite well on a windows network  and you should be able to set up network shares easily if you provide it the network name , user and passwords

Depending on the router you may have problems connecting but most modern ones are fine