Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Figure 10-2:
Use
Windows
Explorer to
see network
resources.
Chapter 10: Putting Your Wireless Home Network to Work
Just because you see a device in My Network Places doesn’t mean that you
can share with that device — where share means that you can view, use, copy,
and otherwise work on files and resources on that device. The devices need
to be set up for sharing for that to happen. (Think of it like your regular
neighborhood, where you can see many of the houses, but you can’t go in
some of them because they’re locked.) To set up sharing, see the next section.
Sharing — I Can Do That!
File sharing is a basic feature of any home network. Whether sharing MP3 files
on a computer with other devices (including your stereo, as we discuss in
Chapter 12) or giving access to financial files for Mom and Dad to access on
each other’s computers, sharing files is a way to maintain one copy of something
and not have a zillion versions all over the network.
You can share your whole computer, only certain things (documents or folders),
or some stuff in only certain ways. Here’s an idea of what you can share
on your network:
� The entire computer: You can choose to make the entire computer or
device accessible from the network. (We don’t advise sharing your entire
computer because it exposes your entire PC to anyone who accesses
your network. In Windows Vista you no longer get this option.)
� Specific internal drives: You can share a specific hard drive, such as
one where all your MP3s or computer games are stored.
187