Help with Networking
I just ordered my first mac the other day. I have a pc at home running xp on a cable modem. I am going to network the two, I do have a few questions though. If I just network my PB through ethernet to my pc then they can share files but the PB won't be online correct? I have never networked anything. Or, should I just get Airport? I don't fully understand Airport that great. I have to buy the basestation and the card, and then I can wire my pc to it with ethernet correct? What cables go where? My modem would go straight to the airport base station correct? And then somehow we would wire it to the pc.
Comments
I assume that your PC is connected with the cable modem via the PCs Networkt Card. Is that right or do you have an internal Cable modem?
you could connect the PB with the PC with a Cat5 Network cable, but then you would loose your internet connection with both computers (I am assuming that you have only one Network card in your XP machine).
The best way would be to buy an airport extreme base station and an AEcard for your PB. You then connect your Cable modem with the WAN-Port and the XP machine with the LAN-Port of the base station. Thats it.
(here is a nice picture of the AEBS ports http://www.apple.com/airport/)
in this case you could connect the PB to the onboard ethernet port of the PC. File swaping and so on can be done very easy like this and there should be a way of getting you on the internet with the PB through the XP machine, but I don't know how to do that.
The AE solution is far easier and you gain a lot of mobility.
Check here if your printer is compatible with AEBS: http://www.apple.com/airport/printcompatibility.html
You don't need to be worried, OS X is easier than XP. Trust me I know it, because I am the XP user and my brother the lucky Apple laptop user.
Lets hope that you get a spotless 15"
Got to keep on movin' on...