Okay i have been looking for the mac online help about this but an not getting to far.

I am trying to get the new laptop (12 inch powerbook) to talk to my win2k machine I can access the laptop from the win machine but i can't see anything from the mac.

I eventually want to be able to access all the files on the win2k machine and be able to use the windows printer.

I am getting it to share internet no problems so it is not an actual physical problem. Just me not got everything just right type problem.

Any advice or thoughts or do i need to go out and get an over priced piece of software

On the Windows machine, check that you've got a folder shared and that there's nothing preventing connections such as firewall software.

On the Mac, in the Finder, go to Go>Connect to server... and either wait for the Windows machine to appear in the list on the left or enter smb://ipaddress and hit connect.

had been doing that then had a moment of clarity

instead of trying to connect to the desktop i went for clanky (old laptop) and that worked fine. so had a good sniff around the desktop and tryed sharing a folder instead of just the drive i use to keep everything on and it now works a treat.

not too sure why it was not working with a drive being shared instead of a folder but got it working now.

All i need to do now is work out the printer bit.

Is the printer an inkjet or a laser?

PostScript printers can be shared on Windows and printed to normally. Non-postscript printers are a little more hassle.

Simplest option would be to just switch the USB cable. Or print a PDF from the Mac, copy it to the PC and prnt it from there.

Currently it is a canon BJC6100 a nasty inkjet printer but it could be heading for the scrap heap due to a probably clogged head since it ain't been used for about a year i have tryed sticking the head in a pan of hot water but it is clogging up again, anyway i degress.

the reason that i was wanting to share printers is that lazy bugger wants to stay using the nice airport card and if i can not bother with swapping cables great but if it is going to be a hassle i may have a rethink.

However if the canon does die i might go for a cheap and cheerful postscript printer or i could try and find one of those wee things that turns and printer into a network printer. unless there is a linx distro out there you can stick on an old pc to do the same job.

You mentioned Airport - do you have an Apple Airport Extreme base station? If so, there's a USB port on it for sharing a printer. AFAIK, though, it won't share to Windows boxes. The Canon model you mention isn't on the compatible list either.

I'm not sure how easy the Linux route would be, but there are probabaly friendly distros out there that will share an inkjet printer as a PostScript unit, but that would involve converting the output, so if you print photos, they may not come out as expected.

Sadly no airport extreme base station but i shall have a looky as it might be a solution and then the current wireless base station can live in car permantly