Access a PC from a Mac

As I had recently written, I am a recent Mac emigre having been a long-time PC user. One of my main concerns was being able to access the data from my PC. Sure I had the fallback option of burning things to a CD and then copying it off of the CD. However, it would be nice to directly be able to access the files; 'cos you know there is going to be that one file (or more) that you forgot to burn onto the CD and you'd have to repeat that process.

I had read assurances of the ease of migrating. Apple spends a lot of ink (and resources at their stores) helping folks with the migration. However, I have had problems with my home network -- even to get my Windows PC and Windows laptop to play nice so I was understandably nervous.

Sure enough, my first few attempts to get the iMac to see my PC were futile. Tried Go > Network, Go > Connect to Server... to no avail. Finally a bit of Googling gave me the hint I needed. In Windows-land they keep saying how only machines in the "same workgroup" can see each other. All fine and dandy. But how does one set the workgroup in Mac-land? Here's how (tip of hat to jlgnyc11):

Finder > Applications > Utilities > Directory Access > Services (tab?) > SMB/CIFS. Then, press "Configure..." and provide the same workgroup name as you have set for your PC. And there it was, my PC in all its glory!

There was still some quirkiness with accessing things in certain folders in my PC (those under my %userprofile%). On my PC I had to drag 'n drop the folders I wanted to share to c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents). Oh! Well.