Printer and file sharing on Windows Vista

Do you remember the promotional video for XP. It was two American men just starting at university with their laptops. One goes out for a few minutes and the other sets up printer sharing on their computers. All so easy. And it is. Windows XP loves sharing files and printers - only if you allow it of course - but it does it so well.

Vista is the new version of XP. It is therefore better. It just follows. You wouldn't bring something out that was worse than the old one. That would be rediculous! Grabs belly and laughs until the tears come.

Nobody without a degree in computers and a large amount of sedative should attempt to share files or printers on Vista. It's just not worth it. Go out and enjoy the sun. Or cut the grass with an axe or something constructive.

Firstly your printer is not going to be compatible with Vista. Nothing is totally. You wouldn't mind if it was totally incompatible - if it really didn't even try. Seen the Mac advert? Where the Mac and PC hold hands and then the printer holds hands with the Mac. The PC then tries to speak Japanese to the printer and gets it slightly wrong. "Rubbish", you cry - "that doesn't happen on Windows". That's because you run XP. I have 27 pieces of paper with "Unsupported Personality: PCL" written at the top. It did print out lots of stuff I wanted as well but that's how it works with Vista - things only stop working a bit.

So then. Printer sharing. That's easy. Just share the printer surely. Ah no. Every other computer on the network is on the workgroup called "MSHOME". So Microsoft have decided to change the default workgroup to "WORKGROUP". Oh how I laughed when I worked that one out and chaged it back to the usual one. You then have to turn on printer sharing and turn off password protected sharing. While you are at it turn on file sharing, network discovery and public folder sharing.

That's it, you can now share your printer, which doesn't have a suitable driver, with all the other computers on the network. And print out "Unsupported Personality: PCL" to your heart's contentment.

File sharing is much more fun. There is a public folder for you to share stuff in, same as the old days; and sometimes it works. But if you actually want to do something useful like share a folder you use a screen comes up saying "Sharing, this make take a few minutes". It's not wrong. It has never finished yet - even when I try sharing folders with only a few files in. It is just rubbish, absolutely rubbish.

Could it be because the folders are read only? Maybe but unticking the read only box and clicking apply doesn't work - it pretends to so you will go away but as soon as your back is turned it is back to read only.

I have given up. I have a half Gig memory stick and I run upstairs with it, either that or I drag files onto shared folders on the other computers.