In the office I work in, an XP machine acts as the network server. Cables run from this machine to be plugged into the back of the four other machines in the office, all of which also run XP. We need to buy a new machine since one of the is unbelievably ****. It looks like it will have Vista as the OS. One guy in a computer shop told me that this would lead to disaster; that the Vista would not be able to speak to the XP server machine. Another guy in another shop said that the first guy was talking rubbish, and that there is no way there would be a problem.

Who is to be believed?

The second guy is right. XP machines have no problem working in a LAN with other Operating Systems, including Vista.

Make sure the new Vista PC has the same Workgroup name as the others;

And, in Vista Network and sharing:
1 network discovery:ON
2 file sharing:ON
3 public folder sharing:ON
4 password protected:OFF

Yeah, that makes sense to me: it should be backwards compatible after all.

Cheers!

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