Networking 2 XP machines in office?

[Pheasant Plucker®]

Hi there,

We have a small office with 2 computers.

Only one has had Internet access as we had to keep one machine stand-alone
to run a custom application that was rendered inoperable as soon as the PC
was networked.

We no longer have a need to run this custom application and it would make
good sense to network the two XP machines together to give the second
machine Internet access, share resources, printers etc.

We plan to connect the second machine to the existing switch/ADLS router
that connects the first machine to the Internet.

Both computers are same model Compaq desktops - the machine currently
connected to the Internet has been upgraded from XP Home to XP Pro - I
believe the stand-alone machine is XP Home that has never been
updated/patched as it has never had Internet access...

Would there be any issues connecting an XP Home to XP Pro machine?

Would I be better off upgrading the second machine to XP Pro also?

Any other gotcha's we need to be aware of please?


When this is done we would like to set up Outlook so both machines can
send/receive mail - currently there is only one main office email address.

I have posted this to one of the outlook newsgroups already but maybe
someone here may care to help please - is there a 'best' or accepted way to
achieve this?

 

[Malke]

Hi there,

We have a small office with 2 computers.

Only one has had Internet access as we had to keep one machine stand-alone
to run a custom application that was rendered inoperable as soon as the PC
was networked.

We no longer have a need to run this custom application and it would make
good sense to network the two XP machines together to give the second
machine Internet access, share resources, printers etc.

We plan to connect the second machine to the existing switch/ADLS router
that connects the first machine to the Internet.

Both computers are same model Compaq desktops - the machine currently
connected to the Internet has been upgraded from XP Home to XP Pro - I
believe the stand-alone machine is XP Home that has never been
updated/patched as it has never had Internet access...

Would there be any issues connecting an XP Home to XP Pro machine?

Would I be better off upgrading the second machine to XP Pro also?

Any other gotcha's we need to be aware of please?


When this is done we would like to set up Outlook so both machines can
send/receive mail - currently there is only one main office email address.

I have posted this to one of the outlook newsgroups already but maybe
someone here may care to help please - is there a 'best' or accepted way to
achieve this?

There is no need to upgrade to XP Pro. There is a very big need to
update that machine to Service Pack 2 and subsequent Windows Updates and
to make sure that it has current antivirus protection. The Windows
Firewall that comes with SP2 is sufficient for most people.

As for the Outlook question, you can set Outlook to leave messages on
the server so they can be read on both machines. Just remember to either
delete the messages or set them to delete after a certain amount of time.


Malke