We're officially "networked"!

Dr. Darling and I like to think of ourselves as fairly technically savvy when it comes to our respective computers.  We own four of them between us (two Mac laptops for me, two WinDoze-based desktop machines for her) and  we're generally pretty successful at making them do what we want them to do.

For example, earlier this year we set up wireless internet at The Penthouse-Nordic, and we've been feeling rather smug about it ever since.  So we were pretty confindent that the next step, creating a home network linking three of the four machines and two printers together, would be a piece of cake. 

WRONG.

It turns out that getting individual machines with different operating systems to talk to a wireless internet router was one thing, but getting those separate operating systems to talk to each other was something else entirely.  So when we realized we were in over our heads, we called an expert...who luckily enough for us, lives just around the corner.

Our friend Sonny is that rare breed of Alpha Geek who is equally at home with both operating systems, though he isn't shy about declaring his personal perference for all things Apple (even though he works for DELL)!  Like us, he lives in a mixed-OS household, so he knows first-hand how to get hardware from Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to work together.

So Sonny stopped by The Penthouse-Nordic on Sunday afternoon for what he told his wife would be a 30-minute visit, tops.  An hour and a-half later I could access the hard-drives on the Hewlett Packard machine in our office/guestroom from my wirelessly connected iBook in the livingroom. SWEET! And for the record, the problem that had initially stumped Dr. Darling and myself was being caused by the WinDoze-based HP machine and NOT the Mac.

We plan to compensate our own personal tech support guru with some goodies that my Mom is bringing over from the U.S. later this week.  And we'll make it up to his wife by having them both over for dinner one evening during her visit.  We'll even make Mom cook, so it's guaranteed to be delicious!

tags: alpha geeks  technology  apple computers  

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