MacBook® Portable Genius, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4. What Can I Do on a Local Network?

If you connect your MacBook to the Internet with an AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule, as described in Chapter 3, you create a local network at the same time. Any devices connected to your local network, whether through a wired Ethernet connection or a wireless one, can communicate with the other devices on your network. This is a good thing because Mac OS X includes a lot of network features that you'll find to be very useful. Perhaps the most useful of these features is the ability to share files, but there are plenty of other powerful network features to explore and use.

Sharing Files

Sharing Screens

Sharing Printers

Sharing an Internet Connection

Sharing Files

If you have more than one computer on your local network, the ability to share files among those computers is really useful because you can easily move files between them. You can also store files on one computer and work on them while using any other computer on the network. The three general sharing skills you'll learn in this section are:

• Configuring your MacBook to share files with other computers

• Accessing files that are being shared with you

• Sharing files with Windows computers

Sharing your files with others

To enable other computers to access files stored on your MacBook, you need to accomplish the first two of the following tasks, while the third task is optional:

• Configure ...