I know that Windows networking on anything other than "Pro" editions is pants, beyond that I don't see any issues.
My problems have been trying to get Macs and PCs to see each other (I think the PC could see the Mac and other PCs could see the Pc, but the Mac couldn't see anything) and hooking up to Wifi with a MacBook thing. It could see the Wifi, it could connect to the Wifi but it wouldn't communicate. Sadly, I have no idea how to find out what the IP settings are that are assigned to a Mac, so I couldn't see if it was getting an IP assigned, if the gateway was wrong, if there was a fault with keys, nothing. Just "You are connected" and "Everything is fine, if it's not working, try seeing if your Internet is down or the site, because I'm a Mac and couldn't possibly ever have any kind of issue at all, it's somebody else's problem". That Mac NEVER worked on the network, yet three XP laptops, a Wii, iPhone and PS3 never had the slightest issue. One of the laptops was used in place of the Mac, as not connecting to the network made it useless. Actually, it was useless anyway, complete dog of a machine :lol:
Of course, that's just my poor experience and shouldn't be taken as canon. People only get in touch with me when things don't work, so I'm only ever going to see broken or stubborn Macs :lol:
Actually, I have a few XP laptops that are swines when it comes to wifi. They'll connect and not communicate, or they'll just suddenly stop for no reason. I've found that some of the additional Wifi driver systems are dreadful and really cause issues (the built in XP one seems much better). Most of the time our Wifi router needs a reboot, but sometimes, XP needs a complete reboot to get it to connect up. So it's not just Macs, I don't want to give that impression
It's just that when it breaks on a PC, I know where the fault lies because I can fault find and dig out where it's failing. I don't know how to do it on a Mac, which is why I said I think often it's a case of just not having the experience or knowledge.