What! No Manual? I need help!

Yesterday I came home with the new baby. A 20'' imac. First computer in '94 was a mac, pc since and now I'm back. Anyway, I came home with a lot of stuff I may or may not need, depending on who I spoke to in the store. I had to drive 130 miles to get it btw. So, here is what I need to do and need help with please. I currently have a pc desktop and my husband a laptop which is wireless. I file share with the laptop and share 2 printers with it as well. I also have an external hard drive. I was sold an Airport Extreme and a USB hub. He said to plug the hub into the Airport and then the printers and hard drive into the hub and then the laptop could access them all whether my computer is on or not? Is this correct? He also sold me an extra ethernet cable so I could keep the pc running while I switch over, but how will that work? And lastly, without a manual (forgive my ignorance) how does one even get started right out of the box? Yeah, I know..duh. Thanks in advance.

I really don't know that much, but our current Member of the Month has put together this information which may help you:

wireless networking
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68784

networking printers
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68780

www.apple.com/support is a great place to start. There is the help feature built into your mac also. Just click help and type in a question, it works really well. I would love to explain to you how to set all that up but It would take a long time to type out. I'm sure that once you get started and have questions, this board will be more then happy to help. Just keep checking back.

If your really lost, I'd recommend picking up The Missing Manual for OS X, very good book, and will help you figure out what you can't on your own. Plus you can always ask here.

How about we answer some of those questions here itself?

1. Yes. You can access your printers and HDD on your airport express whether the computer is on or not. Just install Bonjour for Windows and that's it. It automatically searches and installs the printer.

2. I'm not getting exactly what you are saying. Are you wanting to plug your desktop PC into the network as well? Cause the airport extreme does have ethernet ports as does the iMac. And if all three are connected to the airport extreme, they can access each other's files (as well as that printer/HDD)

3. If you've been using "computers" since 94, then I'm pretty sure you can manage to get around OS X. There's not much to it. Files, icons and menus. Just work your way around and post questions on mac-forums!

Hope I didn't sound like a pompous clown

2.

A good book was mac for dummies... got it from the library 2 years ago and it gave me a jump start but now i no most of the tricks..... go to www.apple.com/support for help... and look around....or even take a trip into the mac store near you

I have just done something similar with airport extreme. I connected an external HD to it to share with the 2 laptops in my household.

The way I did it was

1 - plug airport extreme in and then connect to my wireless router with the ethernet cable.

2- Run the Install Disc for the extreme

3 - Run a software update to download all updates for the extreme.

4 - Open up airport utility in your utilities folder found in applications. Run this and configure accordingly.

5 - Your wireless network now will run through your extreme rather than your router.

6 - Attach your usb hub and printers and they should read as normal. With your HD you need to then open up the airport disc utility and run that.

Apologies for the very high level synopsis but it took me about 30 minutes to set mine up and I am useless with stuff like this - and the reason it took so long for me was that I didn't format my new HD to the mac standard DOH!

It all waorks very nicely now.

As mentioned before - you may have to use bonjour on windows if you have problems with your printers printing - not sure if its just a parallels issue or a general xp/mac networking thing but that too was easy to set up once I had found that bonjour was required.

As always, please feel free to correct me..