"How can I make sure that the new printer will work on a-l-l of those operating systems?" When choosing a printer Visit the printer manufacturer's website. Look in the downloads section to see if there is a Windows XP driver, vista. Or 7 driver. Looks like hp has had some printer driver issues with 7. Here is a link that might be useful: printers

I just went thru this exact (almost) procedure, getting my new Vista desktop to network with our Win xp computer with printer. Not so easy, but here are the instructions which work: 1. To set up the house network, on the Vista computer: Start-Control Panel-System and Maintaint.- system-computer name,domain,workgroup settings area on the screen, hit the "change settings" button, then system properties-computer name tab-change computer name/domain changes-in Workgroup type your home network's name-OK. Then to set up the printer, a huge pain, but doable: On the Vista computer: Start-Control Panel-add printer-add Local Printer (I know it's on a network, but this is the way to do it)-create a new port-default is "local port",leave it-next you have to enter a port name, this is the tricky part, you have to type in the path to the printer manually, the path should look like: \\your exact host computer name\your exact printer's sharing name. That's it. To check for the exact host computer name, go to the host computer, my computer, and a screen will come up with it's official name, use it, case sensitive. For printer name, go to host computer, printers area thru the control panel, rt. click the printer and properties. A sharing tab will show, click it, the exact name for the shared printer will show, again use it case sensitive. The above took me all day when I got my new Vista, hope it helps.

Hi zep, I have a desktop that has Windows 7 on it, a laptop with Vista,Husband's computer is Windows Vista, Daughter has a wireless laptop with Vista and a wireless netbook with XP and they are all in the HomeGroup. So I guess I am all up to date with all of the networking in this house.

After much debate, I decided on XP because of software compatibility issues and information sharing between the new computer and the older XP. Both computers are used for work and must work together. I purchased the new computer to upgrade, down-the-line, to Vista. One problem I didn't consider was MS Office. The new machine was only sold with Office 07. The older machine has Office 03. All Word docs have to be saved at 03 docs on the new machine in order to be opened on the older machine. I guess it depends on what you use it for. I didn't have time to fool with getting Vista to work with what I need for work.