How do you utilize public folders?

You folks are great here at W7F!! Got me up and running with not too much pain from my stupidness!

I'm copying music, mp3's to the My Music Folder, but there is a second folder labeled, Public Music, Same for Documents, etc.

I never understood why they are there and what the purpose of them was, and what situation would you use them or not was them, the Public folders?

This is on my laptop used only at home, I also have a Vista desktop.

Soo, I guess I'm asking for a mini tutorial on the ins and outs of Public folders!

Regards,
Michael.aw

mawil1013 said:

You folks are great here at W7F!! Got me up and running with not too much pain from my stupidness!

I'm copying music, mp3's to the My Music Folder, but there is a second folder labeled, Public Music, Same for Documents, etc.

I never understood why they are there and what the purpose of them was, and what situation would you use them or not was them, the Public folders?

This is on my laptop used only at home, I also have a Vista desktop.

Soo, I guess I'm asking for a mini tutorial on the ins and outs of Public folders!

Regards,
Michael.aw

That is actually a very good question, it's a shame that most people aren't aware of the usefulness of the Public folders and they are there for good reason.

One reason they are there is to make sharing with legacy OP systems much easier, avoiding the problems associated with adjusting the NTFS security permissions or having to use the same User name and passwords in order to gain access to folders.

Basically they are set up to work outside the normal sharing and permission settings under the usual C:>Users folder security settings, only folders placed inside the Public folders will be accessible, keeping your personal Users folders safe from everyone.

They also provide an easy way to share folders with Workgroup machines if you are in a Homegroup. :)

I think they're used in situations where sharing is restrictively doled out across a network, so that rather than having to activately share them with others they are just dropped in the Public folder which is never restricted if file sharing is enabled at all.

But the only time I've really used them is when I couldn't share correctly with an XP machine, or was in a hurry when sharing balked and didn't want to troubleshoot it or even restart.