I'd like to get some opinions of the usefulness of hiding windows shares using sharename$
Is there really a point? Anyone with a medium size toolkit or even anyone using linux can see all hidden shares anyway. Working with hidden shares also impaires the use of some commands like "dsquery user OU=BlaBla,DC=rob,DC=roy,DC=com" | dsmod user -hmdir \\srvr\users$\$username$"
For home users, they're not very useful. For Domain environments, they're used daily. There are certain folders you generally hide from curious eyes. DACLS cannot be modified in admin shares, sysvol/netlogons are a couple of examples of folders that must remain hidden.