So I finally broke down and got Vista (well, my company bought me a new laptop actually)...rather than going with the 64 bit version, they got me the 32. I mananged to get it to read my network at home, and the shared folders on my other personal computers. However, I cannot get my other computers to read the shared folder on Vista. Anyone got a fix for this or know what I am doing wrong? Thanks.
make sure you set "network discovery" and "file sharing" to "ON". And also, I believe for XP or older computers to see your Vista computer, it will take some time(hours in my case) for the first time.