NTFS, HFS, WTF

Don't get me started on the problems with a mixed network, but here's information to make sharing files easier.

MacOSX will read-only mount a NTFS partition by itself, but there is no way without extra software to read a HFS drive in Windows. For read-only access to an HFS drive in Windows, HFSExplorer does the trick quickly, and is open-source and free (GPL Ver 3).

Now if you want full access, it gets a little more complicated and / or expensive.

MacDrive gives Windows full read/write on HFS, but at a price of about $50.

MacOSX 10.4 + can get full read/write on NTFS with NTFS-3G (Both Free and Commercial versions available) and MacFuse. The latest release of NTFS-3G also simplifies the setup, installing both the driver and Fuse in one package.

As a disclaimer: I am noting information on all of these packages for reference, but the only one I've actually used myself is HFSExplorer. For that one, at least, I can say it gets the job done. Used it just today to read files from an external USB HFS drive. The interface is a little complicated (definitely for the advanced user) but the great thing about read-only access is you can't screw anything up. I was also surprised at the speed of file transfer from the USB HFS volume to the local drive, it seemed faster by itself than a Windows cut-n-paste.