Sharing folders between Windows 7 and Max OSX Lion

I recently got a new Mac Mini with OSX Lion for testing, and had a bear of a time getting it able to share a folder from a Windows 7 Ultimate PC.  In the end, these were the key steps:

1. Make sure the Mac is on the same workgroup your PC’s are on as per this tutorial.  Unlike in Windows, there’s no “welcome” message when you join a workgroup so I don’t know if rebooting is needed.  I rebooted the Mac to be safe.
2. More worrisome are the 2 registry hacks needed to prevent error messages when you try to “Connect to server” from the Mac.  But after applying these and rebooting the PC, file sharing worked like a charm.

Let’s hope Microsoft has fixed #2 for Windows 8!