windows 7 networking with MAC

Life was good and then..... my husband got a new desktop computer. The new ASUS computer came loaded with Windows 7. The laptops in the house are Macs. The old Widows XP computer seemed to be able to network with the Macs. I could print from my laptop to the printer attached to the XP computer however now I can't. When my husband set up the network he set up some homegroup thing that was suppose to make networking so easy. Well apparently not for the macbook pros. I really would like to be able to print. Any thoughts?

Then to make things just a little more irritating. My husband loaded Office 2007. I set up his outlook like I've set up outlook several times in the past. It says it's successfully set up but he can't send or receive e-mail. I have double checked the server info and it's what we have been using for years pop-server.wi.rr.com and smtp-server.wi.rr.com however no mail but what does pop up is a little message box over and over a gain asking for the network password. I type it in and it pops up again. This is really getting irritating. I feel like I've never set up a computer before but the reality is I have done it successfully many times... my kids, my parents, my neighbors and our own but for some reason I have met my match. Any thoughts?

 

Just an update.... We managed to get outlook to receive messages but it won't send. urgh