I did some more research and got the MacBook Pro happy living on the Windows workgroup. Of course, TopDawg (a Windows7 machine) isn't even completely happy living on a mere 'workgroup' with the other Windows machines. In fact, it's apparently the most finicky machine on my network now. Everything else seems happy to be there - even the MBP - but oh well. I can finally dump some tunes from my stash onto the MBP so I can travel with it next month and not be completely devoid of music. I usually have some tunes playing via WinAmp while I'm surfing or checking e-mail... mostly just because I can.

The MBP can see everything on BigDawg and can 'see' TopDawg,' but can't get in. TopDawg can do whatever it needs to do wherever, and so can BigDawg for the most part. So dumping or grabbing files from the Windows environment is no biggie... just like getting into BigDawg from the MBP... but TopDawg from there not so much.

Oh well - it's working well enough... for now.