Workgroup computing- groups of people working together can share their resources with each other. People within the workgroup can share information on their hard disks as well as sharing printers, modems and scanners. Many programs are also designed to be used within a workgroup.
It can save a great deal of work by means of only having to put master copies of documents on one computer - then all the computers in the workgroup can have access to it. It saves having to feed in copies to every individual computer. Access to information such as database updates is instantaneous which means that the same product or service cannot be sold twice. The advantages of computer workgroups (computers linked together in order to share information) are too numerous to mention. The next stage after this is LAN local area networks- then WAN world area networks or www the internet. It's not quite like the image above as all the computers would connect through a router.
Create a Workgroup in Windows 7 - start setup as below
Join all your computers to the same workgroup name and you should see your computers including computers running on XP - as below