Setting up a home network (if that's what I mean)...

[#1]

I think you just answered your own question. 
Networks can be very good for sharing data. In a home environment with mixed software platforms printers can be "challenging".

[#2]

My daughter has no problems on her W98SE machine printing to either of the two printers attached to my XP PC.

[#3]

Thanks again for all the replies and suggestions: I'm now much more clued-up than I was.
It has occurred to me though that there might be a more straightforward and neater way of getting over the problem that my new PC with Windows7 can't run a lot of my old XP software: I've been looking into the possibility of simply installing XP Pro on my Win7 machine, either replacing 7 or as an additional OS.  I've also been experimenting with Sun VirtualBox, which effectively creates a virtualPC (which can handle XP) but I'm not totally convinced about that yet.  I'd be interested to know if anyone here has tried either option.