Can Mac OS X and Windows 7 have same computer name in a dual boot setup?

Question

I am running Mac OS X Lion on a MacBook Pro, and I just set up Boot Camp on the system and installed Windows 7 into another partition. This means it is now a dual-boot machine, and I can boot up into either Mac OS X or Windows 7 on startup.

My question is this: I configured the Windows 7 installation to use the same computer name that I used in my Mac OS X installation. Is that OK or should I have used a different computer name for my Windows 7 installation?

I did a search and found out that if you have a dual boot setup involving Windows NT, 2000, or XP, then you should use a different computer name for each of the operating systems. But I don't know about Mac OS X and Windows 7.

Answer 1

This depends on the network you are in, there might be some services that rely on network names to identify a computer. But as long as you are not in a big network with windows servers I doubt that there is anything that really relies on computer names instead of IP addresses or other, safer ways of identification (eg certificates).

If you have no services in your network that need to access your computer (I mean literally, they want to access your computer remotely), you should not have to worry. This counts for most networks, your home network or public networks (university, coffee shop).
At your workplace you should ask the network administrator but most likely it would not be a problem there either.