I am a newbie, please bear with me.

Is this a secure way to share files with SuSE 9.0 and Windowz XP?

A.
click YaST to open
click Network Services
click Samba Server
click Enable Samba Server
select File and printer sharing
type XP workgroup name
select Share Homes
click Advanced to add more directories
...click Edit and Add Mask for each shared directory, type 0777
...I had to change the Mask twice to get it to save
click Finish

B.
Bring up Terminal or Command prompt in SuSE
type su to become secure root user
type root password
type smbadduser nameofusertoadd
...I used the default admin user that I created
type/create a password for the new smb user

C.
Map the network drive to Windowz XP and login

If anyone has a better more secure method, please post
detailed instructions here. I would like to be able to
force Samba to accept connections only from certain IP
addresses on my internal home network if possible,
but as I said, I am a newbie.

add to your smb.conf file in the global section:
allow hosts = 192.168.1.

or whatever your home subnet is, leave the last number off that will allow any number to connect

Thanks for the info Finlay, I may need to try that.
I also edited my post above to include the Mask comment.
I may need to work on getting SWAT to work, if it is available.