Connecting to Windows machines by name doesn't work

OK. Here's the story. PC/Linux guy for a long time. I'm the default sysadmin at work and for family. My wife bought me a Mac for my birthday, and I LOVE IT !!
The only problem is I still have 4 windows machines in the house, and I need to connect to them to get work done. (I actually now prefer using the Mac keyboard and mouse over the standard PC ones.)
I've gone through all the tips on joining my Mac to a Windows workgroup, and in the Finder, under the Shared section, I see the names for all my windows machines on the network. I can change my Connect as.. information, and see my windows shares.
Here's the problem, though. I want to use either VNC or MS Remote Desktop Connection on my mac to get my Windows Desktop. I cannot enter in just the name in either of these dialogs. It doesn't fined the machine by name only. If I figure out the explicit IP address, then it works fine.
Also, if I open up a terminal window, and attempt to ping a windows machine by name, it won't find it. What's going on here?
Thanks for all responses !!

G'day jimmy,
The wonders of name resolution are often a pain in the proverbial.
What response do you get from the "ping" when you attempt to use the name? Are you using the name of the PC on its own or "PCname.local"?
Cheers,
Rodney

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