Understanding user accounts, administrators, volumes, permissions, etc.

I'm totally flummoxed by the variations and differentiations of users, accounts, short names, long names, volumes, etc. A lot of this happened as we now have 3 macs, in addition to external drives on one G5. I feel like I'm a newbie asking these questions, even though I've been a Mac user since '88.
1. On the individual machine, in the default finder window I see, in one case, "<My Name>s' Computer." When I got a MBP, I wasn't thinking and set it up as well as "<My Name>'s Computer." When I network between the two through browsing, the MBP was renamed "<My Name>'s Computer(2). How can I change the name of one computer so that I don't have this confusion? I foolishly renamed a user and just learned that doesn't solve the problem and creates other problems.
2. Also, is that name "<My Name>'s Computer" the "long name?" When I created the new user problem, I still see a user "<myname>" all lower-case, no spaces. Is that the short name? And, the directory under Users now includes a "<myname>" with only a few folders of recent docs. Was that created when I renamed that user?
3. On the G5, I have 2 user accounts, mine & my wife's. My account is also the admin account. However, I find that if I'm logged in as myself (admin) and I want to look at all of her folders, I'm locked out. Even if I try to Get Info and change the read/write permissions, sometimes I still can't access those folders. (I'll add that she doesn't know beans about permissions and we have a nice, open relationship!)
4. Should there be an admin account with superuser rights on all machines? Is it okay if there's a user who is also admin?
5. When I browse for another machine, I see "<My Name>'s Computer" but then when I connect to that machine and I log in as one of the registered users for that machine, I see volumes, which can lead to users, but locks me out of those user's files.
6. I see some help on these boards through postings which link to Technical Articles, but is there any good online resource or book recommended? Of course, the technical articles have links, but they are not sequenced, so they have no context. Mac Help is not terribly detailed.
B&W G3, 2Ghz G5, MacBook Pro, Mini, lots of boxes with wires and lights and things   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

Hi Lee,
1. On the individual machine, in the default finder window I see, in one case, "<My Name>s' Computer." When I got a MBP, I wasn't thinking and set it up as well as "<My Name>'s Computer." When I network between the two through browsing, the MBP was renamed "<My Name>'s Computer(2). How can I change the name of one computer so that I don't have this confusion? I foolishly renamed a user and just learned that doesn't solve the problem and creates other problems.
renaming the drive with disk utility should work.
2. Also, is that name "<My Name>'s Computer" the "long name?" When I created the new user problem, I still see a user "<myname>" all lower-case, no spaces. Is that the short name? And, the directory under Users now includes a "<myname>" with only a few folders of recent docs. Was that created when I renamed that user?
yes, thatt's the shortname
3. On the G5, I have 2 user accounts, mine & my wife's. My account is also the admin account. However, I find that if I'm logged in as myself (admin) and I want to look at all of her folders, I'm locked out. Even if I try to Get Info and change the read/write permissions, sometimes I still can't access those folders. (I'll add that she doesn't know beans about permissions and we have a nice, open relationship!)
Only the root user can view the contents of another user's account.
4. Should there be an admin account with superuser rights on all machines? Is it okay if there's a user who is also admin?
yes, you can have multiple admins. you need at least one admin on each machine (unless you're running a server environment.
5. When I browse for another machine, I see "<My Name>'s Computer" but then when I connect to that machine and I log in as one of the registered users for that machine, I see volumes, which can lead to users, but locks me out of those user's files.
refer to root user comment.
6. I see some help on these boards through postings which link to Technical Articles, but is there any good online resource or book recommended? Of course, the technical articles have links, but they are not sequenced, so they have no context. Mac Help is not terribly detailed.
try Google or Amazon when looking for self-help/guide books on OSX
hope this is ok
regards,
Pete.

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