sheesh ... i guess i should never assume anything. the fstab mount command you gave me earlier had your share mounted in /media, so i didn't foresee you having a problem with the -R switch.

you shouldn't have to use the places menu to browse your share. you should see it in your home directory as an additional folder, just as though it's physically located in your ubuntu machine. but maybe i'm just misunderstanding what you meant.

try copying a file to your share via the command line and see if there are errors shown.