Can't simple copy from a Mac to my ext HD

I have an external hard drive, I reformated it so I could use Vista's backup.
Now it seems that when my brother inlaw tries to put some music files(Itunes) that the hard disc is unavailable to his computer. At this stage it seems that Vista has conned me into destroying a perfectly good WD harddrive!
I have created a second partion on the hard drive and I am reformatting that, as I write this, but the only formatting option seems to be this NTFS, and that is what I had already formatted the ExtHD to so I think this formatting will be to no avail!
From what I can figure I need to format into FAT but I tried a quick format an ex-fat option was there, but the problem was the same. I am becoming more frustrated with Vista, seems I just keep running into things that should be simple and aren't!

Not a strictly Vista Problem

Apple - Support - Downloads - Mac OS X Combined Update 10.3.9

The problem is that I know not enough to easily find the solution. The Vista NTFS file system is not transportable to other operating system. A flsh drive worked and gave me a clue, needed FAT, then I had to work out using Vista how to reformat to FAT32, somewhere along one of the circles I was caught in I found the size limitation (what the 32 means) then once I sumized that I went round a few more circles till I could reduce the size of a partition and then format to FAT32. So I eventually reached escape velocity, and achieved what I thought would be a simple file transfer from one computer to another. Perhaps the fact that Vista doesn't make it easy for me who has an amount of problem solving ability, isn't strictly a Vista problem, but I doubt that the average first time computer owner would be praising Vista, or suceeding in the few simple things like playing an MP4 file, or transfering files from an XP machine!
That said I have worked out that Vista is the best operating system from Microsoft yet, it is just that the best of a not so good bunch is is not much!

Don't give up on Vista. It is by far the best operating system produced by Microsoft, more powerful and easier to use than XP. That said, it is still only an operating system, although a lot more sophisticated than many others, and the mechanism to allows you to use specialist programs to perform tasks. Once you get your head around that concept I think you will appreciate Vista more.

Hi Cliff

The problem here is that Microsoft and Apple, being competitors, will unfortunately I think never go out of their way to make their products work together easily.

Saying that I do personally feel that it should be apple (with about 7% of the OS market), that provides compatibility with Microsoft's NTFS. relying on the outdated FAT system is not really good enough.

The update that I linked to in my original post does seem to indicate that Apple are doing this so there is hope.

If you need to interact between the MAC and PC, at present, on a regular basis then you may need a third party App on the MAC to accomplish this

A google Search does give a few options

read write NTFS on MAC - Google Search

hope this helps