There are more Windows books than Linux books, true, but there's less for Windows than Linux that actually addresses complex issues in a useful manner. You can always find a book, for instance, called Microsoft Office for Dummies, but you'll have a harder time finding Windows Heterogenous Network Servers (as a hypothetical example). Meanwhile, there are several books at any given time in any credible bookstore chain dealing with Linux network servers that will include, among other things, information about setting up network services for heterogenous networks. It all depends on what you want to find.

For online help, I recommend LUG mailing lists. You don't have to be local to a mailing list, and if you join a couple and just watch for a little bit it should become rapidly clear what you can expect from each of them. Sure, you should expect the occasional "ha ha only serious" recommendation to ditch Windows entirely, since they are after all Linux User Groups and not Windows User Groups, but at the same time there are uncountable LUG mailing lists out there where help with homogenous network configuration using Samba is a trivial task, even if you're talking about Windows with people who hate it. As long as your post isn't entirely off-topic and only about Windows, you should be fine.

Meanwhile, Windows user groups tend to not only be hostile to Linux users, but the people in them are usually completely clueless about how to make Windows and Linux interoperate on a network. Even worse, try calling Windows tech support some time and asking them about homogenous networking services for Windows/Linux mixed environments. Good luck with that.

Besides, if one of the first three replies online to a question about integrating Linux with Windows just tells you to ditch Windows, the other two are likely to be helpful.

It's true that the Windows platform provides a certain amount of ease of use to beginners by removing the responsibility of making choices from the user, but ultimately that is itself a choice of the user. When you choose Windows, you're writing off everything else. The reasons you do so had better be good: doing so because it simply limits your options is not such a good reason, and it in no way ensures you're getting a good solution to your problem. Personally, I like options.

I'm not a huge fan of info pages, of course, but manpages are exceedingly easy to use. Once you open it, use the arrow keys to navigate. When you want to quit the manpage viewer, hit the Q key. Anything else is just bonus functionality, very useful but not necessary for basic use, and you can learn it at your leisure (by typing "man man" if need be). There are also GUI front-ends for manpages available, and most of the kitchen sink distributions out there provide such tools by default. These GUIs usually take the form of browser-based markup-processed manpages, so all you really need is your web browser and you'll be in business. The specific tool at your disposal will vary from distro to distro, but most often it will be something like man2html, which "just works" when you have a default httpd service on your machine (all you have to do is point your browser at the start page for the man2html system).