Is it possible for Ubuntu to talk to a Windows 7 Homegroup?

I suspect not, but I'm curious, after tearing my hair out over trying to get a printer to work over the network(Ubuntu to Win7) and the problem being simply that it was being shared over Homegroup, not Workgroup.

For anyone who stumbles on this question looking for help - if a printer is automatically shared via Homegroup, that does not mean it is shared over the workgroup. To share over a workgroup requires you to have a valid set of credentials on the Windows machine.

Anyhoo, I know Homegroup and Workgroup work via different protocols. My question is, is there a shim to make Ubuntu talk to a Homegroup, or are we stuck networking with Windows like it's 2004?

Info from this UbuntuForums thread (and this one, too!)

Samba (the network protocol used in Ubuntu) was designed to communicate with the CIFS protocol used in earlier versions of Windows. HomeGroup in Windows 7 uses a whole new protocol. So, it is NOT possible.