iBook - PC interaction questions

Hello everyone!

I am totally new to Apple. I ordered my new iBook G4 today and it will arrive in some 10 days. Meanwhile I want to know few things. I have a Dell i9300 notebook and I plan to exchange documents between my two notebooks extensively. Both Dell and iBook have wireless adapters built-in. Will I be able to create a wireless network between the two machines to copy files? Is it hard to do? I imagine that Windows XP PC will not see my iBook hard drive, is that right? Will iBook be able to access Windows' machine HD?

If there will be problems with wireless LAN, can I built a small network using standard ethernet cable? Will it work fine?

And finally, a little off-topic issue - is there a Virtual CD/DVD software availbale for use with Macs? I deal a lot with authoring and CD/DVD images, so the ability to mount virtual disks on iBook would be VERY useful. I mean to mount native Apple *.toast, *.dmg and *.cdr files.

I realize how stupid these questions probably are, but I have no experience with Mac computers whatsoever, and I hope you can help me with it.

EDIT: I also fail to understand one very basic thing: if I have two computers with wireless cards installed do I need something else to connect them together in a network ( like a router or something)? Or it work just like an ethernet cable should?