easier way to turn on mac mini?

When the mini is off, it's *off*. There is no way to turn it on except by hitting the power switch.

An exception is that you can tell the mini to start up automatically after a power failure – but cutting power to a running OS is asking for trouble in the long run.

But why turn it off in the first place? The mini uses next to no power while sleeping, and can be woken by mouse or keyboard. I haven't touched the power button of my mini since I plugged it in the first time.

Alternatively, since the mini is so small, you might consider putting it somewhere that is easier to reach.

A.

Shadylane315 said:

I am setting up a mac mini for a friend who is an elderly and I need an easier way to turn on a mac mini instead of having him reach down in the bottom and extend his arm all the way into the back of the mini. Is there a remote control somewhere that can be programmed?

thanks!

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Your friend doesn't need to do anything. The Mac Mini, by default, will automatically go to sleep in about 10 minutes. If he wants to use the mac again, simply wake it up with the mouse or keyboard.

And he doesn't need to turn it off, unless he is planning a weekend trip or something.

dont bother about turning it off, all my macs are sleeping very well and use not much power then , and one mousclick and they are awake ,
cant be easier then that

If you don't use the optical drive very much just turn it around so the power button is facing forward

I'd suggest to your friend that they keep the mini on the desk/table near the front where its easy to reach, and only turn it off at night. The power button at the back is the only way to turn it on when its *off*.

Cheers!

i remember years ago i could turn on computer by pushing a button on the key board. is this still possible? maybe with a 3rd party keyboard? i always liked that feature

foofan said:

i remember years ago i could turn on computer by pushing a button on the key board. is this still possible? maybe with a 3rd party keyboard? i always liked that feature

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Yeah, I kinda miss that one, too.

I never turn my mini off. I restart maybe once a month, but you don't need to get to the power button for that.

foofan said:

i remember years ago i could turn on computer by pushing a button on the key board. is this still possible? maybe with a 3rd party keyboard? i always liked that feature

Click to expand...

Yeah, I had that on my Preforma and my LC3 lol... Don't know why they took it away, it made desktops easier to turn on, because a lot of people ask me how you turn on an iMac

The power button thing is a violation of USB standards.

The mini uses little electricity while on (20W or so)- it is basically a laptop.

ADent said:

The power button thing is a violation of USB standards.

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I guess that's why we lost it...

Why not just plug the mini into a power strip and set it to turn on when power comes up? you could plug the monitor/speakers into the same power strip and put it at a convenient spot.

Another possibility would be to use System Preferences/Energy Saver to Schedule it to startup and/or shutdown at a specific time each day. This would save him the trouble of using the power switch each day but it would still be available if he needed it during an "off" time.

I would just put it to sleep each time. I do that with my iMac and haven't had any problems. I only shut it down when I'm updating

ADent said:

The power button thing is a violation of USB standards.

The mini uses little electricity while on (20W or so)- it is basically a laptop.

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How is it a violation?

mrsir2009 said:

How is it a violation?

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From: http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=USB

If you plug in a Macintosh keyboard to a Windows machine, you will blue screen the computer, if you press the power button. This is because the USB implementation on a Macintosh involves dropping the fourth pin low to turn on the machine. This signal, which is out of spec for USB, is not handled by many drivers, including that of Windows 2000 RTM. The low fourth pin tells the Macintosh to come out of sleep mode, or to turn on or off.

SNIP

Finally, the USB committee got the them to fix up their keyboards, and now they do something in software for that key, or so I am told.

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Also around this time Apple really started to use standard components and drop custom designed stuff that had little Apple features.