(Noob ex win user) File Alias' and apple scripts helpt please?

Just turn file sharing on in system preference and share the disk with the movies on it between the 2 computers. On the computer you want to connect to the remote disk with, in the finder in the menu bar do Go > Network.

There's no reason to ever turn a Mac off. You should always just put it to sleep.

 

If a computer consumed anything more than a tiny trickle of electricity while asleep, then it wouldn't have been awarded Energy Star status by the US's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html
http://www.energystar.gov/
http://www.epa.gov/

EDIT:
Even if you save more than an insignificant amount of energy by turning the computer off instead of sleeping it, it still wouldn't make sense energy-wise. Cold startups shorten the life of all the components in your computer. It takes a LOT of energy to produce every single piece of equipment in your computer. Lets say over the lifetime of the computer you save 10,000* joules of energy by turning it off instead of putting it to sleep, but which leads to your hard drive dying and needing to be replaced before the life of the computer is over. Manufacturing a new hard drive and having it trucked to the store where you bought it will consume 100,000,000* joules of energy. And buying a new hard drive will cost you way more than the dollar or two you'd save in your electricity bill.

No matter how you slice it, it just doesn't make sense to turn your computer off instead of putting it to sleep.

( * = these numbers are just made up for the purposes of clarity on the issue, the actual numbers will be different but will have a similar order of magnitude disparity)

 

On the shared movies folder thing, if I'm understanding what you want to do correctly, I've done exactly that fairly recently. All I did was turn on File Sharing on each Mac in question, mount the Mac from another Mac, and drag an Alias of the mounted computer's Movies folder into the Movies folder on the other Mac. All the stuff in the mounted computer showed up in Front Row just fine.

The only "trick" is, when connecting to the remote Mac, you make sure to check the "Remember Password" box when logging in--that should allow you to auto-connect to that computer without any confirmation dialogues.

In Leopard, since you can pick the specific folder to share, you can just share the Movies folder directly instead of the whole Home folder, and just make an alias of that, mounted, on another Mac. Should work fine.

The only hitch I can think of is that perhaps Front Row won't cause the network volume to auto-mount by itself, in which case you'd need to either open it to mount it first, or add it to the Login Items to make it mount at startup.


On the power-down question: You're partly right--a computer does use a bit of power when sleeping. However, as with anything with a "soft" power switch, it also uses some power when completely off--a "phantom load" if you've heard the term.

I haven't put a wattmeter on a recent Mini, but I know for a fact (I've measured) that a lot of Apple's older computers draw nearly the same amount of power asleep as off, so there was nearly no benefit to shutting them down at all.

A G5 tower, however, does improve somewhat--it appears to power down nearly everything when off, so is very close to zero (as opposed to some computers which I've seen draw as much as 10W when completely "off"), while it's a couple of watts asleep. Not sure which end of that the Mini is on, although since it uses almost all laptop components, it's probably pretty low.

Just tested my MBP (old CD, not C2D), which is probably closer to a mini: 2.2W asleep, 1.2W off (that's without the battery in both cases, though there wasn't a measurable difference with a charged battery in).


So, if it's worth it to you to shut the computers down (I'm all for energy savings!), that's fine, but I don't think there's a default way to do that with the remote. You might look at apps that add extra functionality to the remote--you can probably link an Applescript to a button to soft shutdown.

Truth be told though, if you really want to save power, you're going to need to put the computer on a power strip and flip the switch after shutting it down--that's the only way to get zero.


Edit: No useful suggestion on the DOS thing, but if you have (or get) a copy of Parallels or VMWare Fusion (which can be had for $40 after rebates), I'd guess you could run DOS in a virtual machine (without rebooting), give it control over whatever component you need, and do the updates that way...

 

I'll agree with you on the power thing. People leave too many things on 'standby' and it wastes too much electricity. (leaving a screen on standby overnight wastes enough energy to print 1000 pages using a printer)

For remote control software, hop over to macheist.com

They recently gave away sofa control in one of their missions. If you sign up you 'may' get the loot (I doubt it) or you could ask in the forums for a copy off someone that has already bought the licence.

 

While we all understand what you are asking, what you are not doing is listening to the responses of people with experience. You are approaching a group with questions as a newcomer to Mac's and OS X and yet you are unwilling to consider the solutions being posed. Perhaps the problem is not with the answers, but you being unwilling to accept them as correct because they conflict with your pre-existing beliefs.

What has been proposed by respondants is correct and before you jump up and down screaming 'but thats not how I want to do it', try doing a little research that will back up the answers given.

If you really want to go the route of shutting down equipment, then in Sys. Prefs./Screen Sharing, enable it and set the appropriate options. That will allow you to remote in and do a shutdown. An alternative is to SSH in and issue a shutdown which could also be scripted. (As you already know what you want to do, I'm confident you already know the answer to how to do this)

Sharing does work, if you understand how to set it up and with OS X its very, very simple. Try using Google for a beginner's how to.

For the job of running a DOS prompt, the solutions given so far are valid, using software like VMware Fusion or Parallels, or alternatively a free one like QEMU.

If this sounds a tad harsh, its due to an unwillingness on your part to openly consider the options given to you.

 

Thank you for so eloquently expressing what I was feeling but was holding back from saying due to my certainty that I wouldn't be able to do it as politely as you just did. If a person asks a question, and is given an answer that is clearly backed up by evidence, logic, and reason, then the asker can't just say I don't like that answer. If you aren't willing to at least seriously consider answers that people freely give to you, and then explain exactly why you might disagree, then you shouldn't ask questions in the first place.

 

http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/system_requirements.html
Dos is supported in Fusion. Also, Fusion is my preferred and recommended virtualization software.

 

You're welcome

Glad I could help.

 

Assuming the aforementioned PM wasn't about this issue, and you're running Leopard on the machines in question, it should be easy:

First, create a user account on the Macs you want to share movies from--non-admin, which won't give that user access to any of the other users' private files.

Then, in the File Sharing pref pane section, add the Movies folder to the list. Click on it, and in the Users list to the right add the non-admin user.

Done. If you connect using that user you should be able to access the Movies folder, but nothing else.

Possible you might have to also change permissions on that folder to give the new user access--I'm not sure if File Sharing does this automatically for you.