Running apps in background while another user loged in?

[Karnivore]

I apologize if my post title is a bit confusing, so I'll skip straight to the scenario.

We will be gifting my daughter a Mini for Christmas. I will create a separate restricted user account just for her, just to make sure she doesn't mess up the Mini as she's only 8 y/o and likes to tinker.

Is it possible for me to log in (admin) and launch iTunes so it will serve up music and movies to Apple TV then switch to her account and leave iTunes running in background under my account?

I hope my scenario was more clear then title

 

[spinnerlys]

That will work, though iTunes will stop playing music when switching the account, but the Apple TV should still be able to connect to the mini's iTunes library.

 

[Karnivore]

Wonderful to know! Do you know if it's possible to perform other tasks in background, such as Handbrake conversion or file downloads?

Thank you for a quick answer!

 

[spinnerlys]

Wonderful to know! Do you know if it's possible to perform other tasks in background, such as Handbrake conversion or file downloads?

Thank you for a quick answer!

Yes, everything will run like if you would be actually using the Mac, except that no sound will come from it. But know, that Handbrake will use the CPU at high percentage, thus the other account might experience some slow downs.

 

[Karnivore]

Yes, everything will run like if you would be actually using the Mac, except that no sound will come from it. But know, that Handbrake will use the CPU at high percentage, thus the other account might experience some slow downs.

Would expending the memory to 8 GB help? If we're talking 10%-20% performance gain, then it's probably not worth it, but if I can run Handbrake in the background while she's watching a movie then it may be worth it. What do you think?

Again, thank you for answering my questions.

 

[spinnerlys]

Would expending the memory to 8 GB help? If we're talking 10%-20% performance gain, then it's probably not worth it, but if I can run Handbrake in the background while she's watching a movie then it may be worth it. What do you think?

Again, thank you for answering my questions.

8GB might help if you have many applications open and your daughter has many applications open, but more RAM will not take Handbrake away from the CPU. Anyway, I ran several Handbrake encodings in the background for hours on a 2007 C2D 2GHz CPU and I could still watch some video (SD or HD) and it went without problems. It might be the same with different users. You can always test when the machine comes.