Would a mac mini be able to do these things?

I'd like it to be my download device while I'm away from home. Got it in a trade, so I didn't have to shell out money for it. When I say download device, I mean I log on from my slow connection remotely, and tell it to download movies or whatever from the fast internet connection at home. I'm away from home a few weeks at a time. I was thinking of getting a NAS, but since I have the mini now, it would be great if it do the following. It's a core duo 2.0ghz, 120gb drive model.

1. I'd like it to at least have password protection while I'm away. My daughter has company from time to time, and I don't want someone to screw around with it. Are passwords on Leopard relatively secure? Or easy to get around?

2. Can I set it up to auto-login on boot, autorun vnc, a torrent program, etc? If the power goes out, I'd like to tell her to hit the power button, and it's up and running on it's own.

3. If it's password protected on site, can I remote login while maintaining the password protection locally? Or once I remote login, anyone can see what I'm doing in front of the computer?

4. Can I login from a windows machine with vnc? The only things I really want to do is tell what torrents and nzb's to get. If there's a better way, I'm all for it.

5. For heat/power consumption, is it better to install a bigger internal drive(500gb) or plug a usb external to it?

Thanks!

1. You can set password protection to start when the screensaver comes on (a minimum of three minutes). It shouldn't be too easy to get around that; of course, I wouldn't leave any computer in a public place only protected by a password, but if you're only wanting to discourage a few visitors, that should be enough.

2. You can set up auto-login and as many startup programs as you'd like. In addition to the screen saver and lock settings mentioned above, this should work fine for you. Also, there is a setting that automatically restarts the computer in the case of power failure. I haven't tried it personally, but it sounds like it would work perfectly for your needs.

3. I'm not quite sure about this; I've never observed what is shown on the local display during a remote connection.

4. I think this is possible with Leopard, as it does use the VNC protocol to my knowledge, but again I haven't tried it.

5. You can set the internal hard disk to sleep when not in use in System Preferences. I'm not sure whether that would be better than an external drive, but it is possible.

Overall, I'd say that the easiest way to accomplish what you're wanting to do would be to use a torrent program that provides a web interface, which would eliminate the uncertainties of your third and fourth questions. Transmission comes to my mind as the easiest way to set that up. You simply have to mark one check box in the preferences, and it does the rest for you. From there, you could type in your home IP address in addition to the port that you set, and you could view your current downloads and add new ones from wherever you are.

Thanks for the response. Transmission sounds great! Is there a similar program for nzb's?

Newmack said:

Thanks for the response. Transmission sounds great! Is there a similar program for nzb's?

Click to expand...

unison in my opinion is the best for NZB's. there are other programs that offer more features that you might have been use to with windows but if you are new to OS X and not familiar with terminal then stick with Unison.

as far as your other ?'s:

1. secure they wont get around them.

2. yes i have mine setup that way also using transmission.

3. they will see what your doing if your monitor is on but not if it is off.

4. yes and you will find that it is easier especially when away from home than your windows machines are.

5. i prefer a bigger internal HDD but i do not know the exact research results on this.

Thx again for the reply Fletch.

Just thought of something else. If I save the files with the mac mini using an external usb drive, could I plug that into my windows laptop and use them right away, or do I have to specify some kind of format? And if I use Fat32, is there a way around the 4gb limit? I think dvd iso's are 4.37gb?

In other words, is there a format that both Mac and PC's can read? Or what's a good utility to get to read off the Mac format to a Windows drive? Thanks!

i dont recommend FAT32 for reasons beyond the 4GB limit. you have a coupe things here:

1. if you want to physically connect the drive to each machine then you would need to decide whether to format it for mac (journaled) or windows (ntfs) then you would need either MacDrive to allow your windows to write to the mac (journaled) drive or NTFS for Mac to let your mac write to the NTFS drive.

2. or you could just pick a side and leave the external connected to it and you can write to it from either. basically if it is connected to your mac or your windows and you share the drive then you can read/write from both.

I got it set up and running yesterday. I wish there was a way to prevent someone from hitting %-S or whatever the combination is at bootup, and running a few commands to reset the password. Can't have it all I guess.

The only problem I came upon was transmission. How can I remotely queue up torrents? I enabled remote connection, but when I access it remotely, the only button I can click besides settings is the "open" button. I enter a url, nothing happens. I've read about Clutch, but I use Vista on the laptop away from home. Any way around this?

Thanks again

Rather than entering a URL try downloading the torrent file onto your laptop and then uploading that to transmission on your mac via the web interface. That's what I do and it works perfectly.

Tom

Have been trying to do what you've said tsmith, can't get it to work. It won't do anything when I upload the .torrent file. The url link works when I put it in Safari or IE(not Firefox for some reason). However, every torrent I put in this way gives me an invalid passkey error.

Any other torrent programs allow remote web access/queuing?