Can a mac mini hook up to an iBook?

I got a used iBook for $300 last october and it works great, but there's some stuff missing from it i think and there's a ton of stuff I want to get for it; iLife '05, OSX Tiger, an external harddrive (it only has like 27GB and I make a lot of movies on there, which takes up a lot), and an external CD burner/DVD Player/DVD burner. I was looking at the mac mini's, and I could get all of that stuff together. The only thing is, I don't wanna get rid of the iBook; so I was wondering...could I somehow connect the two so that I could use the iBook's moniter, keyboard, and mouse for the mac mini?

the only way to do that is to use a vnc client.. Its not perfect, but it can be done.. If you do it over ethernet its realy fast if you do it over wireless its fast but you can tell that you are not on that computer, and you can do it over the internet but even over cable its very choppy. I would say get a screen for the mac mini if you don't already have one and get a mouse and keyboard as well.. It can hurt to have 2 computers because there is always that chance that one of them will break and you will be left with nothing.. I do like the idea you have of using the mac mini instead of buying all the other things, will probably save you alot of money, and you get to use it by itself as well.

PowerBookG4 said:

the only way to do that is to use a vnc client.. Its not perfect, but it can be done.. ..l.

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I would agree that it is technically possible.
However, it is far, far from perfect and really IMO isn't really usable by that method. You would be much better off just getting the Mini and keeping the iBook for a secondary computer.
The "using a laptop as a keyboard/monitor/HD for a different computer" question has been asked before, and to sum it up...the answer is really no, you can't.

:black:

There's no way to do what you want, except for VNC. But you can use Target Disk Mode on either with a firewire cable. This would make the other machine show up as an external drive. I do this all the time with my iBook and Mini.

you can boot your ibook on your mini with firewire. and also if you want to transfer files you can plug your ibook into your mini with firewire and it should show up as a removable HD(i think you need to hold down a few keys during start up on the ibook to make it go into disk mode but i know you can boot a laptop off a desktop and you can have your laptop act as a removable HD on a desktop seen it in person at the mac store the guy showed me how to do it but i dont rem the 2 key you hold down on start up on your laptop its apple+ ____ should be in your manual)

that how you transfer files and apps. but i dont know if you can use your ibook as a display prob and you prob cant use your keyboard on your ibook.

That's right. You can boot the ibook into Target Disk Mode, then boot up the Mini while holding down the option key to select the boot disk. You can then select the iBook (connected firewire) as the boot disk for that session. Now you've got all the software and data from the iBook running on the more powerful mini. Going the other way around is also possible, booting the iBook from the Mini's HD, but I can't see much benefit in that.

Hold down T after the chime to boot into Target Disk Mode.

Sell the iBook as is and use it to buy a decent keyboard/mouse/monitor.

yea you could get a really nice 19inch flatscreen LCD for about 250$ then i recommend apples bluetooth keyboard and mouse on the mini to free up usb ports that will run about 100$. and i just sold my old powerbook G3 233mhz for 150$ so you should easily get a lot more for your ibook.