[BWSchultz]

I've been thinking a lot lately about adding a Mac Mini to the living room (as I'm sure many have). Currently, I have a G5 in my office on an airport extreme wirelessly sending itunes to the living room's airport express and onto my stereo.

I'd like to add a Mac Mini to the living room so I can play video files and DVDs using front row on my TV. And now my random string of questions...

Will I be able to see the G5 desktop in the living room via the Mac Mini? I've heard of people mounting each computer as a drive on the other computer. How does this work with multiple users? Do you have access to all user's files? Can you select which folders are shared between the two? For instance, on my G5 I have a folder called "media." Can I share the G5 with the Mini such that I only see the "media" folder and nothing else?

If I'm using the Mini in the living room and click on a G5 Excel file, will it start Excel on the G5 or the Mini? (Running an app via ethernet can't be good) Will the wireless ethernet have enough bandwidth to watch a large video file on the TV? Or should I copy the video file from the G5 to the Mini first?

I'm sorry for the plethora of questions. I'm just seeing how functional this will be for me so I can justify spending the $800-$1000 for the Mini.

[SWFan]

1. Limiting access by user to resources on the G5 is only going to be possible using OS X Server, not the standard client OS. In fact, you won't be able to mount anything but the user account's /home directory when you login unless all your logins are using the Admin userid, then you'll be able to see other drives/partitions on the G5.

2. Regarding Excel, Excel will NOT run off the G5, it will need to be installed on the Mini to open the Excel file.

In regards to watching video over 802.11g, it works okay if its a compressed file, but trying to watch uncompressed DVD's will basically be impossible. What will happen is you'll get it going and it will start pausing/stuttering. Using VLC and upping the buffer time you can get decent streaming on divx and other mpeg-4 files, though you won't be able to easily FF in the clip due to the large lag from the buffer. If you're encoding the videos yourself and you're using Quicktime, QT offers a "streaming" option during the encode process. If you click that you can get decent performance when watching QT videos. Without it checked you'll pretty much need to watch everything in VLC where you control the buffer size.

[BWSchultz]

So what I'm gathering from this is that once I set up file sharing on both machines, I will only be able to mount the drives/users/files that are under admin rights? What about files that are on a second hard drive of the G5 that are not assigned to a particular user?

As far as watching videos, it makes sense to copy the files to the Mini first. For me, it's just a matter of having access to the files on the G5 while logged into the Mini. I want to be able to transfer files between the two via a bluetooth keyboard/mouse from the couch and then watch them on the TV.

In terms of the excel file, if I had Excel installed on both machines, I could open a file residing on a G5 hard drive on the Mini, update it, and then save it again onto the G5 hard drive, correct? I don't want to have to copy it to the mini, work on it, and then overwrite the original file on the G5.

[SWFan]

1. If you connect to the G5 share and login as a non-admin account then all you will see is that account's home directory. However, if you authenticate using the G5's admin user account then you should be able to see ALL resources on the G5, which is kind of the problem, you have no control over what a person has access to when logging in that way. If you're the only user then its not that big of a deal, if this will be in a multi-user environment then I strongly suggest upgrading the G5 to OS X Server.

2. On the Excel file, yes, if you open a file stored on the G5 with the Mini then a regular save will update the file on the G5.

[BWSchultz]

Originally Posted by SWFan

1. If you connect to the G5 share and login as a non-admin account then all you will see is that account's home directory. However, if you authenticate using the G5's admin user account then you should be able to see ALL resources on the G5, which is kind of the problem, you have no control over what a person has access to when logging in that way. If you're the only user then its not that big of a deal, if this will be in a multi-user environment then I strongly suggest upgrading the G5 to OS X Server

It is a multi-user environment. So even though I don't have access to another user's account while logged in under my account (admin), if I log in to the share as myself (admin) I WILL have access to other user accounts on the G5? Very interesting.

What about something like Apple Remote Desktop? Or is that completely off the mark?

[SWFan]

Apple Remote Desktop would be like sitting in front of the computer. Again, if you're connecting as an Admin acct, then you technically will have access to all the resources on the computer.

Again, what you really need is to be running OS X Server so you can set up proper shares and permissions.