Headless MacMini

I use a headless Mac Mini also and hope to see some good info here. Mine has a keyboard attached as well as a wireless mouse. Putting it to sleep with the keyboard is doable, but the only way I know to turn it off is to hold the power button until it goes off.

why not just set it to go to sleep after X hours of inactivity? I know there are some that say you need to turn off all of these sorts of options to achieve optimum sound, but I hear no difference in my modest system. Or, you can just leave it on all the time.

Do you have another computer and a home network?

Screen sharing works very well for me!

Are you logging in to the Mac Mini from another PC? If so, the terminal command "shutdown -h now" for halt or "shutdown -r now" for reboot. These are standard Unix commands.