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.

If you have another Mac (10.5 or above) or an iPad or iPhone, you can remote into the Mini and control it as if you were sitting in front of it. There are two steps to get this working. The first step is to configure the Mini to allow screen sharing. Here are instructions if your Mini runs 10.6 (Snow Leopard):

Mac OS X 10.6 Help: Sharing your screen with other computer users

Instructions are similar if your Mini runs 10.7 (Lion):

OS X Lion: Share your screen with other computer users

The second step is controlling the Mini from another Mac:

Mac OS X 10.6 Help: Sharing the screen of another computer

OS X Lion: Share the screen of another computer

If you don't have another Mac, iPad or iPhone (heaven forbid), but you have a Windows computer, you can use VNC software. You still need to configure screen sharing on the Mini (first step above). Then, you need to get the VNC software on your Windows computer and configure it. Here are some good options:

http://www.wyse.com/products/software/mobility/PocketCloud
http://www.tightvnc.com
http://www.realvnc.com

I hope this helps!