I have a iMac - PC home network (with and Airport Extreme router).
I have my iTunes library on the iMac and the PC on another floor. I share the music from the Mac to the PC. This works fine unless the iMac is sleeping. If the Mac is sleeping, the windows PC can’t see the shared iTunes directory.
I’d like to figure out a way to wake the iMac from the PC so I can access the shared library.
Other possible solutions:
Never sleep the iMac (how much power does it save when sleeping? I assume the screen will continue to be off but the mac itself will be “awake.”)
I could also copy the entire library to the PC (at least I think I can do this), but then I have to deal with keeping the libraries synched. Plus, and the PC is older and might not even have the room to hold the whole library (~10GB).
I could also just suck it up and buy an iPod. I like this solution, but I don’t think my SO will go for that.
Any advice or other possible solutions?
I’ve seen that article before and I have the mac set to wake on all of the available options (modem ring and ethernet admin access). The PCs iTunes lookup attempt doesn’t seem to be enough to wake it, though.
The Apple support article says this:
IMPORTANT: If you select this option, a Wake-on-LAN packet is required to wake the computer. Using the Terminal commands ssh and telnet will not wake the computer.
So I guess my question then becomes, how do I generate an administrator wake-on-LAN packet from my PC to the iMac (and have it be less of a PITA than just going downstairs and waking it up the old fashioned way)?
Could you put the PC where the iMac is and vice-versa? Then you just hit the space bar or click the mouse and you’re in business. I assume you need these guys where they are, or you would have done this already.
If I did that, then I’d have the same problem when I wanted iTunes downstairs. I am starting to think the easiest answer is to set the mac to shut off the monitor, but not sleep. Any idea what that does to power consumption?