Question regarding mac mini w/leopard server

[JWFerne]

I want to get a mac mini in my house to serve as a central "always on" server for music, video, documents etc. I have 3 macs already + appleTV. I also have a drobo pro that will be connected to the machine for mass storage.

My question to you bright people out there... what does the Leopard Server offer that would make it a good choice (or not) verse just buying a stock Mac Mini?

I don't completely understand what the server offers much beyond the main OS. I guess I'm tempted to buy the server Mac Mini version based on curiosity and knowledge gain than anything.

Thanks!

 

[macuser154]

Well, as you may know, the Mini Server comes with two 500GB internal drives, whereas the standard mini can only be configured with one internal drive. Although in order to fit two drives in Apple has removed the optical drive from the Server Mini.

For what your doing (File Sharing) you won't notice any benefits with OS X server. Standard OS X has file sharing built in, and presumably you will be using iTunes to share movies, so you won't really see a difference. SL Server is basically OS X with "business-specific" services, like DNS, FTP, web hosting etc. bolted onto it.

 

[JWFerne]

Thank you very much. That’s the info I needed.

Cheers!