Thanks... honestly, this site has been a fantastic resource.
Basically I'm planning to turn the iMac into a media centre... it will contain hundreds of movies, tens of thousands of songs, etc. This is obviously too much to put on a laptop hard drive at current sizes, but I'd like to be able to access a movie or two, or copy a certain album to my laptop, over the Internet while I'm away from the house.
I know these items can be stored on a Time Capsule or other NAS drive, but I'm hoping to do it direct from my iMac's internal hard drive. Possible?
Thanks again for your help!
yea this site is great! i have learnt so much from here.
it is most certainly possible, i have a setup similar to what you want.
im glad that you wish to copy the music/movie to your computer first, then play it - streaming would be a lot harder.
do you have a static or dynamic external IP address? this is an important question, as a static address adds a few extra points. also, do you have a ABES/Time Capsule?
here is a basic rundown on the steps:
1. open up the specific ports on your router (these will be the AFP ports). you must enable these few ports to be open so that the connections can be made to the computer.
2. enable file sharing on your mac - you can use encryption and whatnot, and only share certain folders. its pretty secure.
3. find out the external IP address of your computer network, when you are out and about you can "Connect to server"

apple: + k when in the finder) and use the external IP address of your computer network to connect to it.
that is basically it, of course its not always that easy but that is the run down. when i want to file share externally, i must set the IP of my computer sharing the data to the IP of the router (this is called DMZ mode).
any questions or whatnot just PM/email/msn me. im always on haha