Page 13 in the Mac mini manual:

Put Your Mac mini to Sleep
[...]
To put your Mac mini to sleep quickly, do one of the following:
[...]
Press and hold the Play/Pause button on the Apple Remote for 3 seconds.

You may also want to read Page 39, Pairing Your Apple Remote.

Assuming this works with MacBook Pro's, this is GREAT! It's always been something of a problem when you want to use an external display only with a Powerbook/MacBook - close the lid to put it to sleep, but how to wake it without opening the lid?

I'll be trying this one tonight. :)

I works with a MBP also.

You can pair a specific remote to a specific computer to omit those pranksters: Click and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons for 5 seconds. To unpair the computer, open the Security pane in System Preferences and Click Unpair.

Source: http://gnuhaus.com/iblog/archives/000200.html

This should be a hind of it's own in Mac OS X Hints!

Or, alternately, one can read the strange bits of paper Apple included with the machine you bought.

Some testing reveals that only an admin account can pair the remote, and once that is done, regular user accounts cannot use the remote.

Test some more. You're correct about having to be an admin to pair it, but standard accounts (at least on my setup) can use the remote still.

Yes, you are correct. I tried again today and it works, but it sure didn't yesterday. Go figure.

Now if only the trailers server was working again.

haha this is rad, I had no idea and I was just thinking to myself as i set up my new mac mini, wonder if I need to set this to not ever go to sleep.

Then i realized i am going to be using it as a web server also, so yeah i dont need to sleep it.

but still great tip for my macbook pro also.

This works on my iMac with a cool little ZZzzzz animation. I also found out that I can control iTunes with the remote without having to use Front Row.

I purchased a black 2 GHz MacBook a couple days ago, and stumbled upon this thread. I tried all the mentioned tricks here. Everything that works with the Mac Mini also worked with my MacBook. This includes the sleep, wake, and "remote pairing" functions.

Tres chic!

The first thing I tried after buying my MB was waking the MB with the front row remote while the notebook was closed and an external monitor was connected (specifically a mini-dvi to TV adapter from apple to my TV). It worked however I have run into an interesting problem that really needs to be solved. Although it wakes the computer when you try to play a movie from the movie menu you get sound but no video. Now if you wake the thing with a USB keyboard or mouse first and then use the remote the movie plays just fine.

Keep in mind these conditions:
The MB is closed!
No keyboard or mouse!

All I want to do is hook up my MB (and only my MB) to the TV and watch a movie without being distracted by MB screen. No external mouse needed. I have front row. Of course playing music works fine. The menus work fine. Just the video of the movies are broken?????

Somebody Please help!