Filed under: Hardware, OS, Hacks
Hackintosh netbook compatibility updated
Boing Boing's gadget blog has updated the list of potential hackintosh netbooks. You can ponder the whole thing or cut to the chase: "...get a HP Mini 1000 or a Dell Mini 9/Vostro A90." While the Mini 9 has been discontinued, the Vostro A90 is apparently a rebadged version of the highly hackable Dell and it works just as well as the original.The Eee 1000H also scored highly. There are 21 machines on the chart, each scored across 10 items like working Wi-Fi, Ethernet, sound board and so on.
Our own Steven Sande wrote about his experiences with turning a Dell Mini 9 into a hackintosh. His experience was less than optimal, but your own may differ (those Windows and Intel stickers sure do look sweet).
In related news, the fabled and still non-existent "iTablet" is rumored to be coming this year or next, depending on whom you choose to believe. As for me, I'd be happy enough to pick up a 13" MacBook Pro and call it a day. It's small enough for a daily ride in my backpack and is a genuine Mac. But as my hacker friends would say, "Where's the fun in that?"
[Via Gizmodo]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dr. Spaceman said 5:32PM on 7-27-2009
It's "I wish I were a Mac..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood
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colouroflight said 5:45PM on 7-27-2009
PROTIP: You are not the editor.
puhsitch said 6:25PM on 7-27-2009
You can't expect every sentient laptop to muse in perfect grammar
Chase said 6:35PM on 7-27-2009
Thank you! That was the first thing I thought about when I saw that image. It made me sad to see it wrong. My ears bleed when people do that.
Coffee said 6:46PM on 7-27-2009
If the computer were a mac, it would be in the correct tense.
Bob S. said 10:39AM on 7-28-2009
Sorry, buckaroo. The subjunctive is reserved for situations that are purely hypothetical. See Bernstein, The Careful Writer, written 44 years ago ferchrissake and still a book that kicks Strunk's and White's respective asses. Since the idea of turning the netbook in the photo into a Mac is very feasible -- I've done it myself -- one goes with the conditional here.
wrayal said 5:58AM on 7-29-2009
Bob S.: you're wrong. To quote wikipedia: "Macintosh, or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. ". So unless you actually paid Apple to remake this computer to which you refer...you don't have a Mac. You have a hackint0sh.
Plus I'm not convinced; even the phrase "I wish I were a hackint0sh" would be grammatically correct - the computer is not currently a hackint0sh, and thus this is a hypothetical statement and so should be in the subjunctive mood.
Bob S. said 12:40PM on 7-29-2009
That's certainly one way of looking at it.
smak said 5:36PM on 7-27-2009
It would be really nice if Apple would just make a version of OS X that was akin to a linux distro - not officially supported, but there for the public. Oh well.
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John B. said 6:01PM on 7-27-2009
I know, right? I mean, it just makes such sound business sense for them. Oh, wait...
Joshua Ochs said 6:10PM on 7-27-2009
I can vouch for the Eee option - it works near perfectly on my Eee 901 (Snow Leopard is also rumored to work just fine).
You can frequently find the Eee 901 or 900A (9-inch models similar to the Dell, but with a slightly better keyboard) for less than $200. Of course, that does not include an SSD upgrade that's downright mandatory for such models (the 9-inch Eee's shipped with cheap SSD's that were painfully slow). And you'll probably want 2GB of memory and a real Apple Airport card, as the Ralink drivers SUCK.
All of that said, you can put together a 2.2lb Mac OS X netbook that flies for about $400, and not even void the warranty.
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badweasel said 6:45PM on 7-27-2009
I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing...
http://www.tomorrowland.com/2008/11/10/dell-mini-9-leopard-install/
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oliver hart said 7:42PM on 7-27-2009
The MSI Wind is awesome when it comes to hackintoshing. Great weekend project, I had tons of fun doing it. Everything but the microphone works. OS X is stellar on these little guys.
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Luis said 8:39PM on 7-27-2009
I'm using safari for leopard on my dell mini 9 with no problems, it actually runs faster than with windows and I can use crossover and parallels for the windows specific apps (altough parallels is very slow).
Its not perfect, but is the cheapest mac I could find.
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Kevin said 12:05AM on 7-28-2009
Using Leopard 10.5.7 on a Dell Mini 9. Only problem I could find is tethering a cell phone via bluetooth to use its data connection, but iSync over bluetooth works fine, as well as everything else.
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Raj said 1:02AM on 7-28-2009
I know everyone here seems to love hackintosh netbooks, but here's my experience with my 1000h (as of my last attempt 6 months ago):
1) The form factor is good, but the keyboard is hard to use with the trackpad, which is far more sensitive an unusable than any other laptop I've used.
2) I only got wireless working with a seperate broadcom wifi minipci card, not with built-in ralink (which works, but not with native wireless interface... and the connection needs to be restarted each time you come back from sleep). Broadcom card was same as ones found in macs, so it worked fine.
3) Sound was a nightmare to setup, and initially kept causing skype to fail.
4) Videocam was pretty weak and worked horribly with skype and ichat (I wanted to give this laptop to my mom so she could video-chat with her granddaughter).
I gave up on OSX and went with ubuntu netbook remix which had a very nice interface. The laptop trackpad being as unusable as it was, the machine now acts as a media server running boxee.
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duncanator said 2:39PM on 7-28-2009
I too would love to buy a 13" mbp and call it a day, but I would also like to save $800-$900 and have OSX on a Dell Mini 9. My iMac at home just isn't as portable as I would like.
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consumer_q said 6:30PM on 7-28-2009
As these netbooks become lower in price, the more I want to buy a $100 touschscreen kit and turn one into a side table tablet. I could use it to control my home automation doodads, control my iTunes library, access my webcam, make skype calls, and have it be a digital frame with weather and news widgets while it is idle.
:-)
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SeB_or_Sam said 8:56PM on 7-28-2009
I just bought an HP Mini 1000, and I'm turning it into a hackintosh. As far as the hardware goes, it has a good keyboard in comparison to other netbooks- it's the best keyboard on any netbook I've tried so far. Yes, you do have to iron out a ton of kinks, but it's kind of fun- so sue me, I'm a huge geek :D
The actual hackintoshing is an odd process. I choose not to just download an already-hacked copy of OS X, which is what most people seem to do. Insted of iDeneb, Kalyway or iATKOS, I used the disk image of my Leopard Install Disc and some useful hacks. I followed instructions that the InsanlyMac forum member Res posted (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=136084&st=120) which were surprisingly simple. I tried to do it from an old iPod, which didn't work at all, so I got a 16 GB flashdrive from staples and the rest can be read in the link I provided. Once I was completly done, I booted up the laptop and saw the apple logo and spinning gear. Looked pretty good. It's been pretty good so far, but it's had some problems too; the built in webcam did seem to be known to Photo Booth and iChat, but the picture from that camera looks unbearably terrible. Safari didn't work at all, so I had to download the package from apple's site, disasemble it, and install everthing manually. I'm still trying to get OS X to accept the audio driver. It's odd, really; that's one of the things I was sure I'd never have to do with a mac- hunt for drivers and try to install them correctly. Then I realized the obvious- it's not a mac. Not really. A mac is not just a computer that runs Mac OS X- it's a computer which has parts inside of it that are already configured to work with Mac OS X, and Mac OS X is configured to work with them. It's the integration of software and hardware that makes it a macintosh. I have no problem with someone who wants to take the time and effort to install OS X on a PC and iron out the kinks so it works- if someone is really up to all the frustration, head-scratching and cursing that comes from doing this, and is geeky enough to know what and why they're doing the particular things they are doing, then that's fine. It's a hobby for a small and deovted number of geeks. No, I don't think apple should license Mac OS X to other computer makers, but I don't think it's wrong for someone hack OS X to work on a PC. And I think apple might recognize that- as either Jason Snell or Chris Breen said, they know that regular people will never do this, and therefor it's not really that bad for them, but if any company tries to make this easy for regualr people to do, they'll come down on them like a ton of bricks (sorry I couldn't remember which one said it- It was from a macworld podcast, and it's really hard to pinpoint something like that from a myriad of macworld podcast episodes.) Apple hasn't done anything to InsanelyMac, because they know it's a hobby for a few devoted geeks, some of who could one day become apple customers, but with Psystar they waited a little bit and, as Steve Jobs would say, BOOM! Lawsuit. Why? Because that was for regular, non-geeky people.
Anywyay, I like my little hackbook.
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James said 11:04AM on 7-29-2009
I'm running Leopard right now on my Mini 9, bought it for about $215. Well worth every penny. It's got about 3.5 - 4.0 hours of battery life, I've quickly adjusted to the keyboard and type near as fast and accurate as my iMac, it's never really let me down in terms of performance, and overall after initial setup and a simple trackpad install I've never felt like it wasn't a Mac experience.
Look down on it all you want, the fact is this is only becoming better and more and more models are becoming seamless experiences. If Apple offered a netbook, naturally I'd be all over it, but they don't, they can't even offer a notebook for under $800..
I'm sure Apple will get on board, but they'll put some useless gimmicky feature for the wow factor, and then it will probably cost about $1,000.
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