Hackintosh netbook compatibility updated

Dell brought back the Mini 9 for a "limited time". Thru July 30 there is a $40 discount, so you can get the base model for $199.

Tempting, but my Powerbook G4 still runs.

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.

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.

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.
:-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing...

http://www.tomorrowland.com/2008/11/10/dell-mini-9-leopard-install/