Holiday Gift Guide: Hackintoshable Dell Mini 10v

Update: This deal seems to be dead for now, possibly until Friday. (Apparently the TUAWlanche we set off hit the "LIMITED QUANTITIES AT THIS PRICE" limit.) We will update the post when and if it goes live again.

Later Update: It's baaaaaaaaaack. Link & code seem to be working again. Guess we didn't completely TUAWcide the deal.

For shoppers in the US, Black Friday is right around the corner. With it, of course, are lots of deals, including many that don't make you wait for Friday.

Dell is currently offering the highly Hackintoshable Mini 10v unit for just $229 shipped (it's $20 more for Bluetooth, which you have to opt out of; there are many other options configurable as you set up your unit). Here's a typical order, with the lowest end processor and free shipping.

1 Inspiron Mini 10v 
1 Intel Atom Processor N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache) 
1 1GB DDR2 SDRAM 
1 10.1" Widescreen Display (1024x600) 
1 Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950 
1 160GB, 2.5inch, 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive 
1 Obsidian Black 
1 Wireless 802.11g (1397) Mini Card 
1 Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam 
1 24WHr Lithium-Ion Battery (3-cell) 
1 1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service 
1 1Yr LoJack for Laptops Theft Protection 
Save $139 off this Dell Mini 10 ! - $139.00 
Order Subtotal: $229.00 Shipping and Handling Total: $8.00 
Shipping Discount: -$8.00 
Tax Total: $17.68 Total Amount: $246.68

Add in a Leopard license (plus an optional Snow Leopard license on top of that) and you still have a very reasonably priced system. If you have a monitor, keyboard and mouse on hand, and the Mini 10v makes an excellent and highly affordable kids' computer to replace an older Mac system.

Note that Apple's EULA, as recently affirmed by the California courts, does prohibit you from installing the copy of Leopard you purchase on anything other than Apple hardware, meaning that you Hackintosh your system at your own risk (legal and technical).

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Source: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?cs=19&dgv…

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Hardware Hacks

Update: This deal seems to be dead for now, possibly until Friday. (Apparently the TUAWlanche we set off hit the "LIMITED QUANTITIES AT...

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rogerh

The RAM on the 10v is NOT soldered in. It is upgradeable to 2GB.

January 10 2010 at 9:23 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Rob

It looks like Dell is offering the Mini 10v for $249 US today on Black Friday.

November 27 2009 at 2:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

veedow

Is this deal still available? I used the link, but what is the TUAW code that we are suppose to enter? The best I could get this for was $368. Any help would be appreciated.

November 26 2009 at 11:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

badweasel

Two things.. the court case was about reselling machines with leopard hacked on it, NOT about installing it on your own system.

Second, Charli mentioned that atom is no longer supported, but that is already been worked around. Just no blogs have covered it yet.

November 25 2009 at 11:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Peter

The Mini 9 is back also, as "Vostro 90". It's $184 but you'll want to pay the $50 extra for the SSD 8 -> 16 GB upgrade.

November 25 2009 at 5:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mike

Dell's site drives me bananas. I can't figure out how to order the thing without some version of Windows preinstalled. How does one get around this?

November 25 2009 at 3:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Mike's comment

homan2

I don't think there is a no-OS option. Going to wipe the drive anyway when you install SL (unless you are setting up a multi boot), so not an issue technically (might be a preference issue for some though).

November 25 2009 at 5:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

Great post. I highly recommend the Mini 10v for a hackintosh system. It's affordable, looks great, and is super easy to install OS X on!

November 25 2009 at 3:08 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dan Woods

Erica? Why do you keep post articles with such bad, and illegal advice? People are idiots and will follow your advice without thinking of the consequences.

I can just see it now;
Dear Auntie TUAW,
Following advice posted in articles on a popular Apple-focused Blog I recently purchased a Hackintosh as my main computer and Installed security disabling software on my iPhone.

Due to worm which only affects iPhones with the security software disabled my life savings have been stolen by a keylogger surreptitiously installed on my iPhone and I cannot access the data on my Computer because Apple updated their OS to only support authorised computers.

I have contacted Apple and they have told me that I'm on my own and their lucky they are not suing me for breach of EULA.

Who can I sue for loss of my money and loss of my data?

November 25 2009 at 2:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

3 replies to Dan Woods's comment

Adam

The deal was up as of 6 am this morning.

I was having issues with the Dell site not accepting my address, so I gave them a call. The Dell rep. said the deal was up this morning and that he could not offer it over the phone. Apparently some orders are still making it through online.

He also hinted that this may be the reason my address is being marked as "invalid" and it not letting me proceed through the checkout.

November 25 2009 at 1:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Adam's comment

Adam

Just ordered one with Paypal and it worked!

So if you still want one and are getting the "invalid address" problem, trying going back and proceeding with paypal!

November 25 2009 at 2:13 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Freak Mojo

The deal is still active. I just ordered mine ( at 12:17 PM Eastern) and it came to $254.... I upgraded the processor.

Now I'm wondering if I should search for some Black Friday deals that would be better. Suddenly, $254 doesn't seem like such a good deal.

Damn buyer's remorse :P

November 25 2009 at 12:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply