This hackintosh blog has been neglected big time for the past 2 months. I’ve been busy with working on my mobile booklet website over at MobileBooklet.com, porting it from Ruby on Rails to Python on Google App Engine.

This blog may have been neglected, but not my hackintosh netbook. I’m still using my Dell Mini 10v hackintosh netbook daily after 5 months. It’s mostly used for surfing the net and reading digital comics using FFView. Rotating the netbook to view comic book pages in portrait mode is sweet, but I usually end up rotating the netbook quite often for those two-page spreads.

After 5 months, I’m still happy with my hackintosh netbook, but I’m wondering, would the Apple iPad make me happier?

digital comics, hackintosh netbook

Charlie Sorrel over at Wired.com Gadget Lab, talks about his 8 months experience with a hackintoshed MSI Wind clone from Medion. His positive experience provides a contrast to Brian X Chen disappointment after 6 months with a hackintosh netbook.

His main reason for his positive experience?

He had low expectations for his Mac netbook. What he had was a rock solid Mac OS X netbook that ran for seven hours on a nine-cell battery and did all the tasks he wanted it to do. He says at the end:

If you are aware from the beginning that a netbook is a cheap, low-spec, low-rent kind of computer, with the cheapest, most plasticky parts, then you won’t be disappointed. And if you hack it to run OS X, and you have similarly low expectations, you’ll actually be pleasantly surprised. I love my hackintosh netbook. It’s not perfect, but is sure is damn useful.

I couldn’t agree more.

hackintosh owner

I woke up this morning to the news of Apple product updates. I couldn’t read them fast enough. New iMacs, MacBooks, Mac Minis, Time Capsule, Airport Extreme, Magic Mouse, and Apple Remote. A MacBook with 7 hour battery. Wow!

I wonder how many hackintosh laptop owners are being tempted to get the “real thing”. Using a hackintosh laptop is a great experience, but using a real Mac laptop somehow feels more satisfying. The Mac multitouch trackpad is a joy to use.

I for one am drooling over the new 2.53GHz Mac mini with 4GB RAM. I am using my aging 1.83GHz MacBook like a desktop machine by attaching it to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. The MacBook Combo drive has died for a long time, the battery condition recently says “Service Battery”, which basically means, the battery could die anytime, we just don’t know when.

Any hackintosh owner out there tempted by the ‘real thing’?

Apple, macbook, macmini

After six months, Brian X. Chen decides to part ways with his hackintosh laptop, a MSI Wind. The relationship got off to a great start with hopes of love, thrills and delight. So, what turned the MSI Wind from being a great companion device to a frustrating and impractical gadget?

According to Brian, over time, little irritations with the netbook made it increasingly frustrating to use. First, the small trackpad made navigation tiresome and he had to use an external mouse. Second, software utilities hacked to run on his netbook didn’t work perfectly. The netbook’s wifi connection stopped working suddenly while he was on a trip to Europe. I guess it’s related to the quality of kext files (similar to Window’s hardware drivers) for the MSI Wind written by hackers. His third complaint, the build quality of cheap netbooks. His netbook screws fell out and the case no longer clamp shut all the way. All these, caused the battery to pop out slightly whenever he nudged it. When the battery pops out, the netbook shuts down.

In the end, he gave up on his hackintosh netbook, sold it along with his old MacBook Pro and bought a refurbished unibody MacBook.

I have to agree with Brian that a netbook’s small trackpad can be frustrating to use. At times, my Dell Mini 10v trackpad seems to have a mind of its own. Sometimes, it needs some coaxing before the click or two finger scrolling registers properly.

As for the overall hardware and software reliability, the Dell Mini 10v hackintosh laptop is a champ. I’m still thrilled and delighted by it. Let’s see after six months, will I still be saying the same thing.

msi-wind, netbook

My primary purpose for getting a hackintosh laptop was to be able to access the Internet with a laptop when I’m out of the house. The Dell Mini 10v, being a small and light laptop was perfect for that purpose. Apart from Internet access, I thought about what other ways I intend to use my laptop, and came up with this list.

I am using my Dell Mini 10v hackintosh to:

1. Surf the Web – I have Safari, Firefox, Camino and Google Chrome on my hackintosh laptop.
2. Read Emails – I am using Gmail as my primary mail account, Google Apps hosted email for work related email and Yahoo Mail as my backup. I don’t use the Mail application.
3. Chat – I connect to my Yahoo and MSN account using Adium.
4. Read eBooks – My collection of pdf, chm and lit files is handled by Adobe Acrobat Reader, iChm and Lexcycle Stanza.
5. Read digital Manga and Comics – FFView is the best comic book reader for the Mac OS X.
6. Listen to Music – iTunes.
7. Watch Videos – VLC player supports all the major video and audio formats.

My Dell Mini 10v hackintosh does what I need it to do perfectly. Having the proper expectations is key to being satisfied with your laptop.

After thinking about what I intend to use my hackintosh laptop for, I also thought about what I’m not going to use it for. Basically, it’s not going to be used for any tasks that is CPU intensive or require tons of memory. My hackintosh laptop only has 1GB of RAM and I don’t intend to upgrade to 2GB anytime soon.

I am not using my hackintosh for:

1. Software or Web development – The small screen and Intel Atom CPU is not really suitable for extended periods of programming.
2. Video or DVD Editing – Once again, the small screen and Intel Atom CPU is not suitable for this purpose.
3. Photo Editing – Once again, the small screen … you get the idea. Maybe I’ll use it occasionally for simple photo touchup using iPhoto.
4. Gaming – I’ll stick to my Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP for video games.

What are you using your hackintosh laptop for?

favorite mac os x apps, laptop usage

I received my Dell Mini 10v yesterday afternoon. After getting it out of the box and taking some photos, I quickly started charging the laptop battery while installing Snow Leopard on the laptop. Dell’s instructions is to charge the battery for at least 12 hours before using the laptop on battery power.

Not so smooth installation process

I had expected a simple and straightforward installation, but it wasn’t so. There were some installation hiccups along the way and I had to retry the installation a couple of times before I managed to install Snow Leopard on my Dell Mini 10v. It wasn’t a smooth installation process because I was in a hurry and didn’t prepare a proper checklist.

Here’s the list of things that went wrong.

• First, I forgot to run Disk Utility and reformat the laptop hard disk before starting the installation process. I had to back track to Disk Utility when I couldn’t continue the installation  because no suitable hard disk was found. The Dell Mini 10v came with 3 partitions on its hard disk. In my first attempt to erase the 3 partitions using Disk Utility, I got a spinning beach ball that refuse to go away. I had to power off the laptop and restart the installation process.
• Second, I forgot to downgrade the Dell Mini 10v Bios version A06 to version A04. On my next second and third installation attempt, the installation process would stop halfway with a dialog telling me to reboot the laptop. After a couple of reboots, I remember reading about the need to downgrade the Mini 10v Bios to version A04 before installing Mac OS X. After downgrading the Bios to version A04, the installation completed without any problem.
• Third, after the installation completed, I powered off the laptop while it was rebooting. I felt it was taking too long and assumed that it had frozen. When the laptop booted up for the first time, I didn’t see the Mac OS X welcome video when the Snow Leopard desktop came up.

Mini Mac up and running

After a bumpy installation process, I now have Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on my Dell Mini 10v. I am named the laptop minimac, short for Dell Mini Mac 10v. I also made a Time Machine backup of the laptop once it was up and running.

Above is a screenshot of this website taken on my Dell Mini Mac 10v.

I will write more about my first impressions of the Mini Mac later.

dell mini 10v, hackintosh installation

Dell is delivering my Dell Mini 10v tomorrow. That’s 6 days ahead schedule. That’s the power of under-promising and over-delivering.

Looking forward to receiving my Dell Mini 10v tomorrow.

dell delivery, over-deliver, under-promise

Just got a call this morning from Dell to inform me that my Dell Mini 10v is arriving tomorrow. I had expected it to arrive at the end of this month, but it’s reaching me 6 days (or 4 working days) earlier. Well done Dell! Looks like my earlier estimate of getting my Dell Mini 10v within a week after ordering it online  wasn’t too optimistic after all.

I’m really looking forward to getting it hackintosh’ed by tomorrow.

Come back soon for my take on the hackintosh installation process and first impression on the Dell Mini ‘Mac’ 10v hackintosh laptop.

dell delivery, dell mini 10v

After making the decision to get a Dell Mini 10v as my hackintosh laptop, I had another decision make. What color should I choose? The Dell Mini 10v came in seven different colors. I went through the seven colors and below were my responses.

1. Obsidian Black – Glossy black looks boring.
2. Alpine White – Will probably get dirty easily just like my existing white Macbook. My Macbook palm rest area has turned gray permanently.
3. Pretty Pink – My 5-year-old niece tells me that pink is for girls.
4. Jade Green – Hmm… green… this looks nice.
5. Cherry Red – Red looks good. I like it.
6. Passion Purple – Purple is too loud for me.
7. Ice Blue – Blue seems plain and boring too.

So, I was down to two colors for my Mini 10v. Do I want a green ‘apple’ or a red ‘apple’? I was leaning towards Cherry Red. So, instead of deciding, I asked my wife. She said the color ‘Green’ is good for your eyes. I’m not sure how much truth is in her statement, but, that’s how I decided to get the Jade Green Dell Mini 10v.

Cherry Red Dell Mini 10v - First runner up.

Jade Green Dell Mini 10v - The Winner

Do you have a Dell Mini 10v too? What color did you choose and why?

cherry red, dell mini 10v, jade green

While waiting for my Dell Mini 10v to arrive, I’ve already completed my research on how to install Mac OS X ‘Snow Leopard’ on it.

Here’s the list of items required for installing ‘Snow Leopard’ on the Dell Mini 10v.

1. netbook-installer
2. Mac OS X 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ retail DVD
3. 8GB USB thumb drive
4. An existing Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6 machine
5. Dell Mini 10v Bios version A04. Get this from dell support site.

The thumb drive is used as the installation dongle according to the netbook-installer’s how-to guide.  A Mac OS X machine is required to create the installation dongle. I’ll be using my current MacBook for that purpose. The steps looks simple enough. It should a straight forward installation when the laptop arrives.

The Dell Mini 10v ships with Bios version A06. This will cause the Snow Leopard installation to stop midway with a message to reboot the laptop. This message will reappear again during the installation process after rebooting the laptop, unless you downgrade the Bios to version A04.

Do you have a hackintosh laptop? What installation method did you use?

dell mini 10v, dell ship from factory, netbook installer