I’ve been using my hackintosh laptop, a Dell Mini 10v for the past 3 days after installing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on it. Here are my first impressions after spending a few hours on it.
- Performance – Mac OS X Snow Leopard runs smoothly with just 1GB of RAM for web surfing, email, chat and listening to music. The screenshot above shows what ‘s running on the laptop.
- Battery life – my initial estimates is a fully charged battery can last about 6 hours with wifi and bluetooth on.
- Wifi – the 802.11n adapter just works.
- Ethernet – works. Won’t be using this much because wifi is so convenient.
- Bluetooth – paired with my Sony Ericsson P1i and bluetooth stereo headset without any problem.
- Screen – 1024×600 feels a bit cramped as I’m used to at least 1280×800 on my MacBook. I turned on the option to automatically hide and show the Dock to have more usable screen space.
- External VGA – dual display works with my 42″ Philips LCD TV at 1368×768.
- Keyboard – will take some getting used to as it’s smaller than my MacBook keyboard. Frequently, I hit the wrong keys when touch-typing.
- Touchpad – the tiny touchpad makes it really difficult to perform two-finger scrolling. Quite often, it’ll register a two-finger click when I was trying to do the two-finder scroll. Very annoying. For one finger operation and tap to click, the touchpad works fine.
- Audio – speaker and audio output to earphones work. It can also be paired with my bluetooth headset.
- Mic – works.
- Sleep and wake – works by closing and opening the laptop screen. Sleep can also be triggered with a short press on the power on/off button. Audio takes longer (about 15 seconds) to be automatically turned back on after waking from sleep. Wifi and bluetooth wakes up faster.
- Webcam – tried out Photo Booth with it. Works except Photo Booth’s window is too tall to be displayed entirely on the 1024×600 screen.
- SD Card Reader - works.
As you can see, all the hardware components in the Dell Mini 10v works with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I am very satisfied with my Dell Mini 10v as my hackintosh laptop. I highly recommend the Mini 10v to anyone looking for a netbook sized hackintosh laptop.
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Hello, so nice to hear that you have the same setup as me, except for that I have mini 10v running mac osx leopard 10.5.8.
I would like to kindly ask you to share your experience from the battery life on snow leopard.
I am right now with the six cell battery and I am getting 4:50 on battery using wifi.
How does snow leopard handles battery life ?
Hi, I haven’t tested the battery life extensively on my snow leopard 10.6.1 installation, but upon a full charge, the six cell battery meter says ’6:17 Remaining’.
Hello there!
I am thinking about buying a Dell Mini 10v, too.
My question is: Is it possible to use the Mini v10 connected to a monitor? I mean only the monitor and not internal display. I’m thinking about using the Mini v10 as my home and portable computer.
BTW: Did you try dualboot yet? Windows 7?
Thanks a lot
Chris
Hi Chris, you can connect an external monitor to the Mini 10v running Mac OS X. The external monitor and the laptop LCD will be separate displays and turned on at the same time. You can try using an external keyboard and mouse with your Mini 10v while connected to an external monitor.
No, I didn’t try dualboot Mac OS X with Windows 7 on my Mini 10v. Not intending to do so anyway.
Thanks for your answer. Please keep up posting about your experiences with the Mini 10v.
Bye Chris (who is still thinking about getting a Mini 10v
)
Good news guys. I got mine in today, I was able to get 10.5.8 AND 10.6.1 to run flawlessly on my mini 10v. This is a nice little project and it runs WONDERFUL even on 1gb of RAM. I will be upgrading to 2GB this weekend to beef it up but this thing runs like a champ, my new favorite gadget. I even have a virtualized windows XP box working on it. Thanks for the info and help!
Also, I’ve upgraded my 10v to 2GB of RAM and it does make a significant change in multitasking. Don’t be intimidated by the installation! It’s not that difficult if you follow the guide online. If you can handle a screwdriver then you can swap out the RAM with ease
This is sad, Hackitosh’s are wrong and I think you should restore yours with the not so awesome OS it came with or goto Linux
Your comment is sad. If Apple or other corporations don’t wish us to use their software (not hurting anyone or stealing anything) and break the rules, then they should be more open. Why are you even on this site if you’re so concerned with abiding by the EULA?
Hi, I’m looking into getting a Mini 10v and was wondering how well it worked with a bunch of stuff open when it only has 1gb of ram? This is for my girlfriend who currently has an old iBook G4 with 1.25 gb of ram. She usually has Word, Excel, Entourage, and Safari open at once, and sometimes iTunes thrown into the mix. Horribly bloated software unfortunately. In any case, her iBook stutters a ton with this and usually requires multiple apps closed. Any idea how the 10v with 1gb runs with this kind of load placed on it? If you have the 2gb model and it’s a lot better, I’m always willing to pull a machine apart
Thanks!!
Hi Joe, if your gf is gonna have Word, Excel, Entourage and Safari open at once, I would recommend you upgrade the Mini 10v to 2GB.
On my 1GB Mini 10v, Activity Monitor reports 1.20GB of System Memory used when I run iTunes, Safari with 3 tabs, Opera and Textmate.
are you still using this setup? my wife loves Mac but wants a netbook sized machine, and the iPad costs way too much for what she wants.
We’re looking at ordering a mini 10v and putting snow leopard onto it…
yeah, i’m still using this setup. i would really love to get myself an ipad. if the ipad was available before i got the dell mini 10v, i may have gone for it instead.
Hi,
Interested in doing the same; Dell won’t sell the 2GB model with an ‘N’ card; so might have to get the crappy XP model (1GB/N). In your original video, it said that the wireless is only b/g; which hardware do you have and is it correctly supported by OS X?
How about the hi-res screen option? I looked at the numbers and wondered if that might be too cramped for comfort.
Hi Jeff, I have the 1GB model with the wireless N card. Everything works with OS X. Screen resolution is 1024×600; good enough for simple web surfing, email and youtube videos.
Victor,
Thanks. Judging from the looks of http://www.jrin.net/2009_07_23/how-to-upgrade-dell-mini-10v-memory, I think I might sacrifice ‘N’ in place of 2GB from the start (and save myself the headache). Assuming that either wireless card works equally well.
Cheers.
Victor, how is the performance in OS X with the 10v. Can you use the machine as an everyday machine, and does it play videos (eg youtube, divx)?
Hi Matt,
I use the 10v mostly for surfing the web, reading digital comics and PDFs. For playing videos, it should handle standard video on youtube without any problem. The screen is just enough to watch 480p videos on youtube. It doesn’t handle 720p videos well.
Victor,
Hi, it does not play 720p well on youtube but does it play 720p mkv video files?
I’m afraid 720p mkv video performance isn’t too good.
There is a fix for playing 720p video files, doesn’t help YouTube though…
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-10-guides/17234-720p-1080p-hd-video-playback-any-netbook-even-you-10v-4.html
I have mine connected to my 32″ Samsung. I was really hoping to play 720p on YouTube, but alas only 480. Still better than what my Samsung BluRay player does for YouTube.