Hackintosh Netbook
Hackintosh refers to running OS X on non-Apple x86 hardware. Of course OS X forbids this in it's licensing which means that buying a retail copy of OS X won't get you around this. But since Apple is not offering certain types of products such as the popular netbooks people have decided to hack away to get it working on current hardware.
| Feature | Dell Mini 9 | MSI Wind | Samsung NC10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price (UK) | £299 | £299.99 | £298 |
| Storage | 16GB SSD | 120GB HDD | 160GB HDD |
| Memory | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Battery | 4 cell | 3 cell | 6 cell |
| Screen | 8.9" | 10.2" | 10.2" |
A summary of the main features that are working or have issues would be:
| Feature | Dell Mini 9 | MSI Wind | Samsung NC10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WiFi | Working | Not working ( need to replace it with a Dell 1490 ) | |
| Ethernet | Working | Not working | |
| Bluetooth | Working | Working | |
| Card Reader | Driver in development | ||
| Sleep | Does not work with stock 8/16GB SSDs | Not working | |
| Resolution | 1024x600 with Quartz Extreme | ||
| Sound | Mute does not work | ||
| WebCam | Working | Working |
While I would not be using one of these netbooks for normal day-to-day use I would have it hanging around for web, email and general tinkering. So that means that space should not be an issue with but I'd definately like the 160GB that the (Samsung NC10)[/netbook/samsungnc10] offers. And of couse there is the issue of battery life with the Samsung coming in with a 6 cell out of the box.
Not sure if I'd be able to live without sleep/suspend as I would definately want to be able to pop the lid closed at a moments notice. And I definitely don't want to have to perform any surgery on the laptop so that means the Samsung is out if it's Wifi card needs to be replaced.
For now I'd be looking at the Dell Mini mainly because it's ultra portable, uses SSD which can be upgraded later if needed. Dell support is actually very good, even better than Apple UK where they demand a credit card number before shipping replacement goods ( even headphones ), and I'd not worry too much about issues being resolved. And on top of that it's OS X support seems to be on par with the MSI Wind.
Of course with all of the issues involved OS X might not be long lived on the device ( should I even get one though ) which means Windows XP might float back onto it. Don't think I want to try and re-live my Ubuntu experience which was on my work laptop.