Built a MacBook Mini out of a Dell Inspiron 9
FormFactor
At the core of forgotten
So Dell had these 9" lappys on sale for 200$ a month or so ago. I grabbed 2 (1 for me, 1 for a friend).
It took some hacking, but I managed to get the thing to dual boot OS X and WinXP.
I have to say, OS X is great on these netbooks. There's a very active hacker community out there that have written mac "drivers" for all the hardware. And OS X runs like a DREAM.
If anyone is in the market for a netbook, you should DEFINATELY grab the inspiron 9. And anyone in the market for a cheap Mac... well good luck finding anything close to this for the price.
I ended up paying an extra 100$ for a 32 GB SDD and 20$ for a 2GB RAM stick.
So for 320$ I could not be more impressed with this beast.
Anyone else here on Icrontic have a Mac netbook? If so, any suggestion on good GPS software for OS X?
It took some hacking, but I managed to get the thing to dual boot OS X and WinXP.
I have to say, OS X is great on these netbooks. There's a very active hacker community out there that have written mac "drivers" for all the hardware. And OS X runs like a DREAM.
If anyone is in the market for a netbook, you should DEFINATELY grab the inspiron 9. And anyone in the market for a cheap Mac... well good luck finding anything close to this for the price.
I ended up paying an extra 100$ for a 32 GB SDD and 20$ for a 2GB RAM stick.
So for 320$ I could not be more impressed with this beast.
Anyone else here on Icrontic have a Mac netbook? If so, any suggestion on good GPS software for OS X?
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Comments
Done this also with help from the jared^
It was insanely friggin easy to put OS X on a MSI Wind.
http://forums.msiwind.net/osx-guides/retail-dvd-install-updated-driver-pack-t8901.html
It was extremely easy to get OS X and Windows 7 dual booting on a Wind. I actually never thought I could be happy with a netbook, but when it came time to start looking at iPhone development it was either buy a (minimum) $600 Mac Mini or try a $300 Wind. Budget was the deciding factor, and I couldn't be more pleased with the results.
My first question on this is do you already have an NMEA compliant receiver, or are you looking for a complete package? If you are not adverse to dual booting, MS Streets and Trips 2009 comes with a receiver and can be found for $50. I haven't found a good OS X version yet.
dell minio 9 has no onboard, and is maxed at 2gb ram.
The UI on the mac install drivers looks much cleaner for msi wind than the dellEFI does atm.
But yea i dual boot winxp on this mini for gaming and gps. Everything else i do in os x. I really wish there was a mac quakelive client, and streets and trips equivalent.
I use the gps reciever that came with streets and trips.
I would also like to hack some LEDs under the keyboard, as the keys are just so hard to find in the dark.
also i would like to find a way to boot my xp partition as a vm within osx, bootcamp wont work for obvious reasons. Tried vmware and parallels to no avail, so if anyone has ideas there im all ears.
I have also added a 9-cell battery to mine. The paperwork that came with the battery says up to four full charge cycles are required to attain full capacity...the first charge lasted just over 6 hours, and the current charge is at 2.25 hours with another 4.5 hours left according to Windows.
Which OS do you prefer to run on that Wind? Im finding mac is just easier altogether combined with spaces on this little fella. I REALLY wish i could boot my winxp partition in a vm tho.
As for OS of choice, it's a little difficult to say right now. I am learning how OS X works while Windows 7 presents a much more familiar system. Once school is over (in a month
BTW, has anyone figured out how to remap the Wind's keys in OS X?