OS X on a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook

What do you do when you really want OS X on a netbook but Apple won’t come out with an Apple branded netbook? You take some other vendor’s netbook and install OS X on it of course. That’s what this guy did with his Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. He grabbed a version of Leopard 10.5 that was actually customized for the MSI Wind netbook and got it running on the Inspiron Mini 9 (with some additional patches to get audio and Wi-Fi working too). In fact, he even patched his system to 10.5.5 with the system updates! Very nice! In the comments section of the article, the author notes that the boot time for the system is 24 seconds and the entire install consumes around 7GB of disk space. If you’re interested in doing this then you should probably get the 16GB model of the Inspiron Mini. And as far as the OS X distribution that he used – it’s called “MSIWindosx86.iso” and can be found here.

Oh and if you do have an MSI Wind netbook, you can read this article here detailing how to install the same distro on the netbook. You’ll want to upgrade the memory and swap out the Wi-Fi card for a Dell Broadcom DW 1390 or 1490 internal mini-PCI Wi-Fi card to get things to work well.

If there’s anything Apple can learn from all of this, it’s this – there are people out there who love OS X and would love to see this OS available in a cheap small form factor system like a netbook. If Apple were to only create a comparable netbook system – heck maybe brand it as a MacBook Mini.. consider how many units it could possibly sell if it was priced around 400-500 dollars?

[Check it out via CrunchGear]

Written by flung

October 3rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm

2,850 views

Posted in Dell, MSI, Netbook Hacks, Netbook Software, Netbook Tips, Netbooks

Tagged with Dell Inspiron Mini 9, MSIWindosx86.iso, OS X

Viewing 5 Comments

barristers chambers 5 months ago 1 point
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Excellent post - very informative and more importantly accurate. You raise a interesting point so i'd be interested to hear other peoples response.

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Texas Longhorns Jersey 6 months ago 1 point
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In fact, he even patched his system to 10.5.5 with the system updates! Very nice! In the comments section of the article, the author notes that the boot time for the system is 24 seconds and the entire install consumes around 7GB of disk space.

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Life in Moscow 6 months ago 1 point
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That’s what this guy did with his Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. He grabbed a version of Leopard 10.5 that was actually customized for the MSI Wind netbook and got it running on the Inspiron Mini 9 (with some additional patches to get audio and Wi-Fi working too). In fact, he even patched his system to 10.5.5 with the system updates!

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Djarum Black 7 months ago 1 point
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the author notes that the boot time for the system is 24 seconds and the entire install consumes around 7GB of disk space. If you’re interested in doing this then you should probably get the 16GB model of the Inspiron Mini. And as far as the OS X distribution that he used – it’s called “MSIWindosx86.iso” and can be found here.

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Dermal Filler 7 months ago 1 point
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There are people out there who love OS X and would love to see this OS available in a cheap small form factor system like a netbook.

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