NetbookTech

OK.. this certainly isn’t for the faint of heart but if you’re wondering how you might convert say.. a Dell Mini 9 netbook into a Tablet PC wannabe, then you’ll want to check out this MyDellMini.com forum thread. In it, Rob928 describes his DIY project where he transforms a Dell Vostro A90 netbook (basically a business version of the Dell Mini 9) into a touch-screen enabled Slate device. The touchscreen is complements of the Hoda Technology solderless touchscreen kit. Pretty cool project although I doubt I’ll ever have the time or patience to do something like this myself.

[Check it out via SlipperyBrick, Gizmodo]

While it certainly appears that Apple will stay away from the netbook market (with rumors that the company will instead venture into a tablet PC style device shortly), this certainly hasn’t stopped the competition from releasing a netbook product with OS X installed. The latest example? A company called RussianMac (which is also selling other types of PCs with OS X installed) which is now offering what appears to be an ASUS Eee PC netbook with OS X pre-installed. The system (known as the “MiniBook”) features the following:

• Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 160GB 5400RPM HDD
• Intel GMA 950 graphics
• 10.2 inch 1024 x 600 resolution display
• Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0
• 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, media card reader

And now.. the price? 19,200 rubles or approximately $616 U.S. dollars. Not exactly cheap for a netbook.

[Check it out via 9 to 5 Mac]

MSI Wind owners who want or are running OS X on their respective netbooks have one more reason to celebrate. Official drivers for the Realtek Wi-Fi card have finally emerged although they are not available directly from Realtek. The drivers are currently floating around in the MSIWind.net forums and also available for download here and here. Cool stuff.

[Check it out via SlashGear]

First.. a little disclaimer – please don’t try this at home unless you know what you’re doing.

The crazy folks on Team Australia over at XtremeSystems.org have taken a poor MSI Wind netbook and overclocked the processor and system resulting in an Atom processor running at over 2.3 GHz. (Mind you, the stock speed of the Atom is 1.6GHz).

In the picture linked here, you’ll see the system clocked at 2315.7MHz with the FSB cranked to 771.9 MHz. Nuts! In this picture below, the system is actually clocked just a tad bit higher at 2385.8MHz (the FSB at 795.3MHz). Again.. nuts.

BTW, you have to love the cooling device

[Check it out via Ubergizmo, Engadget]

While we may not see an actual Apple branded netbook system anytime soon, this certainly hasn’t deterred folks from installing OS X on a netbook system. However, at least one person has taken this a step further by not only installing OS X but also physically modifying an MSI Wind netbook – making it look like what a possible Apple netbook could look like (if they would only make one of course). The end result? Say hello to the “MacBook Nano”.

The transformation process from an MSI Wind to the “MacBook Nano” also happens to be documented pictorially on Flickr.com. Very cool stuff though ..I can’t say that I will ever spend the time to do something like this.

[Check it out via eWeek, MacRumors.com]

After reading about how OS X was installed on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, I began toying with the idea of installing OS X on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10. After all, the S10 has all the makings for a potentially great MacBook-like system – it has a bright 10.2 inch display, a fairly comfortable keyboard, a touch-pad WITH mouse buttons below it, upgradeable hard drive and memory, and a form factor and design that’s reminiscent of the MacBook itself.

Yet, would the same OS X distribution work on the S10?  The answer as it turns out is yes but not without some problems along the way. After combing through various forums and threads, I’ve decided to compile as much information as possible into a single web page so without further ado, here’s our guide to installing OS X on the IdeaPad S10.

It’s certainly not a complete guide but hopefully it’ll help get you started down this road. 

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m still in the middle of writing up my guide to installing OS X on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10. It’s taking just a little longer than I would like but in the meantime, if you’re curious how fast OS X boots up on the netbook, just check out the video clip I posted up on YouTube. OS X itself boots without a problem on the S10 – the problems are of course driver related. I’ll get into that once I finish up the article. In the meantime, enjoy this super short video clip.

UPDATE (10/13/2008) – The guide to installing OS X on the IdeaPad S10 is now up here.

It’s extremely easy to upgrade the storage and memory capacities of the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook. To do either upgrade, you’ll need to have a Phillips screwdriver on hand which will be used to remove the bottom panel from the netbook. If you’re planning to upgrade the hard drive, you’ll need a replacement 2.5 inch SATA notebook hard drive and if you’re upgrading the memory, you’ll need a single 667MHz DDR2 SO-DIMM memory module. 

It’s important to note that the IdeaPad S10 comes with 512MB of memory soldered directly onto the motherboard. Thus if you order the 512MB version of the S10, you’ll have a single free SO-DIMM slot. If you get the 1GB version of the S10, you’ll have a 512MB SO-DIMM memory module occupying the slot. You can add a either a 512MB, 1GB, or 2GB memory module to the S10 but the netbook will only recognize up to a maximum of 2GB of memory.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you have an Acer Aspire One netbook and you’re interested in adding hacks to the netbook – whether software or hardware or both – then you should check out this page over at LinuxHaxor.net entitled “30 Cool Acer Aspire One Hacks”. The posting has links to various hacks that can be done on the Aspire One – ranging from upgrading the hardware components, to installing different operating systems such as Ubuntu or OS X. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in modding their Aspire One. The only major complaint I have with the Aspire One is how incredibly difficult it is to upgrade some of the components – such as memory or hard drive. A royal pain in the #@^Q%$&#(!!

[Check it out]

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]