NetbookTech

So you’re in the market for a new netbook and you’re considering your operating system choices for said netbook system. Do you go with option #1? Tried and true Windows XP (albeit Windows XP Home?) or do you go with option #2 Linux?  According to Matthew McKenzie of bMighty.com, you should really consider Linux over Windows for your netbook. His reasons boil down to the following:

• OpenOffice is a great and workable free alternative to Microsoft Office which means there’s no dependency on Windows
• There’s no upgrade path for Windows XP Home – whereas Linux is well supported by the developer community
• SSD performance is better on Linux than on Windows

Certainly all very good arguments to consider Linux. Yet for my needs, I’ll probably stay with Windows simply because it works wonderfully for my needs.

One final note, Matthew makes the following statement in his article:

“It’s safe to say that no sane human being wants to run Windows Vista on a netbook — if such a feat is even possible.”

I hate to disagree but Windows Vista on an Atom powered netbook is 1) very possible and 2) performs quite nicely – with some caveats. Vista out of the box will run on an Atom system though yes – it consumes more memory than Windows XP. So if you’re limited to 512MB or 1GB of memory, as is fairly standard with most netbooks, you’re better off with Windows XP. However, if you have 1.5 to 2GB of memory, Vista works quite nicely. You can also help speed things along by applying some tweaks to the OS such as disabling Aero and turning off some visual effects etc.  I’ll write more about this later on but do check out the bMighty.com article for additional info on Linux vs. Windows for netbooks.

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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. 

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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.

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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%$&#(!!

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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?

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For Acer Aspire One owners out there - there’s a new version of the Acer Aspire One Fan Control application for Windows XP and Vista out. Version 1.1 now works with the latest BIOS 3304 update for the Aspire One. If you’ve used the previous version of the Fan Control application and then promptly updated the BIOS to 3304, you’ll have noticed the application stopped working. This new version will fix this problem should you still feel the need to run the app under Windows. I’m not running this application for now since I’m relatively happy with the 3304 update.

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As I mentioned a few days ago, Acer Aspire One owners had some good news for the month of September. Acer released a BIOS update that seems to have fixed the noisy fan issue that many owners were complaining about. Now the bad news. In order to update the BIOS (version 3304), you’ll need to boot the netbook into DOS.

Now since the Acer Aspire One lacks a DVD/CD-ROM drive, the only viable way to boot into DOS is to boot from a USB flash drive. I followed the recommendations from the Aspire One User webpage here and managed to update the BIOS fairly painlessly. The page actually links to instructions laid out over at macles* here. For the sake of providing instructions in one location, I thought it would be helpful for all of you to read/see what I did.

Before you begin, here’s what you’ll need:

• A copy of UNetbootin (available for Linux or Windows - I used the Windows version)
• An available USB flash drive (I had plenty of CES 2008!)
• A copy of the Aspire One 3304 BIOS update

The following steps were performed on Windows Vista

Step 1: Download UNetbootin from the sourceforge website - http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/.

Step 2: Download the Aspire One BIOS update from the following url - http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal20.cfm?recordid=5593&formid=3394&website=AcerPanAm.com&siteid=7117&words=all&keywords=&areaid=2

Step 3: Connect your USB flash drive to an available USB port on your PC

Step 4: Once Windows recognizes the flash drive, remember the drive letter the OS assigned to the flash drive.

Step 5: Start up UNetbootin and then select the following:

• For “Distribution”, select “FreeDOS”
• Skip to the bottom and make sure “Type” is “USB Drive”. Make sure the “Drive:” letter is the one assigned by Windows for the USB flash drive (it was K in my example).
• Here’s a snapshot of what I had selected:

Step 6: UNetbootin will now download the distribution and install FreeDOS on your flash drive.

Step 7: Unzip the downloaded BIOS update to your flash drive

Step 8: Remove the USB flash drive and then connect it to your Aspire One netbook

Step 9: Reboot the Aspire One. When you see the splash screen, press F2 to go into the setup.

Step 10: Once in the BIOS, select the Boot Manu and move the USB HDD up above the Hitachi drive.

You’re telling the system to check the flash drive first before the hard drive for a bootable partition. You’ll need to press F5 to move a highlighted selection up and F6 to move a selection down.

Once you’ve moved the USB drive to the top, press F10 to save and exit

Step 11: The Aspire One will now reboot and load up UNetbootin.It will automatically boot into the default OS on the drive which is FreeDOS:

You’ll then see a menu of FreeDOS options. Select option 5 for the FreeDOS Live CD only.

You’ll see an error message about a missing CD-ROM - just ignore that. Once FreeDOS finishes the startup, you’ll be at the “A:\” prompt.

Step 12: To access the BIOS update files, you’ll need to go to drive “C:\” which is actually the contents on your flash drive. Type “C:” and hit ENTER. Than go to the directory where you stored your BIOS update files. If you need to change a directory, type “cd <directory-name>”. If the folder name is “update”, you’ll type “cd update”

Step 13: Make sure your Aspire One is connected to an outlet - the update will not proceed if the Aspire One is running off the battery only. Type “3304.bat” and hit ENTER.

The BIOS will now get flashed to version 3304. Now reboot the system and go back into setup when you see the splash screen by pressing F2. verify in the first screen that the BIOS version is now 3304:

You’re going to change the boot order back to the way it was. It might already be in the proper boot order but it’s a good thing to check anyhow. Make sure the first boot option is the hard drive (unless of course you always want the netbook to check the USB flash drive first).

And.. that’s it! If you’re still in the setup, press F10 to save and exit and then boot into Windows XP and Enjoy!!

Again - many thanks to AspireOneUser.com and the macles* website.