Dell Inspiron 1018 - Unfortunately not my second Hackintosh

I am in the market for a real simple netbook whose main -- almost only purpose -- is to run Skype. In other words I am looking for a video telephone. Ideally an OS X powered one. The MacBook Air is beautiful, but it costs an arm and a leg.

One of the most OS X compatible netbooks made so far seems to be Dell Mini 10v. The Mac OS X Netbook Compatibility Chart on myMacNetbook.com states that all hardware features such as sound, sleep, audio, wireless, ..., work. The only problem is that you cannot buy a new Mini 10v anymore.

The current low-end netbook on the dell.nl is the Inspiron 1018. Yes, cheap it is.

Despite having not seen any success stories, I ordered one. Well, I didn't get very far and ended up installing Linux. If anyone had more success, I would love to hear from you.

- MacFiets

 

My First Hackintosh

My previous desktop Mac was a PowerMac G5 bought in 2006. There are two things I do not like about it. First, it is slow and second, it is as loud as a hoover. My very first Mac was the original 1.25GHz Mac Mini. This was the Mac I liked the most so far. The truly stunning Mac operating system running on absolutely quiet hardware.

When the PowerMac began to show its age to the point where it was no longer bearable I looked for a new desktop Mac. The Mac Pro has become far too expensive and the iMacs are nice, but come with glossy screens only. Early 2010 I came across Cindori Custom: Building an i7 Hackintosh on the macrumors.com forums. An i7 based Mac for about the half the price of an original Mac Pro. This I had to try it out.

My shopping list:

• Fractal Design Define R2
• be quiet! 480W power supply
• GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD5 (rev. 1.0)
• Intel Core i7-920 CPU
• Noctua fan
• 6GB Black Dragon DDR3 memory
• GeForce 8400 GS graphics card
• Intel X25-M solid state disk 160GB (not exactly cheap, but FAST)
• 2x Seagate 500GB disks for data

The virgin case

Most parts assembled

Booting ...

 

 

 

 

Mouse Modding

Coming from a UNIX background using X11 with a 3 button mouse for years, I tried a regular Apple single button mouse for a while when I got my first Mac. This didn't work for me. I wanted "right clicking" back.

I could have gone for one of those fancy wireless ubermice or alternatively a notebook mouse with a retractable cable. Being cheap I opted for one with cables and built my own. Parts needed:

• Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 1000
• Retractable USB cable from dealextreme.com

The original mouse

The remedy for $2.50 or so from dealextreme.com

The modded mouse

Looks really neat and tidy