Netbook!
October 4th, 2009, 3:03pm by JakeSo between my work MacBook Pro being in the shop for repairs and the on-again off-again nature of the PowerMac dual G5, I was getting a little computer withdrawal. I’ve waited 6 months since they introduced the new Mac Pros, so there’s no way I’m upgrading now (with an update possibly around the corner). Been wanting a Netbook for a while, for Hackintoshing and general purposes, so the timing seemed right.
Of course, one quality I was looking for was Hackintoshability. The Lenovo S10 checked out good, according to the compatibility chart, and has robust community support. Small problem, I got the S10-2, which is sorely lacking in sleep support. For now, I’ll take it on faith that the community will find a solution, and I’ll give it a few weeks before I try anything too dramatic. And say that the HP Mini1000 might be the best option for state-of-the-art plus hackability (the MSI Wind is a little long in the tooth).
Besides all that, I like it. The screen is nice if a little glossy. Wide enough, a little short which pretty much requires full-screen mode in Firefox (F11 is your friend). The keyboard is nice, but cramped. Fine for short blog entries, but I wouldn’t want to write my thesis on it. The trackpad is small, but lots of bells & whistles… all it’s missing is double-tap for right click. And with 100 options for the Synaptics pad, the feature might be hidden somewhere.
WinXP is bearable, I’ll upgrade to Win7 soon enough. Incredibly light, 6-7 hour battery life. Plus, built-in SD card reader. Wireless is a little weaker than the MBP. We’ll see about cramming OS X onto it, looks like quite a bit of work regardless. Mostly, I just want this for Firefox and photo storage, although it would be nice to run Aperture. But might be more pain than it’s worth.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Cool, I’ll bring Win7 RC next week and we can upgrade, assuming we can find ourselves a USB DVD drive!
October 5th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Hmmm. I wonder if there’s a way to install from a USB stick or SD card. I’ll ask around work to see if anyone has one.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:27 am
It can be done. You may wish to use wintoflash to make things easier. http://wintoflash.com/home/en/
I did my install with an external usb dvd drive.
October 9th, 2009 at 2:45 am
SO I returned the Lenovo after having multiple problems with the sleep function, and bought an HP Mini 110-1020NR. Downsides are non-expandable memory (apparently) and 3-cell (instead of 6-cell) battery. Otherwise, many more pluses: larger keyboard (92% vs. 85%), matte screen instead of glossy/glarey, looks like better power management, and probably easier to Hackintosh. Hopefully I’ll stick Win7 on this weekend.
October 9th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
How’s the LED screen? We’ll need a USB-DVD drive to do the Win7 upgrade. I think power management is the biggest improvement going from XP.
October 10th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Damn. Totally forgot to pester people for a USB DVD drive. Suppose I could “rent” one from BestBuy, LOL.
October 10th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
This is Kelvin posting from Jake’s netbook. I like this keyboard a lot. Very nice netbook.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Did you find a good guide for installing 10.6 on it? If you send it to me, I’ll probably run out and pick one up.
October 11th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Too late! Just ordered at Dell Mini 10v. With coupon, refurb was $254. Good-sounding machine, though — 802.11b/g/n, 160GB HD, 1GB RAM (will upgrade to 2GB basically immediately for ~$20).
Looks pretty easy to get Snow Leopard on it. Will let you all know soon (receive by Thursday!).
Decided to pull the trigger after feeling bad this weekend doing so much personal stuff on my work laptop, and I don’t think that’s going to become any less over time! 😉
October 11th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Awesome Mike! I found some guides for the Mini 1000, which I think will work with the Mini 110. I’ll try it later.
link.
October 20th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Dang. 1 year later.