Steven Sande: Why the hackb00k is a fail
by Volker Weber
I wrote about creating a hackintosh (AKA hackb00k) out of a Dell mini 9 in a long post back in October of 2008, and at that time I was fairly impressed with the low cost and capabilities of the device. However, ... Even if you delude yourself into thinking that since you're only going to use it for email it will be a worthwhile investment, you're wrong. If you want to know how I came to these conclusions, read on.
Comments
Linux is perfectly fine for "Little Dell".
I agree with Stephan. I understand the challenge and fun to run Mac OSX on a netbook, but as a serious workhorse? That is asking for guaranteed trouble.
As choosing the Dell mini 9 for that experiment? The SSD is not meant for "office" work. The screen is a great mirror, though some might find that useful :-) . And the keyboard... I have never tried the Dell mini, but on the pictures the keyboard leaves room left and right and is built in a tiny machine - that can't be great for normal typing. Asus 10' EEEs or Samsung's NC10 have far better screens and surprisingly good and usable keyboards.
So I'd say the hackb00k experiment tries too prove something that is bound to fail on a hardware which makes sure of that outcome.
Also other than Ubuntu Netbook Remix, there are at least two interesting ubuntu derivatives aimed at netbooks using the remix: EasyPeasy which used to be Ubuntu-EEE and eeebuntu.
Moritz - hoping you are keeping well! ;-)
Thanks for the eeebuntu link (had not been aware of that) but your other link seems to be broken.
I agree (with you and with a great many of his correspondents) that Steven Sande seems to have set himself up for failure on this - use the tool as it is meant to be used and things are likely to go much better - but I guess Apple will not be doing their own work in that direction in the near future.
I've been running OSX on the eee 1000h for about 6 months now and I have to say it does the job pretty well. I'm stuck on an old version of OSX and really need to rebuild it but I think there are surprisingly few problems. I bought a new wifi card (same one as in a macbook) to help the compatibility and I'd rather the touchpad disabled tapping but I can live with that. The keyboard needs remapping and I hate trying to remember where the pipe key '|' is but I watch full screen movies with it and regularly use wifi and 3g and take it on trips wherever I go with great success.
How would I improve them? Don't think I would really. For the price they are great. I don't store anything personal on it (apart from via browsing) so if it gets lost, no probs, I still have my MBP at home...
I'm going to try running Ubuntu 9.04 off a USB stick to see if that's any better but no probs if not!
