It Started With A Huge Download and Patience

Given the netbook addict that I've become, it's no surprise that connecting my MSI Wind (currently running OS X Leopard) to an LCD monitor has become a pretext to justify purchasing the HP Mini 1000.

And given the really sexy and so scrumptuous looks of the Mini 1000, I knew I was gonna try OSX-ify it -- the little machine just oozed with chicness and class that my inner nerd-slash-geek was all aglee. There was no way I was gonna let it be defiled (continuously) by Win XP Home that it came with pre-installed; beautiful should mate only with equally beautiful. Simple as that.

But actually bagging the guy didn't seem as easy as eyeing it as a prospect, (read my futile attempts at my previous site).

In the end, like any solid relationship, one's gotta go under a bit of hardship to lay the foundation;

It started with a huge download.

First off, I didn't wanna go the torrent way as I'd never had success with that method, so I opted for the "chopped into bits and pieces" way, hunting down the 36 .rar files iDeneb v1.3 10.5.5 was split into. After 3 days (I wasn't downloading 24/7; I managed to continue regular sleeping and eating habits and turning off the pc during this time thanks to a pretty speedy net connection), I had the 36 precious bits and pieces of iDeneb sitting in my Downloads folder.

But what to do with those .rar files? I quickly searched for WinRAR and downloaded the Mac version of the app but low and behold, I had no idea what to do with those bizarre looking files staring right back at me. A quick google revealed that WinRAR worked only on terminal which is obviously a no go for someone whose EQ is as low as mine.

I ended up getting RAR expander in the end, installed it, and, crossing my fingers, just followed what the app told me to do: right click on the first .rar to expand. I was then prompted to specify where I wanted to have the resulting expanded file and voilà. Just make sure though that all the volumes, or files, are in the same folder.

I guess I was lucky that I didn't encounter any problems with the .rar files, none of them turned out to be corrupted in anyway.

That done, I proceeded with creating a bootable iDeneb installer from my external 20 gb hard drive (read the whole story here).

And what did I find out?

iDeneb v1.3 booted obediently on the HP Mini 1000.

It was a lot faster installing from hard drive than from DVD.

It was somehow disappointing.

Why?

Well, coming from the MacBook Wind, I was expecting a much better post-installation outcome than what I got with the Mini 1000.

For one, boot up time with OS X on the Mini takes about 1 min 40 secs which is just pitiful compared to the Wind's 35-40 secs. (this is timing after the 5 sec delay, of course)

I was presented with a practically useless system with the Mini after the installation while the Wind, with msiwindosx86 though at 10.5.4, is functional off the bat at least - resolution, trackpad, and audio.

You might ask what the duckies did I expect from a hackintosh anyway?

This is not a complaint; it's just that, compared to the MSI Wind or other netbooks out there for that matter, hackintoshing the HP Mini 1000 is still pretty much unchartered frontiers - little resource exists for OS X on this netbook as of the moment.

So you end up with a squashed 800 x 600 resolution, no sound, no ethernet, no WiFi (the menulets displayed can be beguiling, beware) for the first few moments after your ship hits land; but that's not saying all's lost.

Patience is indeed a virtue in this particular circumstance - it'll get you through.

After downloading (repeatedly) and installing (repeatedly) various (and the same) kexts and countless times of wiping out the 30 gb partition I alloted for OS X on my HP Mini 1000 for equally countless reinstallation of iDeneb, I decided to wrap up for this weekend.

I'm leaving my fresh, and hopefully last, iDeneb v1.3 install on my HP Mini 1000, which by the way, I'd christened "MacBook Mini" intact for now untill I did more research on the matter at hand.

So off the to the forums I go until next.