My MacBook Wind

Stubborn people just never give up on getting OS X Leopard to work on their HP Mini 1000. And some stupid stubborn people just won't download the dang iDeneb v3 10.5.5 (which is the way to go according to sources) either from torrent or rapidshare or megaupload because they don't have a decent net connection that's fast enough to handle the genormous 3.5 GB or up of this DVD installer.iso file. 

So what do stupid stubborn people with only a dated msiwindosx86 and iDeneb 10.5.4 that wouldn't even boot, do?

They try and try until they succeed burn out. Which is what this one exactly stupid stubborn person did over the last weekend:

Create an OS X Leopard Installer out an external HDD.

Disclaimer: exactly stupid stubborn person, me, did not think up this brilliant idea; I got it from here.

What you need: HP Mini's bios should be F.05 for this to work according to sources.

1) A working Mac. I don't have a real Mac so I used my MacBook Wind which is currently happily running OS X 10.5.6.

2) External hard drive. I ripped off my ancient lappie's 20GB ATA (yes, ATA, not SATA) and dumped into one of those cheapo 2.5" external HDD cases.

3) Retail OS X Leopard DVD Installer. Again, I don't have this nor can I download it, so I'm left with my msiwindosx86 and iDeneb-10.5.4-I-think DVD's.

4) Universal installer from PCWiz (I'm totally digging this site!)

5) HP Mini plugin for Universal Installer. This one's from Res over yonder at insanelymac.com. This plugin should be saved in the "Universal installer/Motherboards" folder.

6) Leopard 10.5.6 combo update from the Apple website.

 

What to do:

1) Plug in the external HDD to the mac and then launch the app "Disk Utility".

2) Partition the external HDD as GUID partition and format Mac OS Extended (journaled). 

- In the Disk Utiliy window, at the left side, click on the external HDD's icon (usually depicted as a yellow-orange disk), 

- At the right side, you click on the tab called "Partition". (If you don't see the tab, then you're not on the "main" external HDD. Click on the first, upper most yellow-orange disk icon and at the right of your Disk Utility window should change accordingly to show the tab).

- In the drop-down menu, choose 1 Partition. Give it a name. System automatically give you "Untitled 1" by default. (Quite imaginative huh?)



 

- Click on the "Options" button. This will bring up a menu. Choose the radio button that says "GUID Partition Table". Click on OK.



- Back on the main window, click on the "Apply" button. You can now close Disk Utility.

3) Insert and mount the OS X DVD installer and then launch the app "Terminal"

4) In Terminal, type this line:

cd /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/System/Installation/Packages

Or, if you're using msiwindosx86 DVD:

cd /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD Slipstream/System/Installation/Packages

5) Hit Enter and next, type this line: 

open osinstall.mpkg

6) Hit Enter. The Mac OS X Installation program should start, showing you a window. Just choose your external HDD.

7) If you're using Retail OS X DVD Installer, skip this step. If you're using a iDeneb or any customized OS X Installer DVD, before starting the actual installation, click on the "Custom" button and uncheck Kernel patches and other stuff, like additional languages to save space and time during installation.

8) After installation is done, double click on the 10.5.6 combo update package and select the external HDD. 

9) Start Universal Installer. (You should've installed the tools/utilities on your Mac when you started this)

 

From Res's guide: 

*You're now in the Universal Installer window

1) Change HD to your USB device. 

2) Select motherboard package with X86_Essentials and select apply kext package then click install. 

3) Select motherboard package with HP_mini_1000_F.05-10.5.6. 

4) Select apply kext package and DSDT patch. 

5) select ethernet EFI string and EFI string for video card (intel GMA 950). 

6) Click install. 

7) Select PC-EFI V9 then click install again. (In order to reduce the possibility that PC-EFI could be installed not correctly. I prefer to install it separately.)

8) Launch DiskUtility and fix the permission of your USB device. Done. 

9) Now, congratulation, you have made a bootable USB device. Reboot your computer with F9 and select your USB device as boot disk then boot with "-v -f". Now you are able to boot into your OSX on your USB device.

What I did after my Step #8 because I wasn't able to download Universal Installer and Res' HP Mini plugin for Universal Installer.

1) Launch OSX86 Tools Utility. Get it from PCWiz Computer site.

2) Click on "Intall EFI/Run FDISK" button. It'll ask you some questions (I, in particular, don't understand what they're talking really about) so just OK it and type your password when it asks you so.

3) A new smaller window will come up. In it, click on the "Run script" button. Again, just type your password and hit Enter to confirm if you're asked to.

4) Terminal will open. Confirming what you're about to do. Just hit Enter or "y" then Enter. It will present you with a list of actions to do. Choose 4 (Chameleon EFI) and press Enter.

5) It'll take a couple of seconds then you'll see a list of drives in your system. Usually, the external HDD will be listed as disk1. So just type "1" and hit Enter.

6) You'll see some texts running in the Terminal window and then a confirmation that you're done. Close Terminal and you should now have a bootable external HDD with OS X in it.

But since I didn't exactly follow Res' guide, especially the part with the Universal Installer and HP Mini plugin involved, I did not succeed at all and got stuck at the exact line I was dreading.

"MAC framework successfully initialized using 5242 buffer headers and 4096 cluster IO buffer headers."

Bleh. Well, at least I still have one more straw at this by downloading the Universal Installer and Res' HP Mini plugin before I quit being stupid and stubborn and just get iDeneb 10.5.5.

Last week, I decided to take a leave from work and, yup, I tinkered with my netbook. I tried to experiment with external monitors and graphics drivers just for kicks. I felt like it so I did it.

I was following a thread over at the msiwind.net forums and although I knew there was some issue with enabling mirroring mode, guess what? I still tried it.

Both displays conked out as soon as I enabled mirroring, I was seeing bars of shades of black and grey and then à la rainbow bright colors. In the end, I couldn't get past the blue screen even with the external monitor already disconnected. I tried what the forumers advised, removing some com.apple.windowserver.plist and so on files, but that still didn't solve my prob. 

So given the noob that I am, equipped with just guts and even lesser actual tech know-how,  I thought I'd reinstall. But my precious hackintosh files were still in the drive and I didn't have back up for them yet -- I was meaning to do it after the external monitor experiement but this tragedy happened. 

An idea struck me and so I took out my msiwindosx86 installation DVD, plugged in my iPod, booted from the DVD as if I were reinstalling. 

I was hanging all hopes on this one tactic: archive the files which were contained in a folder on my user's desktop to my main(root) /. And the copy the resulting archive to my iPod before I wiped out, once again for the Nth time, the entire content of the fairly used (and to some extent, abused) 160 GB WD SATA hard drive that came with the Wind.

Once I was in the installer window, I fired up Utilities > Terminal. 

Here is when I swish out my battered copy of Complete Linux. Ok, so what's Linux doing in this blog about Mac OS X? Well, it seems that knowledge of Linux commands is valuable if you wanna really get to know Mac OS X. Hey, OS X is Unix beneath the polished and posh Aqua interface and Linux is "Unix-like".

So here are the steps:

1) In the terminal :

tar cvf -f /Volumes/Macintosh HD/hackintosh.tar /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/username/Desktop/Hackintosh Resource

the -f is the flag for indicating that you want what's happening during the archive process to display in terminal.

cp /Volumes/hackintosh.tar /Volumes/iPod's name/

I voted in a poll over at msiwind.net for OS -- I assume, by OS, they mean the OS you're running on your Wind and here's an interesting discovery:



Mac OS X is finally getting ahead of Windows -- well, in this kind of game, at least.

Maybe I should already get me a real Mac. But I can't, don't have enough cash on me to pay for one, even on 0% installment basis (my S.I.P doesn't allow me that amount). Now with the looming probability - yep, not just possibility - of me joining the pool or poor Cunem-yuppie's (Currently Unemployed Young Profesionals), I'm in no ready state to be swiping that credit card any time within this decade or so. In short, no real MacBook for me.

But that doesn't prevent me from pretending to be a true blue Apple fangirl and my latest achievement is: TADA! My own MobileMe account courtesy of the free trial offer by yours sincerely, Apple Inc. One Infinity Loop, Cupertino, CA.

Now I have my own "@me.com" account! Isn't that grand?

Well the only reason I risked my credit card number (you need to input a bonafide credit card number to sign up even for the free trial) is to be able to use iChat. The prereq is a .mac account which has been superceded by MobileMe nowadays so I took the plunge. It is well stipulated that I'd only be billed once my 60-day trial period has expired and that I can just deactivate my account if I didn't want to pay 148 SGD or around PhP 5,000. It's true that by deactivating my MobileMe account, I won't be able to use the mail and the storage space but I'd still have an iChat ID. So far, so good.

Edit:

I was totally wrong (and stupid) to actually assume that a MobileMe account and a .Mac account are the same and one! Geesh! I'm getting an AIM screen name to use iChat. Although, I must admit, the MobileMe experiment rocked! :D

And what do I do with all that trial space up in Apple cloud? Hmmm....



Yep. I'm storing my hackintosh files. Kinky ! ;)

Argh!!!

Why didn't I see this one first? I hate Quick Silver and I hate it still! I thought I had to marry the guy and so I did and had little non-descript scripts such as "HeadPhones" and "switch.sh" litter my Macintosh HD, thinking all the while that this was necessary!

But it turns out that I could've opted for Audieee on my wind as well :(

And I wouldn't have had to go through the longish process of setting up what I had now had I unearthed the thread sooner.

It turns out that all I needed in the first place was the Audieee version customized for the MSI Wind (it was originally it was meant for the Eee PC hence the 3 e's in the utility's name) and CHUD.

And two steps at that:
1) Download CHUD and audieee4wind
2) Install CHUD and audieee4wind. Forget about the switch.sh included in the package

Great....

Color me prejudiced. Apparently Quick Silver is a shining beacon -- or better yet, the shining beacon -- in the world of Mac users / geeks. Perhaps my being only a Hackintosh user / geek is reason for the lack of that certain X factor determinant of the aforementioned species. Or perhaps having another "Menulet" crowd my menubar is just purely disgusting to me. 

But for what its worth, I've to get used to Quick Silver cause it's what I'm gonna live with from now on if I want to be able to use headphones on my MacBook Wind.

You see, on the MSI Wind, the headphone jack is one of the things that don't play well with OS X. But the good news is that people obviously smarter than me (and thank God they are) have come up with this great workaround involving a script called "switch.sh".

You run the script to switch audio channel from speakers to headphones and vice versa. In a nutshell, it does the duty that plugging in or unplugging your pair of earbuds should accomplish automatically.

Normally this could be done via terminal but that would entail typing command lines which yours truly is bound to forget and which is an error prone process altogether. There's an option where you create the script as an app and then you give it a nice icon and then you run it every time you wanna switch. The problem is, the app actually sits in your dock. Not that I mind it taking space in there; I've already learned to live with the nuisance that is the Realtek WLAN Utility but that I'd had to click it as well. I prefer a keyboard shortcut -- for some reason my brain remembers those, probably from muscle memory mostly.

And guess what, Quick Silver makes it possible to do just that. Oh well, if this were an arranged marriage, I guess I'd have to play my part until the AppleHDA / VooDoo team at the msiwind.net forums releases the much awaited fix that would let us, avid MSI Wind hackintoshers, use the headphones in the usual no-script-just-plug-and-unplug way and also the internal mic.

Here's the guide (taken from msiwind.net forums) :

1) Download this package which contains the switch.sh script and CHUD, and download Quick Silver here
2) Unzip the package anywhere you want. Me, I saved it in my Downloads folder first.
3) Install CHUD and install Quick Silver.
4) Save the switch.sh script in /Users/your username/Library.

5) Launch Terminal and type this command lines:

cd Library
chmod 755 switch.sh

6) After exiting Terminal, launch Script Editor - it's in the AppleScript sub-folder in your Applications folder - but I just command + spacebar and start the app via Spotlight (which is easier in my opinion).
7) Type this:

do shell script "Users/your username/Library/switch.sh" user name "your username" password "your password" with administrator privileges

8) Hit the Compile button -- the one with the Hammer then go to the menubar: File > Save as and name your script. I followed what the original guide author did and named mine "HeadPhones". Put it in the "main" or "root" /Library/Scripts folder like so;

9) Launch Quick Silver
10) Now here is when I get too lazy to write so you follow the photo story:

You can just drag n' drop the actual script file in the box in Quick Silver

 

Click on the small (microscopic) gear icon to the right to access the drop menu from you select "Triggers"

Customize your trigger key by clicking on the line under "Trigger" column.

 

Click on Edit and the field should flash.
From thence you can type the key trigger combination you want. I made mine "alt + S" ("S" for switch :D)

Make sure that Quick Silver is launched at login. You can do this in Quick Silver: Preferences > check "Start at login" > uncheck: Warn before, Enable advanced, Show icon in dock, and Show icon in menu bar.

You can remove it in your dock by hold clicking on the app icon and then click on "Remove from Dock".

And from then on, you can happily just hit alt + S (or whatever your trigger is) to toggle from internal speakers in earphones :D

I recently discovered that I can streamline my "emptying the trash ritual" by subtracting one step from it; "Empty Trash securely".

Just open Finder's preferences (easiest is by pressing command + , )

Enable option "Empty Trash securely". Close it. And the next time you open Trash in Finder, this is what you get:

Now if only I can find out the equivalent of "Shift + Del" on Windows on OS X.

So I was browsing for free apps, particularly free games at the apple website (idle hands to be blamed solely for this) and look what I found:

Not freeware?

Just fiddling with my beloved MacBook Wind again during the weekend. I decided to give coconutBattery a try.

Here's what I get:

My MacBook Wind is apparently already 6.5 something years old if we do the math :) And I only got my MSI Wind September last year.

iBook G4 14" LCD

1.4 GHz G4
512MB RAM
60GB ATA/100 4200 rpm
Slot-Loading SuperDrive DVD±RW/CD-RW
14.1-inch (diagonal) TFT XGA
ATI Mobility Radeon 9550
Wi-Fi 802.11g & Bluetooth 2.0
Mac OS X version 10.4 Tiger

For Php 20,000

Or I could get the HP Mini 1000 for PhP 21,995 but this isn't really as compatible as the Wind is to OS X.

I knew it was a bad idea to stop by at the local mall where gadgets, specifically netbooks, abound like popcorn in movie houses. But what could a mere, netbook-lover/addict, like me do? There was simply no fighting the urge so I followed my feet where they led me.

That's when I came face to face with the HP Mini 1000. 

The moment was just as fatal as the day I met the first guy I ever had a crush on and have loved (though secretly now) ever since. My heart beat faster. Clearly, I was smitten and fallen beyond redeem for this netbook:

And I know I should be more reasonable but the only thing that's stopped me from getting it on impulse is if I'd be able to run OS X Leopard on it or not.

I've always known that the MSI Wind is by far the best netbook hackintosh to be had with its unparalleled compatibility with OS X Leopard thanks to the hardwork of people like Stellarola et. al. over at the msiwind.net forums. And with this reminder in my head, I've been sane enough to keep my credit card safe in my wallet.

But reading this has changed my view completely, and quite drastically.

I've been patient over and over again with the MSI Wind so much so that it's become MacBook Wind in these last months. What with the absolutely gorgeous looks of the HP Mini 1000, and some luck, I think I can endure anything just to transform it into a MacBook Mini.

Should I buy or not? Oh, if only netbooks were free.

So here I am with this latest post, chronicling my experience with installing OS X Leopard on two different machines, the Asus 1000H and the MSI Wind. Both run OS X Leopard great but based on my experience, the MSI Wind, though lacking in "aesthetics" points (depending on each's own opinion) gives the more pleasant OS X experience in that I'd had significantly more trouble installing the OS in the Asus 1000H.

Just see my previous post. 

True, the webcam on the Asus 1000H may be less laggy than the one on the MSI Wind, provided that it isn't one of those nasty Bison v .03's which aren't compatible at all, but the over all user experience is albeit better on the Wind. 

As far as I'm concerned it's only the internal mic that's still totally not working on the Wind. It's the same case as in the Asus 1000H, but with the Wind, you get the volume, brightness, and all the other fn + Fx controls working after doing an install from the msiwindosx86 DVD. With the Asus, you gotta do some further hacking and it ain't easy.

I didn't even bother to get the controls working on my roomie's 1000H because that would mean another significant dent in my time schedule. True, as it is ,my hackintosh skills are hardly acceptable so I may just not have the ability to do that but it's undeniable that the said task does require working on.

Another thing is sound. Okay, what about audieee? Sure that did wonders and my roomie can now even use her iPod's earphones with her Eeepple 1000H (that's what she's decided to call her hackintosh) and I couldn't use it without even installing CHUD first and then running some scripts in Terminal etc...

But the main point of the fact is that without audieee, the 1000H's internal speakers wouldn't work at all. And audieee at that wouldn't have perfomred the big miracle it did without having to install the Developer Tools on the 1000H first. 

Perhaps all this is becoming a pain in the eyes to read and a lot more painful to the brain to process for it to make any sense at all so here's a better summary:

After installation from msiwindosx86 DVD :

MSI Wind

*No preps needed. Boot from DVD and install

What works right away:
1) Sound through internal speakers
2) Correct resolution 1028 x 600
3) Trackpad
4) Keyboard
5) Sleep (close lid and system automatically goes to sleep, press power button to wake-up)
6) Control keys (brightness, volume, etc.)
7) Bluetooth (both built-in or dongle/usb type)

What works but requires tweaking (fixes enclosed in parentheses):
1) Webcam (Sonix, update Quick Time to 7.5 or latest)
2) WiFi (download and install corresponding WLAN Utility)
3) Audio via headphone jack (follow guide here) (it's actually for the Lenovo S10 but it's the same procedure)

Asus 1000H 

1) Pre-installation requirement : Do not install patched kernel
2) Bypass setup by doing this trick:
after installation, during boot up, hit any key to stall default booting into OS X, at the prompt:

-s
/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

of course, you enter these lines one by one. Get a better idea of what to do with a guide with pics here

What works right away:
1) Correct resolution 1028 x 600
2) Trackpad
3) Keyboard
4) *Sleep (not verified)
5) Webcam
6) bluetooth

What works but requires tweaking (fixes enclosed in parentheses):
1) Webcam (Sonix, update Quick Time to 7.5 or latest)
2) WiFi (download and install WLAN utility)
3) Audio via headphone jack (follow guide here)
4) Controls (brightness, volume, etc.  might work by researching here) * not confirmed

Perhaps I took cue from the latest look my MacBook Wind desktop now sports so I adopted this new theme :D and I also obliterated that "Just another Wordpress blog". 

Apparently it does seem cool to have Mac OS X Leopard running on a PC, a netbook at that. Well, at least that's what my roomie thinks.

She bought herself a new Asus 1000H and requested that I transform it into a Mac. Short of explaining to her that I really am not transforming her netbook into a Mac, since installing OS X is different from transforming her hardware into an Apple one. It would require magic and my powers were limited to hacking techniques I didn't even invent in the first place. 

To cut the story short, this entire week was devoted to installing Leopard on her Asus 1000H. And boy was it difficult!

First, I only had the msiwindosx86 slipstream DVD installer which is customized specifically for the MSI Wind, not the Asus 1000H. But I still trudged on, crossing my fingers and hoping against all odds that it would work.

1 try:

I plugged in my external DVD drive to the Asus 1000, slapped in the msiwindosx86 DVD and rebooted. Darwin loaded but I got stuck at a cryptic line along the way, never getting to the graphical installation program.

2 try:

Again, I went scrounging the net for some clue and found out that you can't install OS X on the 1000H without flashing your BIOS with a compatible one that you get from here.

It worked. All but sound. And try as I might, there wasn't anything I could to make audieee work.

So, being true to my nature, I opted to do another fresh install as I thought this glitch might be caused by the fact that I didn't uncheck the patched kernel during install. According to the tutorials, it's important that the vanilla kernel be used if you want audieee to work.

3rd try:

Reinstallation success with the patched kernel left unchecked. But I got stuck at the welcome/configuration step, where I kept getting the Spinning Beach Ball of Death when I clicked on "Do Not Transfer blah blah" option.

I hit the net again, and found that I needed to interrupt Darwin during loading and at the "boot:" prompt, type:

-s

/sbin/fsck -fy

/sbin/mount -uw /

touch /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

(entering each line one by one)

and the change root's password so I could log in to the system later.

passwd root

After several tries, and I dunno why I had to try more than once since it's supposed to work at the first try, I was rocking :D

I installed audiee, which was just a matter of dragging the unzipped app to the Applications folder.

And hop-la! We got sound! :D

So I'm such a mac zealot and from over this last weekend, where I spend a lot of time using my MacBook Wind as my primary computer, I've developped muscle memory and found myself hitting Alt + C to copy files on my office PC.

Mainly that's due to the fact that I've gone ahead and fiddle with the physical keys on the Wind's keyboard. Yep, I'd swapped the Alt and the Windows logo key on both sides of the space bar.

Here's what it looks like:

It has been almost 2 months since I first installed OS X Leopard on my pearl white MSI Wind, thus producing my MacBook Wind. And I don’t know if that spiffy Leopard intro movie is to be held accountable but I installed and reinstalled about 3 times in the first 2 weeks ever since I had the DVD installer with me.

I experimented with the kexts and fixes combined with the updates (10.5.5 and 10.5.6) just to see which broke in which etc. For one, now I know that the Sonix webcam would work if you update QuickTime to 7.5 without having to go to 10.5.5. Updating to 10.5.5 from 10.5.4, which is default for the msiwindosx86 DVD install, does break your video bringing resolution down to a squashed 800 x 600, sound, and trackpad (mine’s Sentellic) but not your keyboard. Updating from 10.5.5 to 10.5.6 breaks all of the four.

After my 3rd fresh installation, I thought of just sticking with that setup for a while. No problem as it was December already and the holidays were coming, leaving me with little time to spare for tinkering. In fact, it was my New Year’s resolution to let a month pass without wiping out my hard drive again for yet another reinstall.

It wasn’t so hard to live with an aging installation after all. XP in my PC at the office is already a year and a half. It’s sluggish alright, but still working. So I thought that if OS X’s Unix origins lived up to its claim to glory, my hackinstosh MacBook Wind shouldn’t have any troubles going for a far better record than that.

I was trudging along fine, installing Parallels and running XP on virtual machine for when I wanted to use Word 2003 with Wordfast for those translation workloads I just had to finish at the apartment after office hours. Of course I had Office:Mac 2008 installed but my CAT Tool, Wordfast, isn’t compatible with it. I could access the net at coffee shops and even while I ate my fries at the Jollibee branch at the other end of our street.

But it came to a point that I noticed it took so long to boot up to OS X lately. It’s not blazing fast as the stock Xandros on the Eee PC but as far as I can remember, the boot up time should at least be as decent as XP’s. That was when I started timing boot times. My iPod timer recorded a molasses like average of 1 min. 20 sec.

I resorted to the forums and found out I wasn’t only the one with this problem. However, I also found at that about 80% of the MSI Wind hackintoshers experienced 30 seconds - less than a minute boot times. I am irked beyond compare.

So, with the little knowledge I gained from my installation experiments, I decided to wipe out my hard drive again. All my files were practically living somewhere in my iPod so backing up was totally an irrelevant step for me.

Here’s what I did:

1) Reinstalled from msiwindosx86 DVD - out of the box, everything worked great as it should. Except WiFi, Webcam. Issues with the mic and audio out to headphone jack are not included in the problem, I didn’t use these a lot and so it doesn’t bother me to wait for the VooDoo AppleHDA to be released. I didn’t install any apps yet.

2) Updated to 10.5.5 - I knew my trackpad would break so I plugged in a mouse. My keyboard was working fine and that’s about all I need to enter my admin password to install the 10.5.6 update.

3)Updated to 10.5.6 - My mouse was still working fine but my keyboard was bricked. It was time to install the kexts and such and as I didn’t have an external keyboard, I just activated the keyboard viewer from System Preferences. This allowed me to use the virtual keyboard which I could summon from the menu bar.

4) Installed the kexts - It was no problem finding kexts from the net but there are lots of versions out there, you end up confused so you download everything you find in the end and then install them all in the end just to be on the safe side.

This is when experimenting becomes useful. I used Paul’s Wind Driver Set but swapped out some parts like for the video, I used the non-artifact Intel GMA 950, downloaded from the forums at msiwind.net again.

At each step, I recorded the boot up times. When Darwin starts, I intervene with the countdown to 5 and then hit Enter with my right hand as my left triggers the timer in my iPod.

I started with 00:00:55.662. Next 00:00:50.617. Lastly 00:00:38.194.

Unbelievable! I was expecting to see boot up times that worsened at each update but the results clearly showed otherwise.

I’m not sure if it was the kexts affecting the boot times. The 303 kexts I backed up running on my system via OSx86 Tools is hardly a minimal figure. So it might have been the combination of updates and kext installation in between that’s a more probable candidate as a culprit.

I've installed all the apps I wanted and am still getting a not too shabby 00:00:40.757.

I’m just happy Leopard is now living up to its supposedly inherent feline speeds.   

I'm used to having to face an installation program when getting a new application on my PC. It's one of those familiar landmarks that let me know I'm home or near home, if you will.

In hopes of getting a messenger app other iChat on my MacBook Wind, I got Yahoo Messenger from the DVD I got from a fellow forumer. So, being the PC user I normally am, I clicked on the smiling Yahoo Messenger file in Finder, expecting to see an installation pop up and bug me.

Instead, I saw Yahoo Messenger immediately open. "Wow, this is really fast!" I thought. I quit the program after using it for a while

And then the problem was that YM was no where to be found when, later, I wanted to use it again. Where did it go?

I checked my applications folder but didn't see it; only iChat as if beckoning me with an inaudible 'Use me instead!'. 

And then I thought of just popping in the DVD again and clicked on that smiling wide icon in an attempt to launch some installation action but to no avail.

I hit the forums and found out that that smiling icon on the DVD was the entire application itself and all I had to do was drag it to my applications folder. I could even drag it to somwhere in my Mac and it would run from there.

Really now. This exercise made me feel a lot stupid ;)

yum! nope, it isn't Vanilla flavored cake much as I want it to be. Those two words are actually part of the new parlance I had no choice but to acquire in choosing to be a hackintosher.

Vanilla seems to pertain to the kernel version and kext, I've only discovered this fairly recently, means "kernel extension".

Right. All I know is that I had to download the appropriate kexts to get me running.

After two previous netbooks, the Eee PC 701 and the Eee PC 900, I finally got the MSI Wind U100.

It's supposed to be the Linux version that I got from E-hub, which didn't include any OS when I bought it, not even Ubuntu. Apparently, the label "Linux version" meant "without any OS installed" for MSI. I remember having Xandros when I got my Eee PC's. Weird.

Anyway, a rundown on the specs first:

1.6 GHz Atom N270
1 GB DDR2 RAM
160 GB WD SATA
802.11 b/g
10" LED wide screen LCD
Webcam
Mic
No internal bluetooth

Pretty much the generic netbook specification. The unit set me a comfortable 19,999 Php. I would've have wanted the XP Home version which had the internal bluetooth module but the hard drive for that model's only 80 GB and costed 24,950 Php.

I figured out I'd rather have the bigger cappacity hard drive 19,999 Php model and then add a separate bluetooth usb dongle for a better deal.

After two previous netbooks, the Eee PC 701 and the Eee PC 900, I finally got the MSI Wind U100.

It's supposed the Linux version that I got from E-hub, which didn't include any OS when I bought it, not even Ubuntu. Apparently, the label "Linux version" meant "without any OS installed" for MSI. I remember having Xandros when I got my Eee PC's. Weird.

Anyway, a rundown on the specs first:

1.6 GHz Atom N270
1 GB DDR2 RAM
160 GB WD SATA
802.11 b/g
10" LED wide screen LCD
Webcam
Mic
No internal bluetooth

Pretty much the generic netbook specification. The unit set me a comfortable 19,999 Php. I would've have wanted the XP Home version which had the internal bluetooth module but the hard drive for that model's only 80 GB and cost24,950 Php.

I figured out I'd rather have the bigger capacity hard drive 19,999 Php model and then add a separate blue tooth USB dongle for a better deal. I was even inspired to buy Windows XP Home separately from E-hub too and the total cost came at only 23,799 Php, still cheaper.

Next I got the msiwindosx86 DVD from a fellow forumer as  I didn't have decent broadband connection at home and proceeded with the experiment.

(You can google for the msiwindosx86 ISO on the net for download)

Installation:

I didn't want to erase Win XP entirely yet and opted to dual boot. So bearing in mind what I read on the forums that I would have to partition my drive to create space for my new kitty, I resorted to:

1. boot up with Mandriva live CD, pretend to install it. I was able to resize my Windows partition and create a new partition on the drive, giving me 80 GB for Windows and another 80 GB for OS X.

2. That done, I rebooted the machine, held down F11 to get to my boot options. Swapped the Mandriva live CD with the msiwindosx86 DVD and chose my external DVD drive to boot from.

3. Some text appeared and I waited for about a couple of minutes before the OS X Installer GUI appeared. I chose the language and ran Disk Utility to format the partition I'd just created: HFS+journaled.

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4. I then chose the partition, or as indicated by the installer program, "Drive" where I wanted to put Leopard.

5. I cancelled installer verification because I was so excited and the installation went through quite smoothly.

6. After about an hour, I was greeted with the Leopard welcome screen--it was breathtaking to see the word "welcome" fly across outer space my LCD in different language and with that equally cool background music. I think that was the moment I officially became an Apple fan girl

Don't I just love the new Finder? I'm used to using iTunes 7 and 8 on my workstation PC at the office and I must say that this sidebar thing is great!

Couple that with Cover Flow view and Quick Look, and you'll wonder how ever you were able to manage without them.

Quick Look is a time saver as it allows me to get a peek at a file without having to open up an application. I'm head over heels!

However, it still just bewilders me each time I drag some files off of my iPod into one my Home folders to transfer them, but low and behold; when I drag and drop, OS X makes a copy of my files instead.

And then I drag and drop the docs from my Downloads folder to my Documents folder, and OS X moves them instead now. Weird.

It seems that dragging ang dropping between different disks is really copying but between locations in one and the same disk is really moving files. 

And apparently my computer vocabulary has to change too with moving to the Mac OS. Oh well.