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Hackintosh for Cart Work


Alex Sullivan

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Is anyone out there using a netbook hackintosh for simple file management or non-critical playback?  I recently got OSX running on a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v and so far it appears to work pretty well.  A 10" laptop with 6-hour battery that fits on a cart nicely and can be found used for less than the price of a lavalier mic.  Is this all too good to be true?

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Is anyone out there using a netbook hackintosh for simple file management or non-critical playback?  I recently got OSX running on a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v and so far it appears to work pretty well.  A 10" laptop with 6-hour battery that fits on a cart nicely and can be found used for less than the price of a lavalier mic.  Is this all too good to be true?

Sounds great to me if you know how to make it go.  I looked into that whole deal very seriously and found the concept too scary.  ("Non-critical playback"  seems like it becomes very critical very quickly if it is being used for timing on the set....)  I admit I'm not enough of a computer expert to feel like I could trouble shoot this combo under pressure.  My solution is to use older Mac laptops (I have 3 12" G4 PBs) and leave them lean and mean and for location use only.    Tell us what steps you took to get your rig working--the size/power thing IS very attractive.  Pix of it on your cart?

Philip Perkins

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Is anyone out there using a netbook hackintosh for simple file management or non-critical playback?  I recently got OSX running on a Dell Inspiron Mini 10v and so far it appears to work pretty well.  A 10" laptop with 6-hour battery that fits on a cart nicely and can be found used for less than the price of a lavalier mic.  Is this all too good to be true?

I've been using a Hackintosh OS10.5.8 Dell Mini 9" for file management, and the occasional web surf -

small and low profile.

32G SSD - much smaller than my everyday MacBook. 

Michael Filosa, CAS

Atlanta

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I still rue the day that Apple decided not to get into the netbook market. Bastids...  shakingmad.gif

BTW, Mike, you can still use your Dell for file management and web surfing just with the dreaded Windows XP. I have MacDrive installed on mine, and I routinely check Mac-formatted disks and stuff on it without any problem.

--Marc W.

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I still rue the day that Apple decided not to get into the netbook market. Bastids...  shakingmad.gif

Apple did decide to get into the netbook market...In a half-assed locked-down proprietary way.

Unfortunately, an iPad is functionally worthless for a lot of what we need...

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Sounds great to me if you know how to make it go.  I looked into that whole deal very seriously and found the concept too scary.  ("Non-critical playback"  seems like it becomes very critical very quickly if it is being used for timing on the set....)  I admit I'm not enough of a computer expert to feel like I could trouble shoot this combo under pressure.  My solution is to use older Mac laptops (I have 3 12" G4 PBs) and leave them lean and mean and for location use only.    Tell us what steps you took to get your rig working--the size/power thing IS very attractive.  Pix of it on your cart?

Philip Perkins

Hi Philip,

The steps I used to get OSX on it can be found here:

http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-10v-into-the-ultimate-snow-leopard-netbook

Be sure you purchase a Dell Mini 10v (aka 1011), other models don't necessarily work.  Also, once you've got OSX up and running, DO NOT update beyond OS 10.6.2, otherwise your netbook will turn into a paperweight.  The hackers will likely have a fix for that sometime soon.  All other software updates are ok.

I hear you regarding the non-critical playback, but so far Audacity runs fine on it and thats about as involved in playback as I tend to get on my current show.  I don't have any pictures yet as I'm re-tooling my cart now because we go back into 9-months of 70-hour weeks beginning this Thursday.

Alex

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shakingmad.gif

BTW, Mike, you can still use your Dell for file management and web surfing just with the dreaded Windows XP. I have MacDrive installed on mine, and I routinely check Mac-formatted disks and stuff on it without any problem.

--Marc W.

Very good to know - I had not ventured there in the past - I will look into MacDrive just for the halibut.

Michael Filosa, CAS

Atlanta

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Apple did decide to get into the netbook market...In a half-assed locked-down proprietary way. Unfortunately, an iPad is functionally worthless for a lot of what we need...

Yep, that's exactly how I feel about it. There's a terrific podcast I listen to every week, This Week in Tech, and most of the commentators there are huge iPad fans. But in a recent show, one of them finally admitted that the iPad is really just a content-viewing/listening device, not a content-creating device. That's my main problem with it: I can't tweak a database, edit a soundfile, change BWF metadata, copy a file to a hard drive, make a disc, or do the myriad of things I need to do every day.

Sure, you can sorta/kinda write a note with it, but I wouldn't want to write anything more than a few pages on it. For watching movies, looking at slides, surfing the web... the iPad is fine. But I need more than that.

If they had just made a one-piece MacBook Air (without a keyboard), that would've worked for me.

--Marc W.

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Hi Philip,

The steps I used to get OSX on it can be found here:

http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-10v-into-the-ultimate-snow-leopard-netbook

Be sure you purchase a Dell Mini 10v (aka 1011), other models don't necessarily work.  Also, once you've got OSX up and running, DO NOT update beyond OS 10.6.2, otherwise your netbook will turn into a paperweight.  The hackers will likely have a fix for that sometime soon.  All other software updates are ok.

I hear you regarding the non-critical playback, but so far Audacity runs fine on it and thats about as involved in playback as I tend to get on my current show.  I don't have any pictures yet as I'm re-tooling my cart now because we go back into 9-months of 70-hour weeks beginning this Thursday.

Alex

Thanks for the info and good luck w/ yr netbook.  But....you could run Audacity on the Netbook in its PC version w/o the Mac OS....right?  (And I had good luck w/ Sound Forge in its 2tr version for playback back when I was using a PC on the set...).  Wave Agent is PC as well as Mac, and there's BWF Widget....  What Mac app do you need that is Mac only?  PT?  FCP?  Boom Recorder?  (Cool idea...)

Philip Perkins

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