Tag Archive for 'netbook'

Mac OSX on Lenovo S10 Revisited

Published on August 4, 2009 in mac. 34 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

S10MacBookPro

It’s been a LONG time since I have done any updates on running a Lenovo S10 hackintosh. When the 13″ MacBook Pros were released I ran right out and picked one up. I love the little hackintosh netbook, but it just doesn’t have the grunt I really need for running Lightroom and other photo editing software. So I am thrilled with the real deal Mac, but I still wanted to revisit the Lenovo to see how things were coming along. The good news is that it’s going VERY well.

What you’re going to need now:

  1. A working OS X 10.5.6 install (use your real Mac or a friends Mac or Hackintosh, you can do this with only a windows system but it’s a bit more complicated. See this thread from SilverZero)
  2. Retail OSX Leopard DVD 10.5.6
  3. NetbookBootMaker 0.8.1 from http://netputing.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4
  4. VoodooHDA from this thread.
  5. kext helper from http://cheetha.net/

If you have all the items above you are ready to go! Most everything you need to do is covered in this NetbookBootMaker howto thread. The only change is that in step 9 do not hide files. Once you have completed these steps pretty much everything other than audio and sleep is going to be working on your Lenovo. Those are up next.

To enable sleep you have to edit the Info.plist in

/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEHCI.kext/Contents/

You need to add these lines

<key>OSBundleCompatibleVersion</key>

<string>1.0</string>

under

<key>CFBundleVersion</key>

<string>3.1.5</string>

Then you will need to refresh your kexts by using the advanced section of the kext helper utility and running the kext permissions and tag cache rebuild options and rebooting.

To get Audio working:

  1. Delete the AppleHDA.kext from /System/Library/Extensions/ (make a backup of it somewhere to be safe)
  2. Copy the VoodooHDA.kext to the /Extra/LenovoS10Ext/ folder on your boot drive
  3. Run UpdateExtra from the /Extra/ folder
  4. Reboot
  5. You’re done!

There are still shortcomings however. Still no mic working. Still no wired ethernet working. The Audio has some issues after resuming from sleep. I haven’t tried it but apparently this thread has some steps that can fix the sound on sleep issues. Some nice bonuses are a new trackpad control panel entry that gives REALLY nice two finger scrolling capability. Very impressed with this, a huge improvement to the overall experience.

Finally, I’m not really using my S10 anymore. If you are interested in purchasing it please send me an email at web@thekitch.com I’m somewhat flexible on price, make me an offer. This includes both the stock 3 cell battery and a 9 cell battery as well as the 2gig ram upgrade. I’m happy to sell it with a working OSX installation but you’ll need your own 10.5 licensed copy.

Apple, I want my pixels back.

Published on June 9, 2009 in mac. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

I’ll be honest, the primary reason I am here is to bitch about Apple removing “Toppy Tabs” or “Tabs on Top” or “Chrome style Tabs” from the official Safari 4 release.  I was loving this little UI tweak on my Lenovo S10 hackintosh netbook from the Safari 4 beta. It’s limited to just 600 pixels of vertical resolution. So with Safari 4 plus my new most favorite Safari addon ever, Glims, I was able to get back 40 or so pixels of vertical resolution.  That’s like 10%!

For those not familiar, glims, is an addon for Safari that provides all kinds of cool tweaks to the browser.  My absolute favs are that it allows for running safari as a fullscreen browser, meaning hidden menubar, and also provides predictive google searching in the search box.  It does tons of other cool stuff as well.

I’ll be waiting patiently for a way to get back tabs on top.  Thanks Apple.

Windows 7 vs OS X Leopard for Netbook

Published on May 21, 2009 in mac. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

macvswin

I recently got very brave and decided to try out Windows 7 on my Lenovo S10 netbook since I had heard so many different sources speak highly of the new Windows Release Candidate.

Initially I wanted to try and dual boot and keep my existing OSX installation fresh.  So I used Disk Utility to shrink the Mac partition and make room for the new Windows OS.  This was a failure.  Even thought Win 7 is supposed to be able to deal with the GUID partition tables I just couldn’t cram the thing down the throat of the install.  So knowing that I have my Time Machine backup handy I decided to just say screw it and blow the whole thing away.

Once I made this leap the Windows 7 install was a piece of cake.  Very little input was needed from me to do the install and it didn’t even take that long.  After the first reboot pretty much everything on the system worked right out of the box.  Video, Webcam, Audio, Mic, Wifi, Ethernet, Card Reader, Sleep, you name it, it worked.  Install, thumbs up!

Next up I got the business of getting the system ready for real use.  This meant finding a browser I enjoyed and getting Lightroom rolling.  I found that the IE8 was pretty awesome!  The full screen mode is unbeatable on the resolution limited netbook.  It’s completely fullscreen with an autohiding address bar, tabs, and bookmarks.  Top notch!  Lightroom installed just fine.  The big issue here was that I could not get it to properly import photos.  The other big issue was that overall performance just couldn’t touch Mac OS X.  Expose and Spaces completely dominates the Windows Aero switcher.  Both in usability and in animation smoothness.  iTunes also performed much better in OS X.  Finally I would say that overall multi-tasking performance in OS X was considerably better.

So in the end Windows 7 didn’t last long.  Next post I’ll discuss the switch back to Mac OS X.  There are some new tools and twists since I last did this and the process is now even smoother!

Two Months of Mac Netbook

Published on May 5, 2009 in mac. 10 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

I’ve been thinking a lot about life with my Lenovo S10 hackintosh netbook as my only system. Recent articles in Lifehacker, TUAW, and Wired got me thinking about it even more.  Most of these folks are going on about 6 months with their Hackintosh netbooks, I’m at two months.  That said I have definitely formed some opinions about the whole thing.  Some good, some bad.  I’ve even been contimplating the purchase of a full Mac Laptop as a replacement.

What it has been really great for is having a fully functioning laptop I can drag around with me anywhere I want in my Tenba bag along with all my camera gear.  I don’t even have to bring the power supply along for a day trip since I invested in a 9 cell battery for it from ebay for 75 bucks.  This is a pretty unstoppable combination for day travel.  I am getting between 7 and 10 hours of battery life in this setup.  Not bad for a little netbook and a cheap knockoff battery.  I also added a Logitech Nano VX mouse to use along with the system as well.  It’s a great match since I can leave the micro reciever in the netbook at all times, very convenient.  I’m also using the netbook hooked up to my 20″ LCD display when at home sometimes.  This is a great setup when I want to do heavy photo editing or work from home.

Overall system performance is OK.  It’s tolerable basically.  It runs Lightroom fine if I am willing to be a little bit patient with it.  I don’t do a lot of brushwork and cloning so that definitely helps, these functions are a bit slower for real artistic work.  I would guess Photoshop would be nearly unusable if I were to try.  It’s great for web browsing with the Safari 4 beta which saves me some screen real estate.  Watching video is a crusher.  It can handle 480p h.264 video and lower quality flash video, but no more.  With 2 gigs of memory it handles multitasking just fine.  I keep Adium, iTunes, and Tweetie open at all times along with a few browser tabs and Lightroom and switching is fine, no issues there.  I have even set up XP in a virtual machine using VirtualBox.  I would say that compared to netbooks running XP performance is actually better, especially for multi-tasking.

Ergonomics is another issue all together.   The keyboard was my main concern initially but this turned out to be almost a non issue.  They layout of the Lenovo S10 keyboard is fine for all but the most intense typing.  The touchpad is worthless for anything but the most basic navigation, thus the cordless mouse.  The screen has also turned out to be a bit of an issue.  At 1024×600 it doesn’t have enough vertical resolution for a lot of apps.  I have to use some scaling trickery to make these work.  Overall, a higher res screen sure would be nice.  I’ve even gone in search of the panel from a Dell Mini 10 “HD” which is 1200×768 or so to see if I could hack it in somehow.  No luck yet.

So in the end it’s still a usable solution.  I think I would really like a real mac though.  The extra screen real estate and the added horsepower would be really great.  Not sure how I feel about giving up the insane battery life that I get right now or the compact size.  There is also the cost.  I’m not limited with what I can do with the Lenovo right now, so I think I’ll just stick with it.

Everyday Mac Netbook

Published on March 16, 2009 in Tech and mac. 16 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , .

DeskThis is my workstation at home now. It’s my Lenovo S10 running Mac OSX 10.5.6 hooked up to my 20″ Dell display and wired keyboard and mouse. Also includes the iPhone dock and a 250gig WD drive hidden away for storage and Time Machine. It’s definitely not the fastest system in the universe but it’s been responsive enough overall. With 2gigs of RAM I can run downloaded TV shows on the S10 screen and switch on the main screen between Safari, Adium, and Lightroom. I’ve easily gotten used to the workflow speed on this setup. Here I just have it running Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM because it’s kinda meta.

I’m really shocked that I’m able to use a 350 dollar system (plus 20 dollar RAM upgrade) as my only personal system.  So far the only thing it really can’t cope with is “HD” flash video streams.  Even non-HD flash video gives it a serious run for it’s money.  If flash would stop sucking so much it would be far less of an issue.  Another good test has been playback of Apple’s Quicktime movie trailers.  480p is handled with ease.  However 720p is too much to handle.  It’s close, but it’s dropping a few frames making it choppy.  Still, none to shabby.

Extra bonus, when the next gen of these little buggers comes around in a year or so I won’t feel to bad about making the upgrade, as long as I can still run OSX.  If not I may have to bite the Apple bullet.  I’m getting kinda hooked on OSX all over again.

Netbook Security Scare

Published on March 5, 2009 in Tech. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

In this recent Yahoo! article they are stating that netbooks are inherintley insecure because they are cheap.

Such a bullshit article.  It does have some facts right about the whole thing.  But the generalization that they are insecure by virtue of being cheap is ridiculous.  The only thing that makes a system secure is the software that runs on it.  So if you have a firewall and anti-virus or something then its just as secure as my 4000 dollar workstation here at work.

They also miss the point that a lot of them run linux which is much more secure than Windows right out of the box!  Some intrepid user, like me, are running OSX, which is also a more secure OS out of the box than Windows as well.  Please do not flame, I’m not a mac fanboy.  It’s just fact.

Certainly there is some validity to the statement regarding “low-end” users.  This is true simply because the most dangerous thing to a computer is it’s user.  Unknowingly clicking links and popups and opening emails and attachments is still the real danger.

Way to go mainstream scare tactics.

Mac OSX on Lenovo S10 and Dell Mini 9

Published on March 3, 2009 in Tech. 123 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

S10andMini9

Notice! I have updated this with a new report on my latest attempt with OS X on my Lenovo S10. It’s easier than ever. It does require that you have a running OS X Leopard machine, but it is dead simple. See this post.

I’ve spent the better part of this past weekend working on getting Mac OS X running on a Dell Mini 9 and my Lenovo S10.  I’ve spent some time in the past Hackintoshing on various systems but it’s been quite some time since I had done it.  Abby’s recent Mini 9 purchase and the sale of my own iMac spurred this whole thing on.   This along with the step by step guide made famous by Gizmodo sparked all this insanity.

The whole thing is made possible by information gathered from:

The S10 (or a dell mini with an upgraded internal drive) makes a truly amazing Mini Mac.  Performance is VERY snappy.   Think of it as running a first gen single core Intel Mac Mini.  It’s nearly identical.   I’ve even got Virtualbox running the included XP Home in a virtual machine and it is trucking away happily.  The small screens do have some limitations but for the most part I have been happy with the real estate provided.  More than adequate.  The Mini9 is going to live on as an XP system, but the S10 shall forever more remain a Mac.  I love it!

Now the technical crap

First thing you’ll need to do is get some install media ready.  I don’t own an external DVD drive so I decided to use the “single key” USB drive install method outlined at mydellmini.  For this you will need one PC, one Mac, one 8gig USB drive, one retail OSX 10.5.6 DVD.

Use this AMAZING guide for step by step directions on how to do the install:

http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/how-to-mac-os-x-dellefi-installation-t3925.html

This worked perfectly on the Dell Mini 9.  You are DONE.  Note that I did my install to an external USB HD (need to use GUID partition table in Disk Utility) and it’s working fine.  Although sleep does not work.  Result of the USB drive or the 8gig SSD internal which has known sleep problems.

Some slight tweaks for the Lenovo S10.

1) I used the latest DellEFI beta from http://code.google.com/p/mydellmini/downloads/list

I used the DellEFI1.1b2.zip I removed the RealtekR1000.kext from DellEFI/Contents/Resources/Extensions/ in this package though since LAN doesn’t work on our S10s. It’s possible this could have been left alone, haven’t tried it yet with it in place.  I also removed IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext since it’s for the sd card reader on the mini 9 which we also don’t need.

2) When installing the DellEFI package I did advanced and did not do the system specific dsdt file since I suspect this might do bad things on the lenovo, more experiments to come later. YOU MUST INSTALL THE DSDT file option.  Without it the system will not power off, restart, or have properly working audio!!!!

There are a few more steps for the S10 as well.

For Audio install Audieee by following the directions exactly as they appear on the site.

For sleep and speedstep download:

Voodoopower from VoodooPower Kext

VoodooUSBEHCI from VoodooUSBEHCI

GenericCPUPowerManagement Application

Install the two kexts using kext helper from http://cheetha.net/

After rebooting then follow these steps:

To enable sleep you have to edit the Info.plist in

/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBEHCI.kext/Contents/

You need to add these lines

<key>OSBundleCompatibleVersion</key>

<string>1.0</string>

under

<key>CFBundleVersion</key>

<string>3.1.5</string>

Then you will need to refresh your kexts by using the advanced section of the kext helper utility and running the kext permissions and tag cache rebuild options and rebooting.

UPDATE:

Fixed fan issues by following the information on this thread.  More specifically I grabbed the 10.5.6 AppleACPIPlateform.kext from this post. Once you have gotten that you can use the kext updater again to replace it on your system and reboot. Fans work great now!

That’s everything you need to have a well oiled Mac Netbook!  Some of this is a bit vaugue so please feel free to ask questions.  It can be a little challenging to piece all this crud together from the various sites out there so if there is something that needs clarification please let me know.

Much thanks to Abby for the photo and loaning me her Dell Mini 9 for this experiment!  Also note, the mini9 is just running xp above, but yes, it’s also running Mac OS