My $250 “macbook air”

So I finally got around to picking up a refurbished Dell Mini 9 netbook. Not only are these great for travelling (tiny, lightweight, solid state drive to handle the bumps and bruises better) but they also happen to be able to run OS X as well as Windows.

$219 plus $12 next day air got me a fedex delivery the next morning.  Two screws later the back panel is off and the easily upgradeable components are exposed — single ram slot which will be replaced with a $20 2GB module arriving tomorrow — and the stock 4 GB SSD (dell offers larger models but I’m going aftermarket):

                    

Until the replacement RunCore 32 GB SSD I ordered ($110) comes, I’m stuck with the stock 4 GB one, which doesn’t give me much room to load an operating system — so for now I’ll be running Windows Fundamentals for PCs which is a poorly named super-slim version of XP that microsoft offers its software assurance customers to run on older computers they can’t afford to retire.  If you look closely you can see that even with almost all the options checked, the FLP operating system will take up less than 900 MB of space when installed.  Once I got FLP up and running, I got to work installing Mac OS X.  This is pretty straightforward and can be done in a number of different ways, and only requires a USB stick and a legit, retail copy of Mac OS X. For now I’m running OS X off an external USB drive, since my little 4 GB SSD doesn’t have the space to install it. Once I get my 32 GB SSD installed I’ll be dual-booting Windows 7 and OS X:

      

 

UPDATE 4/28/2009:

My RunCore 32 GB SSD arrived yesterday, so I replaced the stock 4 GB drive and got Windows 7 up and running – the new drive is significantly faster and doesn’t exhibit the random hiccups/pauses the stock drive did.

                     

First, the RunCore SSD package – comes with a mini-USB cable so that you can use the drive via USB if necessary (helps for imaging etc.). Next you can see the SSD compared to a stick of laptop memory – this thing is small! The 3rd shot is installing the SSD into the mini (2 screws). Finally, the mini now running Windows 7…

Advertisement