Posts Tagged ‘apple’

Feb

MSI Wind: OS - prep & install

With the firmware installed, I’d been gearing up for how to actually install the OS.

First off, I should mention that, for odd reasons, I had a legitimate copy of Leopard that wasn’t going to use. If you’re doing this install, I recommend that you also obtain a legitimate copy of OSX Leopard. Apple sells it for $129, or you can get it here for $109, with free shipping. I’m not sure about the “New and Used” versions for $80, but you may decide to take the risk.

Having acquired a legitimate version of OSX, you’re now going to put it on the shelf. Search your favorite bittorrent site for a distribution called MSIOSX86.iso. This is a version of OSX that has already been modified to include the drivers necessary to make the MSI Wind run nicely on this hardware. The version I installed was based on OS X 10.5.2, and it may have been upgraded by now. There are ways to get your release upgraded to a current version. Right now, it’s all about having a starting point, and I’ll try to cover the upgrade at a later point.

Many people took to burning the OS image onto DVD, and booting from an external DVD drive. Not having one, and not wanting to spend $60 for one, I looked for other options. The best option I found was very similar to what I found for the firmware: Burn the ISO to a USB flashdrive, and boot from there. I found a great set of instructions on how to do that on Dan Cameron’s site.

The short form of what you’re doing to get OSX on to the drive in a bootable manner is to mount the ISO image as a file system. You then use Disk Utility to “restore” that image onto the USB drive. That will result in a USB drive that is (or should be) bootable on Apple Hardware. However, since you’re not using Apple hardware, you need to do a little extra work, which is not mentioned on Dan’s site. To make the drive bootable, you need to use Chameleon, which is one of the tools you can find at the OSx86tools site. Chameleon does all the appropriate magic for non-apple hardware to boot off the USB drive.

Now it’s just a small matter of booting off the USB drive and installing OSX. First, with the machine powered off, install the bootable USB drive. When the Wind powers up, go into the BIOS settings and tell the machine to boot off the USB drive as it’s first option, and save the bios settings. When the machine restarts, it should see the USB drive, boot off of it, and bring you up ready to install. At this point, it’s a normal OSX Leopard installation, and you proceed as you normally would.

I should note that my goal was to have a netbook running OSX. There are people out there who have set up their Wind to triple boot OSX, Ubuntu, and Windows XP. I considered this for a while, and then realized that OSX would really be the only OS to get used. I rarely need a windows box, and I have plenty of other Ubuntu resources generally available to me. It’s nice to have that option available though. If you’re interested in that, a simple websearch should lead you to someplace useful.

Tags: apple, leopard, MSI, netbook, OSX, USB install, Wind

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Oct

New Apple Releases

Posted by: sgw in apple

Sadly, I didn’t get to see the dog and pony show that went with the announcements today. When I was able to get back to a computer, I hit the apple.com website to see what the big releases were.

Looking over the new Macbook and Macbook Pro, so far I like them. If they really mean it when they say 5 hours of battery life, then I’m very impressed, if not interested. The LED backlit displays are supposed to be very nice, and I like the look of the new case. Beyond that, there isn’t much to report. It’s a little faster. It’s got better graphics. They both still only top out at 4GB of ram. It’s a nice update, but not an earth-shattering one.

I have since had the chance to actually touch and play with one of the new macbooks, and I confess that I’m impressed. I hadn’t previously be aware of the fact that there is no “traditional” mouse button any more. It’s gone completely, and the touchpad is now much larger. To “click” you simply press down where you normally would have pressed on the touchpad button. The laptop is well built, nicely engineered, and really nice to look at. The LED-lit screen is bright and crisp. It’s noticeably lighter than the previous generation. I’m also very impressed with the big boost in battery life, now allegedly around 5 hours. But above all, as with many things Apple, it all just works.

Now if only they would update the mac mini!

Tags: apple, macbook, macbook pro

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Oct

Why I love my new iMac

Posted by: sgw in apple

I recently bought a brand new 24″ 3.06Ghz iMac. In almost 20 years of working with technology, this is the first new computer that I have ever owned for myself. I’ve owned more than my share of other computers, from a variety of Apple laptops to a stack of Sun workstations and servers. They all serve their purpose, and they’ve all been worth the time put into them. They were, however, all previously owned. Spending money on a new iMac was a big deal, and more money than I’ve ever spent on a computer, new or used. A variety of circumstances led to it though, and I decided to take the plunge.

That said, I bought one. So far, I love it. Why? Glad you asked! Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:

4GB of memory. Sure, I could get this on other boxes, but this is my first computer with this much memory. It totally makes the difference.
Nice, crisp screen. It’s very bright and nice to look at.
Speed is just not an issue. Between 4GB of ram and lots of CPU, this box has yet to be slow.
Nicely made. It all just fits together in ways that I like.
Rates nicely on power usage. I’ll give it a reading on my kill-a-watt the next time I reboot.

As for things I don’t like:

Leopard. Most of it is very nice. Spaces often does the wrong thing, enough so that I’ve considered loading Tiger onto it.
Only 4GB of memory! Clearly this goes both ways.
The keyboard. I gave up on it. I’m using a white keyboard from an old G4 tower. Much nicer, and more what I prefer.

After several months of using it, the iMac has yet to disappoint in any major way. It’s been rock solid, and can do everything I like. So far, I’m impressed, and I’ve evangelized to friends about it.