This is my Hackintosh. What is a “hackintosh?” It’s a computer that has been hacked and turned into a Macintosh so that it can run OSX. So yeah… Snow Leopard on a Dell!

Why would I want to do this? Why didn’t I go out and buy a Macbook? For starters this cost less than $300 and a Macbook runs at around a $1000. Second, I wanted a simple netbook.  I have a very nice editing suite at home so for the netbook I just needed something that I could use for writing. Yes I could have bought a netbook and used Windows 7, but that wouldn’t have done me any good because there are at least four writing programs I use that are OSX only. The main one being Scrivener (which is on screen in the pic above).

My hackintosh is a Dell Mini 10v. The “10v” is important because the hacking won’t work with the regular Dell Mini 10. The first thing I had to do was get Snow Leopard up and running. To do that I followed this guide. The second thing I did was completely dismantle the netbook so that I could install an extra gig of memory (see the pics below). To do that I followed this guide.

All in all, the netbook runs great with Snow Leopared and even though it’s only got two gigs of ram, email, web surfing and even light work in photoshop runs without any lag. As for word processing, I’m in love. This bad boy is light, super portable, and allows me to write wherever I’m at. If you’ve been dying for a Macbook but didn’t want to fork over the cash or don’t need it’s full power then I’d definitely think about getting a hackintosh.