My Mac Mini’s dying :(
It started w/ the wifi acting erratically and now I have no sound (in nor out). This Mini’s been an amazing workhorse for my modest needs, and the cheap price for such a beautiful, elegant (modestly-powered) workstation was exactly what I needed.
Sensing that the end is nigh, I decided it was time for a replacement machine. I wanted a rugged, tote-able OS X machine to carry with me to & from work, but Apple’s portables start at $1k. My reliance on Omnifocus meant that my choice was limited to a Mac-based OS. Omnifocus has become an essential tool in managing the tasks in my life, but trying to enter large amounts of data into the phone-based version was just too frustrating. I’ll save that for another post. My quest became to find the cheapest portable mac possible
Enter the Macbook Mini.
Yuusou’s praised his Dell Mini 10v for months, explaining to me just how simple it is to hack Snow Leopard onto it. When I found one for just a hair above $200, I knew I had to give it a try. Following the guide post at Gizmodo and sluething around on forums at MyDellMini.com uncovered some really straight forward instructions. After about 3 hours of install time, I can happily report that Snow Leopard runs really really well on one of the Dell netbooks.
One word of caution if you choose to go this route — don’t get a Mini10. It has to be the 10v. The hardware inside the 10 is different and won’t work (as of this writing).