Creating your own cheap Mac Hackintosh out of a PC Netbook is pretty popular right now, so I compiled a list of various how-to guides mostly for myself but figured I would share it with our readers as well. The guides rank from reasonably easy (Dell Mini 9) to an arduous hack, and it’s technically against Apple’s OS X EULA agreement, so whether or not it’s worth proceeding with making one of these frankenstein Macs is entirely up to you.

Gizmodo: How to Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9

MyDellMini: Fool proof no hassle Dell Mini 10v Hackintosh guide

MSiWind Forums: How to Install Mac OS X on an MSI Wind

InsanelyMac: Install OS X on an Acer Aspire One

Stuart Shelton: How to install Mac OS X on a Samsung NC10

S10Lenovo: Install Mac OS X on a Lenovo S10

MyHPMini: Install Mac OS X on an HP Mini 1000

Enik: Install Mac OS X 10.5.6 on an EEE 1000h

It’s worth mentioning that BoingBoing has a pretty good OSX/Netbook compatibility chart but much of the info looks out of date (from December of 2008) so it’s worth doing some of your own due diligence before relying 100% on the chart.

Update: A reader has sent this in, saying that these files work for installing Snow Leopard on a Dell Mini 10v but we have not been able to test it… this link was pulled from the MyDellMini Forums. Not for novice users, proceed with caution!

Have you ever wanted to have your mac require a password on waking from system sleep, but not ask for a password when the screensaver is on? Well, me neither, but someone out there might and it’s kind of a nifty customization tip. I came across this nice trick on TUAW that I thought it was worth reposting here to our readers.

Launch the Terminal and type the following command:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 0

reversing this should just be a matter of changing the 0 to a 1

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver askForPassword -int 1

I really enjoy videochatting with friends and family using iChat, so I was pretty frustrated when seemingly out of nowhere iChat video started freezing completely after a video chat session was initiated. I searched around a bit and noticed other people having the same problem and symptoms – iChat video freezes but iChat audio still works, so I know this isn’t a rare thing. While I don’t know the cause, I did manage to find a solution, and here it is:

How to fix iChat video freezing problem

1) Launch System Preferences and click on the QuickTime preferences pane. Under the “Streaming” tab, set streaming speed to “1 Mpbs Cable” and close the System Prefs

2) Now within iChat, open the Preferences and select the Audio/Video pane, set the Bandwidth Limit to “500 kbps” and close the preferences

3) Try starting an iChat Video Chat again – should work fine now!

This seems to work by forcing a slight reduction in the video quality based on available bandwidth, although I can’t tell a difference in quality myself. It’s worth mentioning that I’m on a fast broadband cable connection, so your mileage may vary with DSL or slower networks; you may try reducing the settings even more if you’re on a slow network and still having problems.