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It’s worth mentioning that BoingBoing has a pretty good OSX/Netbook compatibility chart but much of the info looks out of date (from December of 2008) so it’s worth doing some of your own due diligence before relying 100% on the chart.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

Here’s a great tip that creates a nice hover effect when your mouse goes over an application (or folder) within a Leopard stack. Why this isn’t enabled by default in Leopard is beyond me, because it makes navigating within stacks a whole lot easier. Don’t miss out, here’s how to activate it:

Launch the Terminal and type the following command:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean yes

then, you’ll have to restart the Dock by issuing the following command:
killall Dock

To disable the hover highlights, type:
defaults write com.apple.dock mouse-over-hilte-stack -boolean no

The appearance of the new Dock in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has caused somewhat of an uproar in the Mac community, some of whom even claim it looks like it belongs in Windows Vista. If you’re totally insulted by the new 3D dock, or if you just prefer the old Dock appearance, it’s very easy to change and you don’t need to be a super Mac genius to figure it out. Simply launch your terminal and type the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

then you will want to kill the Dock to relaunch it without the glass effect:
killall Dock

to get the reflective 3D Dock back, simply type the following:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO

again, you will want to kill the Dock to relaunch it. Enjoy!

Quick Look is a nice feature added in 10.5, I use it often for glancing at the content of various documents and it certainly beats launching an application. If you’re an avid command line user though, you may be browsing through a directories contents and wondering just what is that JPG or DOC file. Wonder no more, because you can easily use Quick Look from the command line:

From the command line, use the following syntax:

qlmanage -p filename.jpg

This will launch a Quick Look window with whatever file is specified as ‘filename.jpg’, the file type can be anything that Quick Look is compatible with (which seems to be just about everything).

The qlmanage command has other abilities, here is the full flag list, courtesy of qlmanage -h:


Usage: qlmanage [OPTIONS] path...
-h Display this help
-r Force reloading Generators list
-p Show a preview of the documents
-t Show thumbnails of the documents
-s size Size for the thumbnail
-f factor Scale factor for the thumbnail
-c contentTypeUTI Force the content type used for the documents
-g generator Force the generator to use


Note that you can have Quick Look launch in the background by using the following command, allowing you to continue using the Terminal as usual:

qlmanage -p filename.jpg &

Thanks to Quick Look in Leopard, you no longer have to drag files from the Trash to check them out. Simply hit Command-Y while on any file within the trash folder and Quick Look will behave as normal by launching a preview of the file contents. This great tip was found on TUAW (and screenshot was borrowed from them as well, obviously).

People seem to either love or hate the dock in Leopard. If you’re not a fan of the default ’swoosh’ reflective Dock, there are many options available, and a site has popped up catering to nothing but Leopard Docks. Aptly named LeopardDocks.com is dedicated to nothing but customizing your Leopard dock, with everything from shiny wood surfaces to grass.

Check out LeopardDocks.com for more

Stacks is an innovative addition to Apple’s recently released OS X 10.5 (Leopard). It’s default behavior can be confusing, as it seems some “Stacks” will display in a grid fashion and some will appear in the fan style. After poking around for a bit on various forums (macosxhints.com), I had zero luck in finding away to control the Stack style. Then I stumbled upon a file called “About Stacks.pdf” in my documents folder. The contents are self explanatory and it turns out the solution is simple:

Step 1 : Hold your mouse over a stack and click on it until a menu appears.
Step 2 : Once that menu appears select “View As” and choose either Fan or Grid.

That’s it, from now on the stack will open with your preferred style.

Earlier today Microsoft released the second beta of their Remote Desktop Connection application. This new version introduces an updated user interface (not sure if its worse or better), Universal binary support, Vista support, dynamic window resizing and quite a bit more. It is good to see Microsoft update this utility as it is a crucial part of my workflow. The previous version of the Remote Desktop Connection was a PowerPC only application that was quickly becoming dated. I was able to verify that this new version works flawlessly in OS X Leopard. Read on for a complete list of new features and a screenshot.

Download from Microsoft.com

* Universal Binary – Runs natively on both Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macs.
* Remote Desktop Protocol 6.0 – Provides better compatibility with Windows Vista, improved security features, and many other improvements.
* Improved User Experience – Provides a true Mac experience and improved usability.
* Improved Customization Options – Lets you change application preferences, including keyboard shortcuts, while you are running a session. Changes take effect the next time that you connect.
* Dynamic Screen Resizing – Lets you resize your session window or switch to full-screen mode during a session.
* Improved Printing Support – Supports all configured printers on your Mac. No longer limited to PostScript printers.
* Multiple Sessions (Improved in Beta 2) – Improvements to File menu commands and connection files let you connect to multiple Windows-based computers at the same time.
* Network Level Authentication (NLA) Support (New in Beta 2) – Helps provide greater security when connecting to computers running Windows Vista.
* Auto Reconnect (New in Beta 2) – Supports automatic reconnection when a network connection to a remote session is lost.
* Wide Screen Support (New in Beta 2) – Supports optimal resolution settings for wide screen displays.

If you’re a Leopard user, you might have noticed that the Dock no longer uses little triangles to emphasize what applications are open. Instead, little subtle lights glow underneath open applications, which look nice but aren’t the most obvious. Apparently I’m not the only one that was annoyed with the little glowing light app indicators of the Leopard dock, but SilverMac has a solution for us on how to restore the old triangle dock indicators.

Leopard dock with black triangles

Adding a user is something easily accomplished using the built in GUI tools that ship with OS X, however any power user can appreciate the possible efficiency gained from using the command line. So in the spirit of efficiency here are the steps necessary to add a user to your Mac OS X system all with our good friend, Terminal.app.

These commands need to be run as either the root user or with the “sudo” command. For more information on the sudo command see the sudo man page.

Create a new entry in the local (/) domain under the category /users.
dscl / -create /Users/toddharris

Create and set the shell property to bash.
dscl / -create /Users/toddharris UserShell /bin/bash

Create and set the user’s full name.
dscl / -create /Users/toddharris RealName "Dr. Todd Harris"

Create and set the user’s ID.
dscl / -create /Users/toddharris UniqueID 503

Create and set the user’s group ID property.
dscl / -create /Users/toddharris PrimaryGroupID 1000

Create and set the user home directory.
dscl / -create /Users/toddharris NFSHomeDirectory /Local/Users/toddharris

Set the password.
dscl / -passwd /Users/toddharris PASSWORD

or

passwd toddharris

If you would like Dr. Harris to be able to perform administrative functions:
dscl / -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership toddharris

Recently while using the OS X Terminal I noticed that the “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys do not send an actual page up sequence to a session. It seems that the default behavior is to manipulate the Terminal.app’s built in buffer. This works well for every day use in the Terminal, but if you are using a program like irssi, that has its own buffer, this can be an annoyance. The solution is simple and can be solved with a simple key combination.

Powerbook, ibook and Macbook owners can try using :
[shift][fn]-[page up] or [shift][fn]-[page down]
If you have a standard keyboard:
[shift]-[page up] or [shift]-[page down]

If you would to edit any other keyboard settings in the Terminal, here is a screenshot for your reference. Please note that this is a screen shot from OS X Leopard (10.5) which will differ from OS X Tiger (10.4).