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A New Kind Of Heist: Six Apps For Free

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Get a Slick Mac NetBook For Less Than $600 (Not Strictly Legal, Of Course)

11:52 am, September 6th, 2008, Leander Kahney

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Writer Scott Gilbertson has a very cool Mac netbook that cost him only $550.

It’s got a slick black case, weighs nothing, gets hours of battery life and runs Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X. It’s not a MacBook Air.

It’s a hacked EeePC — a tiny liliputer , as they’re now called, fresh from Asus, a Tawainese manufacturer best known for PC motherboards.

Gilbertson’s netbook is the device Mac fans have wanted for years: A low-cost cousin to the beautiful but pricey MacBook Air.

It runs like a champ but has a couple of quirks (one big one) and may not be strictly legal, though Apple’s never going to prosecute unless these machines are sold commercially. Hit the jump for details.

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Gilbertson’s machine is an ASUS Eee PC 1000H. It has a 10-inch screen (1024×600), 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1-GB RAM, and a 80 GB Hard Drive (there’s also a solid state model — not recommended). It runs OS X like a champ, Gilbertson says.

“Performance is on par with my MacBook,” says Gilbertson. “Benchmark-wise, I think it comes in around the equivalent of a G5.”

By contrast, the standard MacBook Air has an Intel Core Duo processor, 80GB drive, 13-inch screen (1280×800), 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth. Apple claims 5 hours of battery life, and it starts at $1,800.

The Eee PC comes with Windows XP Home, but Gilbertson, a writer for WebMonkey who lives in Athens, Georgia, loaded it with a hacked Leopard distro readily available using BitTorrent.

Here’s the instructions for installing OS X on an EeePC.

The install took about two hours. The EeePC has no internal optical drive, so Gilbertson had to buy an external DVD from Best Buy (returned the next day). Gilbertson burned the install disk on a Windows PC. Macs don’t work well for some reason.

Everything on the OS X EeePC works except for sound; there’s no audio out. This may seem like a biggie, but Gilbertson says he keeps a copy of Windows XP on the machine in case he wants to watch a movie on the plane. He simply boots into Windows instead of OS X.

The machine also refuses to remember WiFi passwords. He uses some crappy crappy third-party config tool.

Slick though Gilbertson’s hacked EeePC is: the MSI WInd is more popular among OS X netbook hackers, resulting in fewer driver issues, Gilbertson says.

Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Hardware Hacks, Macintosh, Software | Comment on this article

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leander Kahney.

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15 comments

    [...] Settembre 7th, 2008 Molto interessante questo post di Cult of Mac nel quale Scott Gilbertson racconta come ha trasformato il suo Eeepc 1000H in un “MacBook [...]

    Trasformare un Eeepc in un MAC… | HeavyTrader, on September 6th, 2008 at 10:39 pm

    [...] Source [...]

    Un Macbook Air à moins de $550 « Tech4buziness Blog, on September 7th, 2008 at 12:27 am

    i love how the comment has been made that it might not actually be legal to put the OS on this machine but in the instructions they make a huge point out of buying the copy you are going to (possibly illegally) install cause it isn’t nice to steal it off bittorrent and the like.

    charlituna, on September 7th, 2008 at 10:02 am

    [...] Гилбертсон (Scott Gilbertson) смог установить Mac OS X на ASUS Eee PC 1000H (по данным «Яндекса» стоимость [...]

    Новости одной строкой — MacRadar, on September 8th, 2008 at 12:45 am

    [...] via [...]

    Получите MacBook менее чем за $600! | obout.ru, on September 8th, 2008 at 12:50 am

    [...] Get A Slick Mac Netbook for Less Than $600 [Cult of Mac] [...]

    Asus Eee PC 1000H: a perfectly wonderful netMacbook | MostReviews.com, on September 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    [...] different enterprising hackers have posted how-tos on hacking your own Mac NetBook. The first one uses an EeePC, and these hacking instructions to run OS X for $550, including hardware. The second [...]

    Make your own Mac NetBook | MostReviews.com, on September 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am

    [...] done than said. The staff of The Cult of Mac is probably going apeshit over their newest toy, an Asus Eee PC 1000H that runs on Mac OS X. [...]

    A Small MacBook Under $600, on September 9th, 2008 at 9:47 am

    [...] different enterprising hackers have posted how-tos on hacking your own Mac NetBook. The first one uses an EeePC, and these hacking instructions to run OS X for $550, including hardware. The second [...]

    Make your own Mac NetBook | Apple News, on September 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    [...] done than said. The staff of The Cult of Mac is probably going apeshit over their newest toy, an Asus Eee PC 1000H that runs on Mac OS X. [...]

    A Small MacBook Under $600 | Completely Random Tidbits, on September 9th, 2008 at 5:45 pm

    [...] Enllaços: Macee.com, Cult of Mac. [...]

    Mac OSX a un Asus EeePC | NoticiesTecnologia.com - Actualitat Informàtica, en català, on September 11th, 2008 at 3:39 am

    [...] Ein Erfahrungsbericht zur Mac OS X Nutzung auf dem Eee PC 1000H (nach dieser Anleitung) findet sich hier. [...]

    EeeMac 901 » Eee PC 901 » Einfach Eee, on September 12th, 2008 at 7:39 am

    [...] the same path you can get the instructions here, and you can read the cult of mac article about him here. Share and [...]

    We don't need AIRs when we have Mac Netbooks | Macgasm, on September 13th, 2008 at 5:02 am

    [...] like someone at Cult of Mac has OS X running on an Eee PC 1000H for $550. It is said to run as fast as a MacBook. It would have [...]

    Kirksnet » Blog Archive » Ultraportable Mac, Cheap, on September 17th, 2008 at 7:05 am

    [...] Many have mentioned getting the Acer Aspire One line of netbooks but I’ve played around with it instore and I’m not a fan of the 8.9-inch screen and the cramped keyboard.  In my opinion strikes me as a better machine, but what really caught my eye about this machine is the fact that you can run Mac OS on it, as that is what Scott Gilbertson did with his.  [...]

    State Your Purpose » Blog Archive » Asus EEE 1000H Netbook Can be used as a Mac Book for under $600, on October 19th, 2008 at 6:08 pm