[Steelitall]

Hey guys, new to the forum, already screwed up once. this is the first post, but the second attempt. thought i was logged in, the forum decided i was not, and lost all my hard work from the first post

Well, here we go again.
First, a Bit of Background. I'm 17, going into my senior year at a New England Boarding School, and I'm from Massachusetts. I have a decent level of technical ability with both Mac and Windows. I have a 3 year old (almost exactly) Macbook Pro that is beginning to die on me. keys have come off, and the disc drive doesn't work (thats my fault though, fell off the top bunk freshman year). My interest in the Dell Mini 9 is not as a replacement to this however.

The Mini would be a joint custody between my younger brother and my dad. my brother's school gives him a macbook for the four years he goes there and he gets to keep it at the end. unfortunately, they take it back over the summer. When my brother is home, the mini would be in use by him for ichat, web-browsing, basic stuff. When my brother is not home, it would be in use by my dad at the job-site, as a lightweight show-the-clients-pretty-pictures computer and maybe some mild web browsing.

If all goes as planned, the Mini would have Leopard installed and then also have a partition of XP. (OSX for bro, XP for dad)

I just have some final questions. Im basically double-checking to make sure i don't waste any of my dads money

1) What would be the easiest way to install osx onto the mini? as mentioned above, my MBP's disc drive is kaputt, and while its not the only computer in the house, its the only mac. I plan on buying an 16gb+ flash from newegg soon, so that wouldn't be an issue (im pretty sure i need one of fair size for this, right?)

2) As far as I can tell, i can currently still get the Mini 9 from dell, in 2 forms- Ubuntu and Xp. The price difference between the two is $60. I am not above downloading pirated software (assuming i could find it in the first place). I mean, Hackintoshing the mini 9 is just one form of that anyway. My main point is whether pirated copies are worth the hassle. If i can save the $60 for xp and the $XXX for leopard, is it worth it? Or is getting around the system updates and stuff too much of a pita?

3) Does the Mini 9 have to use an SSD? Or will a bigger, cheaper standard HD suffice? For instance, this one? It costs almost the same as an SSD upgrade from dell but with much more storage
never mind. amazing what a little bit of research will discover. unfortunately the price of SSD vs storage space kind of eliminates the mini 9 form the running

4) Would there be any issues in using this ram? If so, any other suggestions?

5) Final one, I swear. For those that have or have had both, would you rather a Mini 9 or Mini 10v?

thank you for reading though my very long first post (lets hope it works this time ), and I look forward to any constructive replies I get. I tried to be as intelligible as I could, I think I managed to pull it off

[reberto]

Why not the 10v?

[adriantannerisb]

Originally Posted by Steelitall

Hey guys, new to the forum, already screwed up once. this is the first post, but the second attempt. thought i was logged in, the forum decided i was not, and lost all my hard work from the first post

Well, here we go again.
First, a Bit of Background. I'm 17, going into my senior year at a New England Boarding School, and I'm from Massachusetts. I have a decent level of technical ability with both Mac and Windows. I have a 3 year old (almost exactly) Macbook Pro that is beginning to die on me. keys have come off, and the disc drive doesn't work (thats my fault though, fell off the top bunk freshman year). My interest in the Dell Mini 9 is not as a replacement to this however.

The Mini would be a joint custody between my younger brother and my dad. my brother's school gives him a macbook for the four years he goes there and he gets to keep it at the end. unfortunately, they take it back over the summer. When my brother is home, the mini would be in use by him for ichat, web-browsing, basic stuff. When my brother is not home, it would be in use by my dad at the job-site, as a lightweight show-the-clients-pretty-pictures computer and maybe some mild web browsing.

If all goes as planned, the Mini would have Leopard installed and then also have a partition of XP. (OSX for bro, XP for dad)

I just have some final questions. Im basically double-checking to make sure i don't waste any of my dads money

1) What would be the easiest way to install osx onto the mini? as mentioned above, my MBP's disc drive is kaputt, and while its not the only computer in the house, its the only mac. I plan on buying an 16gb+ flash from newegg soon, so that wouldn't be an issue (im pretty sure i need one of fair size for this, right?)

2) As far as I can tell, i can currently still get the Mini 9 from dell, in 2 forms- Ubuntu and Xp. The price difference between the two is $60. I am not above downloading pirated software (assuming i could find it in the first place). I mean, Hackintoshing the mini 9 is just one form of that anyway. My main point is whether pirated copies are worth the hassle. If i can save the $60 for xp and the $XXX for leopard, is it worth it? Or is getting around the system updates and stuff too much of a pita?

3) Does the Mini 9 have to use an SSD? Or will a bigger, cheaper standard HD suffice? For instance, this one? It costs almost the same as an SSD upgrade from dell but with much more storage
never mind. amazing what a little bit of research will discover. unfortunately the price of SSD vs storage space kind of eliminates the mini 9 form the running

4) Would there be any issues in using this ram? If so, any other suggestions?

5) Final one, I swear. For those that have or have had both, would you rather a Mini 9 or Mini 10v?

thank you for reading though my very long first post (lets hope it works this time ), and I look forward to any constructive replies I get. I tried to be as intelligible as I could, I think I managed to pull it off

ok sorry for replying to an old post, but i just read it and the other answer didnt really answer much.
about piracy:
for the mac os x: this actually wouldnt be a huge hassle to download, burn to disc and boot from. It is the slipstreamed version created for the msi wind. Im not sure how this would be for dual booting, though. Also, i seriously doubt that you would find any assistance on the mydellmini site if you had problems with the pirated versions because mydellmini doesnt endorse or suggest piracy, and that mac os x is an operating system worth paying for.
for windows: since windows xp installs on so much hardware, it wouldnt be difficult to to find a pirated version of xp that has all licence features removed. that would work on the mini9 and in dual-booting. Again, i dont suggest piracy, and if you do pirate software, extremely careful. i live in a balkan country in europe, where there is 0 chance of being caught if i illegally download stuff, but i dont do it anyways.

oops, i just noticed that im not answering questions in order.

the easiest way: i actually think the easiest way would be to use the pirated version, since it is already set up to work on msi winds and minis. (i know it sounds tempting, but really, dont.)
the easiest way withot piracy would be to go to the mac os x section of mydellmini and read tutorials and see what seems easiest.

hard drive; you already answered it

ram: that one will work just fine

9 or 10v: if anyone was doing serious typing on the mini, i would suggest the 10v, but it doesnt seem like anyone is doing hard-core typing, so i would suggest the 9 (or a90). I have the a90 so i might be biased, but beggars cant be choosers. Also, i actually found that the keyboard isnt really that bad. It takes a little adjusting to, then its fine. also the mini's screen has more pixels than the 10v, so it might be better for your dad's picture showing.
good luck.