A MyDellMini forum member by the name of Rob is the man responsible for this elegant mod, turning his Del Vostro A9 (business version of the Mini 9) into a Windows 7 touchscreen with a 16GB SSD, WiFi, Bluetooth, 1GB of RAM and an Intel Atom N270 processor. Rob is also planning to add an accelerometer to automatically adjust the screen orientation and a small USB fan to help keep the temperature down. If you think you are up to doing a similar conversion, Rob has laid out details of the build in his forum post. [MyDellMini via Slashgear]

"Take a user who's used to a 15-inch notebook and then give him a 10-inch netbook. He'll say 'Oh, this is so cool, it's so lightweight.' Then 36 hours later he'll say the screen's not big enough, give me my 15-inch back."

He went to say that smaller screens and slower performance are not a "replacement for a high-end machine." Fair point, but ouch! On Windows 7, Dell was more optimistic:

"I've been using Windows 7 for a long time now, and if you get the latest processor technology and Office 2010 with it, you will love your PC again."

Are mini notebooks just underpowered casual toys? And if they are, is that because the PC makers (and Microsoft) have imposed limitations so netbooks don't eat into regular notebook sales? What do you think? [GigaOm and PC World]

Right now, you can order a Mini 9 from Dell using this direct link. Its $299 price comes at the cost of a laughable, 8GB hard drive—which technically works for OS X, but you may want to fork over $40 more for the 16GB upgrade all the same.

We have no idea how long Dell will continue offering the Mini 9—a marketing ploy that we're sure Dell just loves—but beggars can't be choosers.

So you win this round, Dell. Well-played. [Dell via Lilliputing via Engadget]

The big reveal came as some internal Dell docs were leaked to Netbook News. In the image at left, you can see Dell's suggested Mini product roadmap, from "media consumption" to "laptop experience" in the proposed Mini 11.

With the Mini 11, you're apparently going to get Vista, a 3G modem for broadband, and a refreshed Intel Atom processor, all projected into your eyeballs via an 11.6-inch HD screen. Price tag is set at $500, but remember these are leaked slides from a Power Point presentation some poor sap left in a Starbucks or something, so nothing's final or confirmed. [Netbook News]

Sure, you could probably pick out a model or two that aren't here (especially since I cropped a row for the lead shot), but if this picture illustrates anything, it's that, yes, the netbook market has become commoditized—though only at the cost of also becoming horrendously confusing with all the product spam. [UMPC Portal via Electricpig]

Matthew Smith caught Woz doing some press for Dancing With the Stars. He writes:

I showed him my Dell Mini 9 with OS X Leopard installed on it (and an Apple sticker sloppily applied over the Dell logo.

He said, "Oh my god, that is so COOL!"

And: "Is that really the color you wanted?"

Then he graciously signed it. I then ran away and giggled for about 45 minutes.

Well done sir. [Flickr via BBG]

The system is available in white, configured with Windows XP Ubuntu, a 1.6GHz Atom, 512MB of RAM and 8GB of storage (just enough to get a Hackintosh netbook running after some fiddling). Yeah, it's a barebones system that you'll want to beef up with more RAM, but it's $199. [Dell via CrunchGear]

It's the low-end spec'd Ubuntu-only Mini, so you probably want to bump the RAM up to 1GB or 2GB and the SSD up to 16GB if you're planning on installing OS X which will add another $100, but $299 for that spec is still mighty fine. And according to Technabob, this is only going to last until midnight CST tonight. [Dell Purchase Link via Technabob]

There are a lot of netbooks on which you can install and run OS X, but if you're mindful of the handy comparison chart those lads at Boing Boing Gadgets have compiled, you'll know that the Mini 9 is about as ideal a platform as you'll find for a Hackintosh ultraportable: Everything from wi-fi, sound and the function keys down to the optional integrated mobile broadband card and the SD card reader are supported and work as they should. No hardware compromises at all. It's awesome.

Generally, there are two ways to approach a Hackintosh install: Using a "slipstreamed" OS X installer image that's been modified to install on non-Apple hardware, or using a $129 factory-fresh retail OS X install disk in tandem with a special bootloader that does the necessary tweaking to let the install happen. The former can be easy enough, but it's pretty much illegal since it contains a pirated OS X install disk, and on top of that you'll run into all kinds of problems should you ever want to upgrade your OS or software via Software Update.

By using a retail OS X disk, you stay mostly out of pirate waters, and ensure that once everything's up and running, you'll be as close as is possible to having an actual Mac. Here we're doing that, using a method referred to as the "Type11" install, cooked up by a fellow of the same handle and his colleagues over on the MyDellMini forums, a fantastic resource.

Even though we're using a standard retail-purchased copy of OS X, the disclaimer: Apple does not like Hackintoshing. It violates the OS X EULA, and probably won't make the Dell folks too happy either, should you need to return your hacked Mini 9 for service. So, as always, proceed at your own risk.

On a personal note let me tell you, it's worth it. The Mini 9 is a beautiful OS X machine. So let's get started.

What You'll Need

• Dell Mini 9 With 16GB SSD or higher (8GB SSDs will techincally work, but it will take some fiddling not covered by this guide)

• Retail copy of OS X 10.5.x (NOT an OEM copy that comes with a new Mac)

• A USB flash drive 8GB or higher

• An external USB DVD drive

• The "Type11" Bootloader: DellMiniBoot123v8.01.iso.zip (download link in this forum post)

• Blank CD to burn bootloader image (I actually used version 8.0 of Type11 on my CD-if your boot process with 8.01 is different than what's spelled out in this guide, you can download 8.0 here. Both should work.)

• Windows PC for preparing the flash drive (if DVD drive works fine, this is optional)

Preparing Your Boot Loader

The easiest way to use both the Type11 bootloader (burned to a bootable CD) and your OS X install DVD is via the external USB DVD drive. The catch is, some drives are mysteriously not compatible with installing OS X on the Mini 9. Mine was one of those drives—the bootloader CD would work without a hitch, but it would choke on the OS X install disk every time. Thankfully, it's also possible to run both the bootloader and the OS X install disk off of a USB flash drive. I'm going to spell out my method here, which actually included both approaches, but try an external DVD drive first, and if yours is compatible, your life will be a little easier than mine was. On the other hand, if you don't have an external drive, you can give the USB flash drive method a shot.

The general approach here it to boot from the Type11 bootloader, which allows you install, run and update OS X; once you're up to 10.5.6, you can install a suite of Mini 9 specific drivers so you don't have to rely on the bootloader anymore.

1. Unzip the DellMiniBoot123v8.01.iso and burn it to a CD with Disk Utility or a similar Windows tool (don't just drag the ISO file to a disk). Pop that disk into your external DVD drive, connect it to your Mini 9 and power it on, then press 0 (zero) at startup to bring up the list of bootable devices.

2. Choose CD/DVD from the list, which will bring you into the bootloader. Choose the first option, "Install Retail OS X 10.5" which will bring you to a command prompt that says "boot:"

3. Take out the bootloader disk and pop in your retail OS X install DVD, keeping the PC running. (You can power your external drive off and then on again to make sure everything's kosher.) Press Escape at the boot: prompt to bring up the drive options. The Type11 installer uses hex codes to choose which device you're booting from, which you can assign at any time from the boot prompt by pressing escape: enter "9f" for the external DVD drive or "80" for the primary internal SSD. Here we're booting from the external CD drive, so press escape, Type "9f" then press enter.

4. At this point, the OS X installer will either load or it won't. If it does, great. You can skip to step 12. If not, you'll need to do what I did, and transfer everything to a USB flash drive to install that way.

Preparing a USB Stick Instead Of/In Addition To a Boot CD

This is based on a tutorial found on the MyDellMini forums by "bmaltais"—bigup to him.

5. Open up Disk Utility and partition your USB drive (8GB or larger) into two partitions: one 200MB FAT32 (MS-DOS) partition named "TYPE11" and one with the remainder of the free space formated as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) called OSXDVD.

6. Move to a Windows PC (I know, I know), plug in your USB stick and download Syslinux-this is a utility that will make the FAT32 partition of your USB stick bootable. With the Windows Command Prompt, cd over to the "win32" subdirectory of the Syslinux directory you downloaded and type the following, where "F:" is the drive letter for the TYPE11 partition on your USB stick:

syslinux -ma F:

You won't get any confirmation, but if you receive no error messages, you're good: This copies a single file named ldlinux.sys (invisible in Windows) to the USB drive to make it bootable. Pop it out and go back to your Mac if that's what you're using.

7. Now, unzip the Type11 ISO (instead of burning it to a disk) and copy the whole directory structure to the TYPE11 partition. Do NOT overwrite the "ldlinux.sys" when it asks—you want to keep the one you copied over with Syslinux.

8. To fill up the other partition, insert your OS X install DVD and, in Disk Utility, select it and choose "New Image." Save it to the OSXDVD partition of your USB drive as "live.dmg" with "compressed" as the type and encryption set to "none." This'll take about a half hour to rip the DVD to an image, which should weigh in at around 6.4 GB give or take.

9. After that's done, go to Terminal and copy your mach kernel file to the OSXDVD partition by typing this:

sudo cp /mach_kernel /Volumes/OSXDVD

10. And finally, download this zip file, uncompress it and copy the System and Library folders inside to your OSXDVD partition. This is the last bit of magic needed to make your Mini 9 think it's working with an actual OS X install DVD.

11. On your Mini 9, restart it and enter the BIOS setup by pressing "2"—and make sure legacy support for USB devices is enabled. Now, reboot and select the boot options list by tapping 0 at startup and choose USB Storage. Select the OSXDVD partition to boot from and press Enter. This should load up the familiar Apple and the OS X installer window.

Install OS X

While you're installing and doing initial configuration of OS X, everything will be all warped to 800x600 rather than your Mini's native 1024x600 res. Don't worry, this will be fixed soon enough.

12. The first thing you need to do is format your SSD. Bring up Disk Utility in the installer select it at the highest level possible. Go to "Partition" and make it a single Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) partition. Before hitting Apply, go to Options and select GUID Partition Table. Then hit apply.

13. Now, go back to the Installer, and install OS X to the SSD you just partitioned. You will definitely want to choose to customize your install to save SSD space—I would ditch all the printer drivers and language packs you don't need to save space. If you install with the default options though, don't worry—all can be removed later. The install will take about an hour, so go fix yourself a drink. You may come back to an Install Error message at the very end (I didn't), but if you do, don't worry. It's normal.

14. Once OS X is installed, it's still not ready for use right off the drive. On your first reboot, make sure you boot back into the Type11 bootloader on your CD or flash drive, as your new OS X partition is still not bootable without it.

This is, however, where a bit of weirdness set in for me. The Type11 partition on my USB disk would NOT recognize my fresh OS X install on the Mini 9 SSD. It just would not boot it. The Type11 boot CD I had made (with version 8.0 of Type11) DID recognize it, however, and booted it just fine. So bear that in mind here—even if you weren't using an external drive before, you still might need one.

15. So now you boot back into the Type11 CD and choose option 1 ("Install Retail OS X 10.5") again, even though you're not installing. This takes you back to the boot prompt. This time, hit Escape, and type the code "80" for your SSD (as opposed to "9f" for the external DVD). Press enter, and then back at the "boot:" prompt, type "-f" with no quotes before hitting enter again to boot. This will load all of OS X's kernel extensions (.kexts) to make sure wi-fi and everything works. OS X should boot, and you'll go through the typical OS X setup process. Notice the webcam and—hopefully—networking are already working!

ONE MORE NOTE: If networking isn't working, don't panic. On my first boot from the SSD, wi-fi didn't work. But after a restart and another boot from the bootloader CD (with the "-f" option) it worked fine. Throughout this process, if anything is screwy, before you panic and start Googling new strategems, simply re-do the last step that failed—it's often that easy.

Free Up Space and Update OS X to 10.5.6

Now that you've booted from the fresh install on the SSD, it's time to update to 10.5.6 (if necessary). After a default install, I only had a gig and change left on my 16GB SSD, so I had to dump some programs I wouldn't need as well as all the printer drivers found at /Library/Printers. There is an app called Monolingual which can also help clear some space by removing unwanted language files and stripping out all legacy PPC code from your universal binaries.

16. Once you've cleared up enough space (if necessary, you'll need around 6GB), go to Software Update and install the 10.5.6 update. This will take a long-ass time too (the SSD, strangely enough, seems to actually be slower on tasks that take tons of reads and writes).

17. After it's done, restart, and boot into the Type11 bootloader one last time. This time you don't have to use the "-f" flag. Once you're booted, go to the DellMini9Utils folder on your Type11 CD or flash drive and run the DellEFI installer. This will load all of the Mini 9 .kexts and drivers as well as a special bootloader to boot your SSD install. Choose the easy install option and just let it do its magic.

18. After it's done, you'll be asked to reboot one final time. You won't need to boot from the Type11 CD this time; you should boot straight off of your SSD like normal, and enter upon your fresh new OS X desktop, now in gloriously correct 1024x600 resolution. Awesome!

Configs, Tweaks and Fun Stuff

You'll notice right away that OS X runs fantastically on the Mini 9. I was really stunned, and you probably will be too. Here are some things to make it even better:

• Follow this tutorial to get your mobile broadband working if your Mini 9 has it. Network preferences should recognize it out of the box.

• If you're especially OCD, you can run the "AboutThisMac.pkg" inside the Type11 utilities folder to change "Unknown Processor" in the About This Mac window to the correct 1.6GHz Atom designation.

• This is a neat trick for fooling pesky oversized windows into shrinking themselves for your small screen.

• I haven't had luck with this, but you can apparently enable some multitouch scrolling action on the Dell's Synaptics touchpad by following these instructions.

Conclusion

So congrats, now you have a 100% functional OS X netbook. I've been using mine for a few days now, and it's quite the machine for basic netbook activities-surfing, IM, email. It connects to my shared AirPort disk and streams my video collection (even high-def files) perfectly, and also backs up wirelessly over Time Machine. The 9-inch screen will make even your lower-res full-screen video look fantastic—YouTube or Hulu, QuickTime trailers and video rips are a pleasure to watch. Watching an episode of something in bed without lugging my 15-incher in with me is really nice.

In addition, I think I may have found the perfect toilet computer. No one wants to fight Windows on the throne. And of course it's amazing for traveling. I'm about to take a trip to Cairo, and I'll be bringing this little guy without a doubt.

Resources

Many thanks to everyone at the following sites:

• DellMyMini Forums: Mac OS X

• DellMyMini Forums: OS X: FAQs and How Tos

• OSX86 Wiki Guide

So that's about it! Please add in your experiences in the comments-your feedback is a huge benefit to our Saturday guides. Good luck with your own Hackintoshing, and have a great weekend!

Better yet, there are no 3g subscriptions or any other funny business with this deal. It's the low-end no frills Mini 9, sure, but it's cheap. [Dell]

Update: It might look like they're out already of the absolute cheapest models, but just keep refreshing, they're adding more constantly.

Dell's outlet site is a pain in the peen to get around, so here's the direct link to the Inspiron Mini 9 shopping page. And even it's a flustercuck.

You're basically trolling through their inventory until you find the one you want, which the $209 model with 4GB of storage and Ubuntu. The first time I picked one and added to cart, some dude apparently grabbed it before me, so I'd check two or three to add to your cart, then just delete the extraneous ones. Then just add the coupon code $C$TXXP1CT3BLC which will knock the price down to $177 for up to two notebooks in your cart.

Even if you don't want the Ubuntu Mini 9, you can still pick up one of the Windows versions for pretty damn cheap. [Dell Outlet via Cnet via CrunchGear]

His reference monitor is a Eizo ColorEdge CE240W and he throws a Lenovo ThinkPad T60 into the mix for good measure, since its in-plane switching LCD panel produces good color reproduction and even screen brightness.

That Lenovo's ThinkPad W700—which is geared toward pro photographers and has a built-in Pantone calibrator—tops the list for color accuracy and "could just about replace a desktop display" for pro work is probably not so shocking. What is crazy, however, is that the Dell Inspiron Mini 9—a $300 netbook—has display with better "overall hue accuracy" than the $1999 MacBook Pro, which is "one or two steps below a good desktop display." BTW, Rob loves the Mini 9 so much he calls it "a workflow-altering experience."

His full assessment of every display is definitely worth reading, even if you're not a photographer. [Rob Galbraith, Image: Rob Galbraith]

According to a spokesperson,

Mini 9 is configured with and has never shipped with anything but 32WH batteries. A third party test program being used in the field doesn't properly program every vendor's battery to report power (versus current) capabilities, and so the utility is not properly reporting the actual battery capacity. We have confirmed this and all packs are 4-cell 32Whr, and will deliver more than 4 hours of battery life in typical usage.

Indeed, the original forum poster even admitted that the "24Wh" battery actually had a longer life span than their "32Wh" version. And both batteries exceeded four hours of usage.

So between Dell's outright denial and further testing by forum members, it looks like this rumor was smashed. Whether or not we have a real explanation as to the odd discrepancies in testing software, as long as it's not screwing with battery life, I really couldn't care less.

Jkkmobile says that while review units had a 32Wh battery, consumer units have 24Wh batteries, which is why you'd be lucky to hit 3 hours of life vs. the four hours most reviewers got. We hit up Dell for a response, we'll let you know what they say. [jkkmobile]