i am looking into switching to mac from windows, and wish to know what laptops i can buy that are compatible with the intel based macosx, but have all the major facilites compatible, such as, networking, graphics and sound, and preferably support for wireless networking, and also would i be able to use universal binary software such as iLife'06 and stuff out of the box with an unsupported mac laptop. im hust editing this to clarifiy a bit, i dont care about screen resolutions, or built in wi-fi, i was talking about usb adaptors, i am looking for the cheapest, fastest, mac os x86 laptop avavible that i can also run xp on.

Unless this is a budget issue, why isn't the macbook an option? It'll run XP perfectly now that Boot Camp has been released.

its a buget issue i have around 500 pounds and the macbook is 1700 pounds.

i would suggest the Latitude D600.
(all prices in US, so it will be cheeper for you)
You can find them on ebay for 430ish (plus shipping, stupid ebay)
you can pickup a truemobile 1450 which is recognized as airport on ebay for 32$

Check out this post on what on them works and what doesn't:
http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=11398

Avoid the D610 as its screen doesn't work at all.

I would stay as far away from Dell laptops as you can. Especially the D600 / D610. They are by far the worst P.O.S. in production. Bad hard drives, bad bt modules, bad everything.

I will qualify the above by also stating I am a support engineer in a almost 100% Dell laptop environment. If it's in a D series I have had it replaced.

I've had nothing but great luck with my Inspiron 5100 that's in my signature... :shrug:

I think this guy will need a laptop with a GMA 900/950 graphics chip if he wants to be fully supported and run iLife perfectly with QE/CI support. I don't believe there are any other graphics chipsets which work perfectly without some sort of artifacting yet.

True. or he could wait and see how the NVidia / ATI situation shapes up. For his price though.. he may be asking a bit much? I dunno.

My roommate just got a HP dv1000t which has a Duo and a GM950 graphics in it, but he won't put OSx86 on it. I think it cost him around $1200. I'm not sure how well the sound and networking are supported though.

I would suggest a thinkpad T30, opengl works with some fiddling, but there is no QE/CI.

I'm using one for work running OSX until i can save up enough for a MacBook Pro.

Love my HP4000 and I got it for $1000US after rebates and all. You'll have to get a different wireless card (see my sig) for $20 or so and then everything just works minus the pcmcia slot. Make sure to get the GMA version, and not the ATI.

I second what quietglow says. I have the Compaq version of his machine (see sig), it was really cheap and with the latest JaS 10.4.6 ISO, everything...well..."just works." Sound, video, all but my Intel wireless--HP offers broadcomm wireless, but they don't allow you to buy internal bluetooth without bundling intel 2200.

I bought my v4000t for under $1000 US, upgraded the HDD and added a docking station, it's a fantastic OSx86 notebook.


EDIT: I also installed OSx86 on a v4000t with Celeron 1.5, 512 ram, total basic configuration. After rebates and discounts, that thing was like $460 shipped and it does great with the OS, my friend uses it every day.