alucard454 Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 alright, i know that a topic already exists listing "the best laptops for osx86", but it is two years out of date, and the more recent posts in it are disorganized and fail to actually answer the fundamental question. in addition, scraping through all the HCLs is not only inefficient, but often self-contradictory to the point of madness. hence: new thread. and first post, i might add. so here is my situation. i'm a PhD student entering my home-stretch period. classes are all done, and all i've got now is about a year or so of researching and dissertation writing, and whenever i start a huge new project like this, i buy a new laptop dedicated to that very project. can't explain why, but it helps me focus, and i do what my brain tells me to do. This time around, i've got my heart set on buying the perfect laptop for an OSX86 setup. well, within reason of course. i'm trying to stay below $600, and used/refurb are perfectly valid options. I will likely (hopefully) only need this laptop for about a year, so long-term reliability is not much of an issue. i've got a month or two before i need the thing to be functional, so that's about how long i've got left to finish planning and executing this buy and setup. i need a laptop that will be capable of the following: dual-booting OSX86 and XP in OSX86: internet access (wifi preferable, ethernet acceptable), mouse and keyboard work, audio would be nice, and i need to be able to run word processing software. in XP: capable of the above, plus excel and statistical software packages like SAS and stata, which means dual-core with 2GB preferred. now, via ebay, another auction site, slickdeals/fatwallet, and just general googlefu, i've scrounged up a rotating list of about 50 candidates. the prices fluctuate, obviously, but i've seen tons and tons of laptops under 600 that satisfy my XP requirements handily. and if you all cannot point me in the right OSX86 direction by my deadline, i'll simply buy one of them and upgrade it from vista to XP, and get on with my paper. but i'd MUCH rather spend this coming year gradually exploring the world of OSX, in the hopes that after graduation, my household will start turning away from redmond and into the light. it's something i've wanted to do for years, but it's hard to go all mac while in grad school, and XP was just working well enough that i didn't have much impetus to try this OSX86 project.... but then my wife came home from a business trip last month with a free laptop.... with VISTA installed. suddenly i felt dirty, and i needed to be cleansed. hence, this whole process. ok wow, i've shared ENTIRELY too much. let's just get back to the important bits, shall we? if we can get some real participation in this thread, with people posting KNOWN WORKING laptops, systems that any joe blow lurking in this forum can go ebay and then turn into a WORKING hackintosh with relative ease, i think it would be tremendously helpful. i would obviously benefit from it, but hey, that's bonus, right? heh. seriously though, if you guys can help out and try to assist in making a list of the "best" cheapish laptops for osx86, i'll just keep editting this post and adding new models. so how about it? ~alucard454 Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/121422-best-affordable-laptops-for-leopard/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synaesthesia Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 Dell Inspiron 1525, Acer Extensa 5220, more dell Laptops, HP 530... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/121422-best-affordable-laptops-for-leopard/#findComment-859197 Share on other sites More sharing options...
nickhe Posted August 17, 2008 Share Posted August 17, 2008 HP NC8000 everything works wifi , only need to add 5705 kext to get internal wifi to work and everything works 100% ASUS barebooks i bought one for $130 with intel core 2 duo T7500 only needed to buy ram and HDD and it comes with grafic card geforce 8600m with full ci/qe total cost $200 i'm using it right now gave my hp 530 to my cousin and it's also a perfect hacking tosh Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/121422-best-affordable-laptops-for-leopard/#findComment-859368 Share on other sites More sharing options...
alucard454 Posted August 17, 2008 Author Share Posted August 17, 2008 HP NC8000 everything works wifi , only need to add 5705 kext to get internal wifi to work and everything works 100%ASUS barebooks i bought one for $130 with intel core 2 duo T7500 only needed to buy ram and HDD and it comes with grafic card geforce 8600m with full ci/qe total cost $200 i'm using it right now gave my hp 530 to my cousin and it's also a perfect hacking tosh wow! If you dont mind me asking, where on earth did you land sduch a deal on that barebones? i've been considering that as an option, because i love building my own desktops and buying prebuilt lappies always feels dirty, but the barebones kits always seem to start at 500ish. also, to anyone reading this thread looking for the same thing as me, bbuy has that dell 1525 laptop on sale this week for $450. see here: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id...customerreviews according to various threads on this forum, as well as the first reply here, the 1525 looks like a pretty good bet for a OSX86 laptop, and probably for a dualbooter as well. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/121422-best-affordable-laptops-for-leopard/#findComment-859486 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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