Hackintosh noob help please?

[Sly14Cat]

Hello,

I want to buy either

 

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/product/ ... fcd426en02

 

or

 

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/ace ... 4adc8fen02

 

or

 

http://www.dell.com/ca/p/inspiron-15r-n ... -15r-n5110

(With 6GB ram and 1TB HDD)

 

Are any of these compatible with OS ,X? What features will and won't work? What are some tips. I wanted to install the osx through a CD on the PC and use the Lion Thumb Drive to get Lion. I also wanted to partition my drive for a section for OSX without losing any data. Is this okay? Where can I get instructions? My main question is about the compatibility and installing using Snow Leopard, Lion Thumb Drive, ######, ###### and ###### using only my PC. I'm also doing research on the legality of this as I don't really want to do anything illegal.

 

Thanks,

Sly14Cat

[King John]

I'll reply back with what I found later, but you know there's a nice little Wiki page that tells you what's compatible and what's not

 

The first link is a good bet. I'm not sure about SL, but the intel HD 3000 graphics seem to be working pretty good in Lion. Didn't hear much about SL though.

 

The AS5755G-9417 (middle link) probably isn't a good idea, as you won't get your graphics enabled until you upgrade to Lion. (it's running a 540m.. Fermi cards aren't supported in SL)

 

The last link is a good bet too, because the ATI Radeon 6470 is in the same family as cards listed as working on Snow Leopard.

 

While you loose 2GB of RAM, you could possibly gamble for more compatibility.

 

BTW, The last option will give you more graphics power due to the fact that it has deticated graphics, not intergrated. So if you're going to do light gaming and HD movies / photos / video editing, I'd go with the last option.

 

But it's really a toss up.

[Sly14Cat]

Thank you very much for the research you did and for replying. It seems that I'll be getting Lion (the USB) so I'd buy the middle one. It's my favorite out of the 3 but I could always choose the first one. The third one is just a back up. Since I can't get the Windows 7 Bootloader as laptops don't come with the CD,how can I get it (legally) without having to pay $120? Can I save all the system files and load them to a USB? I don't see why you can't just pre partition the drive and install OSX on one of the partitions and windows 7 on the other and just worry about the bootloader. If you use the disk, do you just press "Repair" and it repairs the bootloader? Could you legally download the bootloader?

 

Can I use chameleon to have the ability to change OS's from start up?

Thanks for all your help.

 

Edit: I plan mainly on doing programming (C++), light gaming, and testing out hackintosh to see what to OS is like. There will be 1TB of space so I'll have about 500ish GB per OS. But I will be doing moderately processor intensive things that's why I would like at least i5.

[King John]

Yes, I believe Chameleon does boot Windows 7. Only Windows 8 has issues.

 

Technically speaking, it's only illegal if you share(upload) something. Downloading it is completely legal. That being said, it's heavily frowned upon. I don't solicit the use of pirated operating systems (And I certainly paid well over $2000 for my two OEM Windows 7 Ultimate Edition DVD's )

 

If you're planning on doing light gaming, why not use Ubuntu? Humble Bundle actually came out not too long ago for it. Thats Amneisa, Bastalion, and others. Really good games. Eclipse is also a good choice for programming C++, among others.

 

And on their Software network, you're bound to find a ton of C++ compilers.

 

Pair that with Wine for testing Windows interfaces (and running your favorite Windows apps) and you're all set!

 

Plus, it will run on a GUID parition table.

[Sly14Cat]

Thanks,

I received a lot of answers about getting OSX on the laptop I plan on getting. I might also download Ubuntu as I was looking into it already.