Mac OS-X on 7" Asus Eee PC

[Denicio]

This tiny laptop is getting really popular and people anticipate it. It's a 7" ultra portable laptop which most probably will be released at the end of August, and cost about 250$.

 

http://event.asus.com/eeepc/

 

 

Also I find out it has the following specs:

 

CPU: Intel Pentium M 900MHz Dothan

Chipset: Intel 910

RAM: 512MB DDR2 @ 400MHz

Graphics: Intel UMA (Most probably GMA900)

Resolution/Display: 800 x 480 on 7" TFT

Audio: Hi-Definition Audio CODEC

LAN: 10/100 MBit Ethernet (Uknown)

Wireless: 802.11G Atheros AR5BXB63 (Most probably AR5006EG which works natively on Mac OS-X 10.4.10)

Storage: 4GB/8GB/16GB Flash Hard Drive

Webcam: 300K pixel video camera

Battery: 3 hours on 4-cell

 

More reviews:

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Hands_...h_the_ASUS_Eee/

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3829

 

What do you think? Will it become a nice Hackbook toy?

[yoda75]

I love the concept and especially the price. Unfortunately, I think the 512mb (didn't see anywhere that it is upgradeable) and the 16GB storage capacity will render it useless for OSX86 IMO.

[U.C.]

Dunno about that CPU. Some machines with the older Pentium M's dont run OSX.

[Embio]

1, There is a Dothan in the AppleTV that runs at a similiar speed

2, There is also an article on Lowendmac about running OS X on a G4 Powerbook on an 8GB flash drive so I see no problems there either

3, OS X runs fine with 512MB RAM, unless you want to open Parallels, Photoshop, VMware, etc. then things get slow.

[yoda75]

1, There is a Dothan in the AppleTV that runs at a similiar speed

2, There is also an article on Lowendmac about running OS X on a G4 Powerbook on an 8GB flash drive so I see no problems there either

3, OS X runs fine with 512MB RAM, unless you want to open Parallels, Photoshop, VMware, etc. then things get slow.

 

1. Agreed

2. Compatibility is not the issue. Think of how fast you're going to run out of space. 8GB=less than 2 dvd's worth of space.

3. OSX runs fine is correct. Running the OS is not the only thing anybody wants to do with a laptop though. People want to run applications too. I think this laptop for OSX86 meets the bare minimum requirements. Almost all of the most popular applications that people use will require higher specs. I know this first hand as my wife has a revA macbook core duo with 2x256. It was just ok. I imagine a weaker CPU without RAM to compensate to be a serious drawback.

 

IMHO this laptop will be good for web browsing and microsoft office and not much more. I see this machine at this price as possibly being a hit in the K-12 academic sector though. Think about it, this laptop would be perfect as a dedicated machine with just enough cpu and disk space to replace text books, notebooks, binders etc. No more backpacks for kids. It's a stylin little homework machine.

[Embio]

for what we might call 'proper' laptop duties I have my Macbook, so all I would be using this for is a cheap, lightweight laptop for use with an external drive when I travel around Europe this September. It is ideal for internet access, backing up photos to the external drive and all sorts of lightweight applications. My point about the article was that the guy reviewing it took a lot of of time explaining hard drive space management, not that OS X will run on 8GB HDD ;-)

 

Will OSx86 run on a 910 chipset?

[niteman1969]

If it is using a solid state disk then unless the bios prohibits it then there is nothing stopping you from

swapping it out with a normal laptop hdd.

 

Of course this will impact the battery life but for a cheap ass laptop if it is fully compatible with osx86

I can live with it.

[Captain Spekkie]

The specs are almost the same as on the Asus R2H UMPC.

 

And i know as a first hand user that the R2H can run OS X86

 

The only point that i dont realy like is the screen. the 800 x 480 resolution is a little bit low.

The problem with this is (in that darn old windows) that some screens may not fit.

 

So far as processor and machine is concerd it should work, but a hard drive of at leat 30GB and 1GB of ram would be nice to see.

[Embio]

does anyone know how big the drive is physically? 1.8" drives are available but quite expensive, whereas 2.5" IDE drives are amazingly cheap right now.

[yoda75]

If it is using a solid state disk then unless the bios prohibits it then there is nothing stopping you from

swapping it out with a normal laptop hdd.

 

I wonder if they went with solid state not only for the speed/energy efficiency but for the small size too. I hope the HD is upgradeable but there might be enough space for anything bigger than compact flash. Anyways, this is just speculation. There's no way to really tell from just pictures of the outside.

[Gray_Matter]

for what we might call 'proper' laptop duties I have my Macbook, so all I would be using this for is a cheap, lightweight laptop for use with an external drive when I travel around Europe this September. It is ideal for internet access, backing up photos to the external drive and all sorts of lightweight applications. My point about the article was that the guy reviewing it took a lot of of time explaining hard drive space management, not that OS X will run on 8GB HDD ;-)

 

Will OSx86 run on a 910 chipset?

 

I don't think that HD space will be a problem, I recently ran patched copy of MAC 10.4.7 server on a 8 gb HD and had a little room for some FTP files and a couple web pages. The minimum requirement for 10.4 is 6.1 gigs