What does it matter? The best way to learn a new OS is to mess about with it break it reinstall it and break it some more. I do IT (all Microsoft) as my job and so this is not hassle for me, just a learning curve and getting a basic understanding of linux commands. Win 7 is still on my laptop so having it dual boot with OSX is a bonus.

 

Apologies if it came across like that, it wasn't meant to be taken like that What I was getting at that to me I don't find it major hassle but the best way to learn about OSX without spending a grand on a new pioece of hardware I don't need.

The releases of Hackintosh are improving all the time and so the next Apple release may have an even better Hackintosh release. I've used iATKOS for Leopard on my netbook and Snow Leopard on my Dell laptop and they have been very impressive.

 

I think it helps that allegedly (from reading various comments on insanelymac and hackintosh) the Dell Inspirons are closely matched spec wise to macbooks. Mine is core2duo t7250, nvidia 8600m GT 2GB ram etc.

With iATKOS there was a spot on guide for my acer netbook. With my laptop I noted down the hardware and then tried to get the closest matching options having read as many Dell related threads as I could find on insanelymac. 1st install worked but only stable in safe boot so reinstalled and chose some different options and got lucky. Just then have to fiddle about with kexts for things like wireless and trackpad etc.

 

Reinstalled again but in 32bit mode this time and everything is working superb now. Keyboard/trackpad and wireless via a netgear wg111v3 all sorted Updates to 10.6.4 without breaking anything.

OSX86TOOLS still is an issue with kexts greyed out so don't know what's up with that but as everything is working shouldn't need any more kexts anyway.

 

One issue has come up actually, after a reboot the wireless connection has to be set up again with wep key etc. It doesn't seem to save the details. Any idea?

 

Fixed it Needed a profile setup in the netgear utility for the connection Now have a fully functional Dell Macbook so it seems.

Found one other thing I can't fix. The Microsoft keyboard layout I can't get working as it requires going to International under system preferences and that does not exist on mine and hasn't under any of the installs i've done

 

i'm sitting here using it now for the first time without messing around with it and breaking it again. I've already rebuilt since my last post as I enabled one too many things and broke it, sleep enabler works fine in 10.6.3 but upgrade to 10.6.4 and it kills it, can't even safe boot. So back to where I was minus the sleep kext and never let my machines go into sleep anyway so doesn't matter to me it's omitted.

Media seems very nice on it although the battery doesn't seem to last as long as if I was in Windows 7.

 

Cheers for all the help I'm going to leave it just as it is for now, well maybe for at least 24 hours

 

I've just got OSX 10.6.4 with all updates working on my new Compaq Mini 311c 1101SA and everything works perfectly including shutdown/reboot, wireless/ethernet/bluetooth and the ION video card.

At 11.6" screen it's just like a Macbook Air and looks stunning with the ion gpu but only cost me £250 instead of more than double that for a MBA. Can't recommend iATKOS S3 v2 enough now as used it for Dell Inspiron 1720, Acer Aspire One A150 (now going to sell) and now my Compaq. Also used easybcd in Windows 7 to sort the boot menu so using standard Windows boot menu with an entry for OSX added and got it triple booted with XP, Win7 and OSX.