[shane]

I'm seriously looking at getting a Dell mini 9 netbook (to install Mac OSX on) and I'm curious if some out there my either know, or be willing to speculate whether MacENC would run on it. For comparison, I find MacENC acceptable on my MacBook (2.16GHz Intel Core2 w/1 GB 667MHz DDR2). By pure numbers it looks to me as though it would be slower, but I'm not sure if that's accurate because they are different proccessors).

Intel® Atom Processor® N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K cache)
1 GB of DDR2 @ 533MHz
16 GB SSD

I'll likely try it regardless, but I'd be interested in what others have to say.

Regards,
Shane

[jagasail]

While I would love to see a Mac netbook, first of all, your approach would not be legal with OSX on a non-Mac computer. That aside, I'd be curious if you could even get it to run. I haven't looked at this for a few months but previous implementations I've seen were never fully operational, with generally some sort of hardware issues, particularly with attached devices (i.e. printer, gps etc). Have you tried this yet?

Scot

(edit - I should add I tried to load osx onto my eeePC last fall and couldn't get it to work)

[cyberhusky]

I do have a MSI Wind 100 Hackintosh.

Via external HD I did transfer all my data and apps via Time Machine.

GPSNavX and MacENC do run, though the latter takes a while to display the charts. One time they are onscreen everythings works fine. even the external display works.

[shane]

We need another simple computer around here anyway, so I've ordered a Dell mini 9. From all accounts it appears to be the most OSX friendly. It will require me purchasing another retail OS, as OEM versions of OSX do not play as nice with it. While that still may not be within Apple Inc. terms of use, it will at least appease my consciencious knowing that I purchased a 1 copy per machine.

It would be nice to be risking a $500 computer on the boat rather than a $1200 one, so if I can get the OS happening, I wouldn't mind trying to load on MacENC.

And yes, I genuinely will be checking my EUL for MacENC.

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Regards,
Shane

[jagasail]

I should have Googled this first as I see things have changed since I tried last fall, and the Dell mini 9 appears well suited. Still not legal but I'd feel better at least buying a retail copy of the os. May have to stop by Costco soon and get the Dell.

Scot

[cyberhusky]

Of all the netbooks out there the MSI Wind is the one that is by far the easiest to convert to a Mac. There's a MSIWindOS CD Image floating around on the net. Just boot the MSI Netbook with this CDROM, and you do have OS X running in minimalistic setup. After that insert your oiriginal OS CDROM and upgrade to that version of OS X. You're ready to go.

Everything works, except micro input via the built in micro.
I did exchange the WiFi Card, as the original worked but wasn't non-mac like to use, special drivers etc.

I think in the meantime this problem is solved too.

EEEPC have more problems or tweaks to get OS X running properly. The Dell is good choice too.

As for USB ports everything works, Keyspan, USB GPS, BT GPS, Serial GPS etc.

[shane]

I received the netbook Friday, and things are looking promising. I loaded in OS X -that took a couple of hours to get everything running okay. All the system apps I tried worked fine. Then iWorks -so far so good. I am concerned about how much of the SSD storage OSX; I parsed a lot of it down but may need to go further.

That's all the time I can spare on it this weekend, maybe next weekend for nav s/w.


Regards,
Shane

[AugustH]

Just saw this on TUAW and thought it might be of interest. Full title is "Why the hackb00k is a failure"

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/04/27/road-test...is-a-fail/

[shane]

Just saw this on TUAW and thought it might be of interest. Full title is "Why the hackb00k is a failure"

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/04/27/road-test...is-a-fail/

Oh, I can think of many circumstances where this would not worth the effort of doing, but I could argue against an 8core install in other cases too.

I installed MacENC and all the NOAA ENC charts for the Puget Sound/Gulf Isl area. So far so good. Have not tied it into GPS yet -just tried firing it up and see what would happen. It is significantly quicker than my dual 2.0 G5 desktop, and actually feels a little quicker than my 1.8 intel macbook; although I don't know how much of that is just due to a bloated system and/or pushing a 1024x800(approx) vs the smaller 1024x628 dell screen.

At this point I'd say the jury's out, but would also call it promising.

Regards,
Shane

[shane]

I'll continue to play w/the netbook, but the first issue I've found is with Mr. Tides. The program itself runs fine, and behaves as you would expect. The problem is that the vertical height of its windows are greater than 600pixels, so some of the info (ie. the dates/values table in the lower right corner of the Day window) are cut off. This info can be gotten in other windows (Calendar & Text) though. For a quick glance at today's tides/currents it doesn't matter, but if you're wishing to look up info for a different day, it means going to a different window. If you do want to see a different day's info displayed in the Day window, you can go to the Calendar window and click on the appropriate date; that new date will then open in the Day window.

[cyberhusky]

Just saw this on TUAW and thought it might be of interest. Full title is "Why the hackb00k is a failure"

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/04/27/road-test...is-a-fail/

Netbooks aren't a replacement for laptops, but knowing that they aren't as fast as true laptops, I use my MSI Wind Hackintosh only when I don't have to do CPU extensive work.

I just use it for writings some texts/letters with Pages (MS Office is way too slow even under Windows), Calc for simple spredsheets and Keynote as PowerPoint replacement. (Well I do use these apps on my MacBook too).
For netsurfing and emailing the netbooks are fast enough.
I do even use GPSNavX and MacENC on my MSI Wind. It works great and one doesn't have the problem to find a enough power on a boat a cigarette ligter cabler is enough!

For doeing graphics intensive work like photoshop, iPhoto, Pages (DTP) or video editing, thenetbooks are definetly too weak, but that was said from the beginning on.

I'm still waiting for a 10" MacNetTouch, a bigger iPod touch.

[AugustH]

I'll continue to play w/the netbook, but the first issue I've found is with Mr. Tides. The program itself runs fine, and behaves as you would expect. The problem is that the vertical height of its windows are greater than 600pixels, so some of the info (ie. the dates/values table in the lower right corner of the Day window) are cut off.

I designed Mr. Tides for the minimum display size that Apple used in 2004, and since then displays have only gotten bigger. I never thought it would be run on anything smaller. Hmm. I'll have to think about this a bit, not sure how to crowd all the information onto a smaller window and still have it usable.

[shane]

I designed Mr. Tides for the minimum display size that Apple used in 2004, and since then displays have only gotten bigger. I never thought it would be run on anything smaller. Hmm. I'll have to think about this a bit, not sure how to crowd all the information onto a smaller window and still have it usable.

August,

Thanks for chiming in; when writing this thread, I forgot about you (and Mr. Tides) being right here & part of this forum. It is *very* close to fitting; I'll check again when I'm at that 'puter and see where the issues are. If you think of an easy way of adding some sort of 'scalability' that would be tres cool. If my nav. hardware plays nice with the netbook & MacENC, I would like to consider making it my primary boat computer; after all, don't want to do 'work' while out on the boat. A benefit of the netbook that I didn't think of is the SSD flash drive; in the event of freeze requiring rebooting the Dell is way faster than my mac; not that it ever needs it , but if it does, it's usually at the worst time.

Regards,
Shane

[Leeward]

Hello....
New member here..

Signed up for exactly this thread..
In fact I'll looking into buying MacENC for exactly this use.

I used to own an Asus EeePC 701 4G with 7" screen running Windows XP ("nlite"d down in size).
I ran some of the software, and stored all the maps on a 8GB SD Card (Class 6 Spec)

Besides the typical Thunderbird (email), Firefox (web) and Openoffice...I ran Garmin Mapsource, Garmin nRoute (road nav) and google earth on it.

It was perfect for sitting in a bar, connected to wifi, while checking weather forecasts and using google maps to look at sat photos of the next destination.
It was also handy for driving around and viewing recently taken photos too.

The only issues were the small keyboard and 800x600 resolution.

I bought a Dell Mini 9 to solve those issues and is still small enough to carry like a hardcover book.
After using it with XP I decided to buy a copy of Leopard so I would have the same operating system on it as my macmini.


Recreen sizing
You can in fact specifically scale any app's display in Leopard or you can scale the everything.

I'm downloading MacENC demo right now.
I assume I need to download Mr Tides 3 Rel 16 ?

I'll test it and post a how-to if i can get it to scale.

Cheers

[Leeward]

Hello again...

Here is a way to have all Mr Tides 3 windows scale down in size so it will fit on a smaller screen.

*Tested this with Mr Tides 3 release 16 on Leopard 10.5.6 on a Dell Mini 9

1) Open terminal
2) type the following in the terminal

defaults write com.hahnsoftware.MrTides3 AppleDisplayScaleFactor .89

The tells OS X to scale the mr tides windows to 89% of their normal size.

If you want to switch it back

1) Open terminal
2) type the following in the terminal

defaults write com.hahnsoftware.MrTides3 AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1.00

*Note: I suspect this setting will only be saved until you reboot the computer. I'll test that and work on a simple solution so that you don't have to type this in every time you reboot

Of course a better option is to have the software handle this on it's own, but this method works for those who need it now.

Cheers !

[shane]

Leeward,

Thanks for sharing your expertise with the terminal window. I'll try that later tonight and see what happens.

Regards,
Shane

[Leeward]

You are more than welcome Shane...

BTW: Upgrading the Dell Mini to 2GB of ram is definitely worth it for this type of application.

[shane]

.......1) Open terminal
2) type the following in the terminal

defaults write com.hahnsoftware.MrTides3 AppleDisplayScaleFactor .89

The tells OS X to scale the mr tides windows to 89% of their normal size..........

.........Of course a better option is to have the software handle this on it's own, but this method works for those who need it now.

Cheers !

Yes, that worked, but I agree that it is a compromise (but I'm not complaining). While it does indeed allow the entire screen to be diplayed within the 600pix (vertical) limitations, it takes the scrollable data table in the bottom right corner of the Day window down to a font siz equivalent of about 3 I can imagine this could be a little tricky to use in any sort of seas. Ideally, I could easily live with a smaller main graphic, but maintain the size of that data box.

Now August, if you decide you want to play with this, I think I know where you could find some testers.......

Regards,
Shane

[AugustH]

Interesting idea, I'll try it out here and see what happens. I might be able to detect when that setting is active, and do things differently (like maybe a larger font size just for the event list) so you could still read it.