thought I'd give OSX a go...

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djpaubes

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#35145 4-Jun-2009 13:13

I'm a big iphone fan boy and my wife wants a macbook so I thought why not see if I can dual boot my

HP Pavilion DV6500 (dv6517tx) Intel Core Duo T5450 laptop.

Got a few issues for the moment, I'm trying to boot off usb and it gets stuck halfway during boot time.
Just wondering if others had tried it and got resonable performance and good usability?

Cheers,

Toys: Ã¯Â£Â¿ iphone 4s; PS3 good times. Ã¯Â£Â¿ 13inch macbook pro. Ã¯Â£Â¿ ipad 3. Ã¯Â£Â¿ 27inch imac. Ã¯Â£Â¿ airport express & time machine. raspberry-pi running xbmc and a gopro try hard.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#221590 4-Jun-2009 13:26

At certain point you will find out what to do. But I think you will also find out a lot of the "usability" comes from the fact that Mac OS X simply "works" thanks to the complete software and hardware integration.

It may be possible to run Mac OS X in some other hardware, but it may not support everything you have, or the exact configuration you have.

In other words, I think you can only judge Mac OS X when running on an Apple hardware - for now.

magu

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#221615 4-Jun-2009 14:10

Agree with freitasm here. Although there will possibly come a time when OS X will run on common hardware, right now the full experience is only available on Apple hardware (which can cost a bit more than regular PCs).

It does win partners over, though (own experience).

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#221620 4-Jun-2009 14:14

I have two Apple Mac here at home. My wife uses one full time, the otheri s the Mac Mini running Windows 7 RC (Bootcamp) as our Media Center machine - note we never use the Mac Mini as a Mac OS machine though.

djpaubes

394 posts

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#221626 4-Jun-2009 14:31

Classic..... buy a mac and run windows on it :)

I've had a play with a mates macbook and I do like the usability but over time I think there might be a few things that get me down.

I guess I like to hack and play too so was a chance to give it a go. I've heard mac mini's can make great media centers, but running the osx, I think my mate intended to use it to play moves, record the whole lot??

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#221628 4-Jun-2009 14:37

I have an AppleTV at home and, even after patchstick'ing it to be able to watch DivX movies from the NAS, I can say that it does need a little bit more hardware than what it offers. I can't get anything over 720p to play without hiccups.

I can see the Mac Mini doing a great job of acting as a Media Center. Even in OS X it should do a good job, running Front Row or maybe boxee.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." - Doc Emmet Brown

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#221632 4-Jun-2009 14:49

djpaubes: Classic..... buy a mac and run windows on it :)

Two reasons: small and silent. Great Media Center machine. Running Windows 7 RC because I believe the Media Center experience is top notch on that OS.

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#221641 4-Jun-2009 15:08

magu: I can see the Mac Mini doing a great job of acting as a Media Center. Even in OS X it should do a good job, running Front Row or maybe boxee.

The problem is how do you get Freeview for example? Do you have a single integrated UI that offers HDTV, DVD, Music, Recorded TV, Radio all from a single remote control?

The beauty of the Windows 7 Media Center is that... it just works. No third party software, etc. I tried Mac OS X options because I though using the

Back to the topic, I'd use Mac OS X if it had a good browser. I just hear my wife complaining all the time. Firefox is a memory hog, Safari can't render things well, Opera just breaks a lot of layouts. And no, fixing the Internet because of the browser they offer ain't gonna work...

But I think this is getting to a OS war!

Back to hardware. Apple hardware [Borat] is nice! [/Borat]

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djpaubes

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#221643 4-Jun-2009 15:15

My only compliant is to get an nice Mac laptop with HDMI out... (do they even do this??) would cost 3k plus.

Where is my HP laptop was about 2k at the time and had all the bobs and whistles... Funny I say that as when I bought my iphone from ebay and paid $800 at the time everyone thought I was crazy and couldnt understand why would I spend that much on a cellphone... and especially one that required a lot of work at the time to even work.

Apple form factor is number 1 I don't doubt that.

Anywho I hope to get my hackintosh working maybe over the weekend when I can search the forums for a sniff of the issue.

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#221648 4-Jun-2009 15:20

The only Apple hardware that has HDMI out is the AppleTV. The Mac Pros can have it depending you the graphics card you choose. Laptops can only have it with a converter for the new miniDisplay Port.

And back to freitasm considerations: Yes, I agree with you. Windows 7's MC is rock-solid. It just sucks that it runs on Windows only. ;D

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djpaubes

394 posts

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#221651 4-Jun-2009 15:28

I've got an old p4 thats running tversity to my PS3 and that's how I watch my divx etc. Works reasonably well.. so I have a samsung hard drive recorder which is a pain as I have TCL and we cant get sky due to bodycorp not allowing satellites..... crap I know!

Might put Windows 7 on the old P4 in that case but will have to get some more memory first as it only has 512mb.

Sorry off track here...

mruane

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#221661 4-Jun-2009 15:43

@Freitasm: Like you I have the mini mac running as a media client and I have been happy with it. So, you have bootcamped now into Windows 7. What are your thoughts on that approach? I tried bootcamping with Vista and thought the 1.8ghz Mini Mac kind of struggled a bit and reverted to XP. Was the Windows 7 experience better than Vista and does the Mini Mac peform well bootcamped into Windows 7?

Cheers Mike

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#221666 4-Jun-2009 15:50

I feel Windows 7 runs a bit better than Windows Vista on the same hardware - even decoding Freeview HD is not as hard as it was (and also Vista required third party H.264 decoders, now builtin with Windows 7, so one less thing to load on the system).

maddygp

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#221802 4-Jun-2009 21:38

djpaubes: My only compliant is to get an nice Mac laptop with HDMI out... (do they even do this??) would cost 3k plus.

While no MacBooks or MacBook Pros have HDMI out, they either have Mini DVI or DisplayPort. Just hook up the output to a Whatever to HDMI adapter and you'll be away. For presentations we drive a 37" LCD with HDMI in from white MacBook with Mini DVI out + adapter or two and it works fine.

mruane

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#221850 4-Jun-2009 23:35

freitasm: I feel Windows 7 runs a bit better than Windows Vista on the same hardware - even decoding Freeview HD is not as hard as it was (and also Vista required third party H.264 decoders, now builtin with Windows 7, so one less thing to load on the system).

Thanks Mauricio - looks like that's my next task...

Cheers Mike

stevenz

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#222059 5-Jun-2009 17:12

Hardware is very nice, but horribly overpriced. The OS is great however, the appeal of running it on more "affordable" hardware is certainly obvious.

Much like Mauricio, I was using a Mac mini with XBMC running on it (under OS X, but it was a pure media centre so the desktop was rarely seen). DVI to HDMI converter and an optical cable to the receiver, a bit of tweaking and SPDIF output worked fine.

I've had "issues" getting OS X running on HP hardware. I know it can be done but it generally involved downloading hacked versions of the install disks (at 7.5GB...). I've got a legitimate retail DVD of Leopard and haven't had much joy. I can get the disk to boot to the installer but then it'll freeze, even installing to a bootable USB drive which boots the Mac and _should_ boot the HP due to a modified kernel still doesn't work.

I had it working on a custom desktop PC just fine though, and it was _fast_. The biggest issues were with drive controllers and networking. Both needed hacking to make them behave. The hardware I was using then is now supported natively in the OS X install so it should work "out of the box".

osx86.org and insanelymac are the good places to check out.

And yes, Win7 RC is completely bulletproof on Macs. Everything just "works". Other than some of the handy applications I use, which don't have any decent Windows equivalents that I've found, Win7 is threatening to replace OS X as the primary OS on my macbook. It's really quite good.

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