About two weeks ago I got hold of a 13″ Macbook Pro, the new unibody enclosure laptop from Apple. I didn’t want another 15″ laptop as I ended up never taking it anywhere as it was so big. So when Apple finally dropped the 13″, I snapped it up.

Size is important. The 12″ G4 PowerBook was one of the best laptops Apple ever made. Fairly rugged (but bloody heavy!) it fit easily into a ruck sack and on your knees in confined places. It also didn’t feel like it’d snap if I bent over with it in a rucksack, unlike the old 15″ Macbook Pro I had!

The battery life is also excellent. Something I’d really liked about the Samsung was absurdly long battery times, so I suppose it’s a must have check-box now.

But what about the smaller screen res? Not that much of an issue to be honest, as I’ve kind of gotten used to the 10″ Samsung NC10 screen, and hey, if it matters so much when doing work, buy an external monitor!

The biggest benefit is that it just works, as you’d expect. I think I’ve had enough of titting about with limitations of the Hackintosh nature, and just want something reliable and… well, just Apple-like.

For the moment, the 13″ Macbook Pro is fantastic and I don’t think I’ll be spending too much time on the other netbooks, though the EEE is pretty much set up for wardriving and is great for that, sling it in the car and off we go!

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One of the best laptops I’d taken in the past was the 12″ PowerBook, and believe me, if Apple made an Intel netbook approaching this small footprint form factor, I’d have one. But alas, that’s a different blog post waiting to happen. However, the 15″ MacBook Pro was a pain in the ass. No desk space to keep it on, unwieldly in size (even fearing warping it when bending over with it in a rucksack) and a battery boasting about 2 hrs, it was a little too much.

In the summer of 2008 I took my Asus EEE 701, running Linux Mint. The little machine was great. Durable, good battery etc, but after a week or so of it being my only computer, the small 7″ screen and cramped keyboard were starting to tell.

This Christmas, I took the Samsung NC10 with OSX installed. I did have a Linux Mint install on a 20GB partition, as a fall back in case I found some weirdness with the OSX86 install, but I’m really happy to report the NC10 was near perfect.

Battery life is incredible. When the battery menu bar indicator turned red, it meant I had over an hour left…whu!? The screen was big enough to play games and watch movies on, and the keyboard, while having one or two keys in odd positions, was really good, no cramping or anything.

Being a long time user of OSX, since the public beta, I know a mac inside out, and feel more at ease than using Linux of any flavour, despite how good Ubuntu/Linux Mint have become. OS X ran sweetly on the NC10, starting up in about 40 seconds and shutting down in less than 5, quicker than my MacBook Pro can wake and sleep, made power management a non-issue.

The only thing still missing is the ability to switch audio output to headphones, but that is very close to being completed apparently… which will make the little NC10 an absolute must for any OSX fans after a netbook.

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Looking to upgrade to something with a bigger screen, I started doing my hacker homework and searching for a netbook that’d run OSX pretty well. A lot of googling later, and the Samsung NC10 was a prime candidate.

Thanks to the hard work and patient instructions from a poster called Mysticus C* over on the InsanelyMac forums, he’s provided instructions, tools and ongoing updates to shoe-horn OSX on the NC10. And it’s bloody brilliant!

Installation isn’t too difficult, I use a £14 Xbox HD-DVD as a USB drive, which makes installing this and Ubuntu/Linux Mint a breeze, then using the supplied tools you can patch OSX up to 10.5.5 (Apparently the 10.5.6 update works too, if you re-run the patcher app from Bike Town). The system boots up *very* quickly, miles quicker than my MacBook Pro. The drivers for the screen are correct, running at 1024×600, USB devices work ok, the webcam is fine, swapping the Mini PCI-e card for a Dell 1390 makes the Airport work a treat.

There are a few problems at the moment. The headphone socket and microphones (internal and socket) aren’t recognised, but there’s a hack to switch outputs, and a lot of work is being done on these at the moment by the guys on the forums.

Sleep with a power lead attached doesn’t work yet, works ok on battery power though. This isn’t really a massive problem, as the system boots and shuts down sooo quickly, sleeping isn’t a big loss, but it’ll be nice to have it fixed.

At the moment the machine is partition to dual boot OSX and Linux Mint and I’m pleased to report that at no point did this netbook boot into Windows

The Samsung NC10 is a great little laptop, nice big keyboard and screen and only an inch or so wider than the Asus 701. The battery life is excellent, 160GB drive, and of course it’s running OSX. Having Front Row while on an airplane to keep Eloy happy will be brilliant!

Apple, I’d much rather give you my money for a small form-factor netbook, but for the moment this’ll do, and do well.

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