light & (darkly)

Size does matter.

And in this case, smaller is definitely better.

So a couple of weeks ago, there was a crazy Dell sale and you could pick up one of the Mini 9 netbooks for $185.⁽¹⁾ I figured I needed something for Africa or traveling that I wouldn’t care about losing or breaking. The only real requirements were: 1) it had to be able to run OS X–because once you’re used to the glory of the Apple interface, you can’t go back, 2) it had to be able to sync my address book and calendar across both computers, 3) I should be able to edit image files on it if I have to, 4) it had to be small enough for me to justify not carrying my 5 pound MBP, and 5) it had to be really, really cheap.

Let me introduce my new toy… the Tech9.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s small. Really small. The size difference between my MacBook Pro and the white Macbook is minimal compared to the Mini 9. There’s an overhead shot with my MBP at the bottom, the white MB on top, and the Mini 9 sitting on the very top. It’s also not that thick. In the sideview, you can clearly see that it’s thicker than either Apple laptop, but not by much.

With that comes certain caveats. First, the keyboard and touchpad suck. I mean, really, what did you expect? In the overhead shot, you can clearly see how much smaller the Mini 9 touchpad and keys are than the MBP (standard keyboard). Next, there’s not a whole lot of real estate in terms of screen resolution. Sometimes, I feel like I’m reading off of my iPhone. Were these obvious and expected? Absolutely. Was it still a shocker in person? Yes.

So that solves number 4 and 5. It’s small. It’s cheap. Will it run OS X? Yes. There are countless guides out on the interwebs. Gizmodo, MyDellMini, or OSx86 are good places to start. I won’t outline how I did it because it seems to be a constantly evolving method, but I think a good 1.5 hours of focused attention would have been enough to get OS X running. It took me longer, but I was writing a paper for class at the same time. Check off 1.

2 was trickier. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a good syncing solution that’s free. The Google Calabrator was a nice effort at CalDAV, but seriously needs to be polished off. Other solutions often didn’t accommodate 2 way syncing (icalx, for example). So I fell back on my trusty DropBox. I copied over my AddressBook and Mail.app library folders into my dropbox and then replaced them with symlinks on my laptop. After I let that sync up, I then deleted the folders on the Mini and then made symlinks to the dropbox. Now I’ve got 2 way syncing that’s truly 2 way and always up to date. A few warnings if you try this one yourself: 1) sometimes Apple will delete your symlink–hasn’t happened to me but it’s been reported. If you lose your calendar and address book, don’t freak out. Make new symlinks. 2) you can’t edit the same event on both computers at the same time. I’m not sure why you would want to, but you can’t do it. Other than that… it’s flawless.

Speedwise, it runs OS X very well. Unbelievably well. Even with all the eyecandy going, it’s as smooth as anything I’ve done on my MBP. I ran xbench on it and got a benchmark score of 42.15. The MacBook Air typically has xbench scores of 45-55 so it’s definitely able to hang. My MBP has an xbench score of 120-125. Val’s white MB runs something in the same area.⁽²⁾ The battery life is about 3:50 hours for me.

Now for the real test… would it run Lightroom acceptably? The answer is yes. I popped in 2gbs of RAM and edited a few files. It is not, by any measure, fast, but it’s acceptable.

All in all, I would say it’s a good $185 spent. I’ve got something to take with me to Africa and something small and light for taking notes in class. Absolutely worth 2 weeks of eating nothing but porridge.

1. Retails at $250. [↩]
2. I am, however, highly skeptical of xbench scores, but this is the only measure I had access to. [↩]