Tri-Boot Retail (Advanced) OS X 10.5.6 Guide on AOD-150 10"

Hey everyone,

This thread will culminate in a walkthrough on how to install a retail version of MacOS X Leopard 10.5.6 on the 10" Acer Aspire One Netbook.

Enjoy!

 

Preparation

Preparation

This procedure is not really for the faint-hearted.

If you want the simplest process for running only MacOS on your AOD150, use the other guide in this sub-forum. You'll need to torrent the "final" version of XxX's DVD. I don't recommend installing everything as listed in that guide: the ICH drivers and default system kexts are unnecessary; all you need are dsmos and IntelCPUPMDisabler. As you will find out if you read on, you don't need the Voodoo kernel if you boot with "cpus=1". Thus I recommend the Boot Delay option under Advanced.


The Beef

I recommend that you purchase an external USB DVD burner before attempting, (especially for installing Windows) but that is not absolutely necessary.

Another good reason to have the burner is so that you can make backup discs from your factory install. I tried doing this, but all my burns were deemed corrupt. (I Googled the media, the batch seemed OK, and then I learned all I had to do was wait between burning and verifying. This is hard to do when Acer automates the transition. I think the read intensity for the laser just melts the already-heated substrate on the disc. I threw out half the stack just in case. This is the first time I've had issues with usually high quality Verbatim media.)

Sorry for the digression, but it might save you some pain: I thought my original USB-to-IDE-slimline-DVD-burner adapter was bad.

Do note that with the AOD150 you will very likely need to upgrade your BIOS to 1.05 via Acer's support website, then reset the BIOS to defaults, with the exception of enabling F12 to select the Boot Menu.

Sometimes an attempt to boot from DVD (especially with hacked images such as XxX, Kalyway, iDeneb, or iATKOS {anyone remember Uphuck or JaS? No? Good. Didn't think so.(!)}) you will get a black screen with a white "E" on it. Just try again, but this time wait until you see the BIOS splash screen to hit F12.

I also highly recommend a 2GB RAM upgrade for OS X, and also a hard drive upgrade. Since they're so cheap these days, I upgraded to a 320 GB 7200 RPM drive that allegedly sips almost as little power as the stock drive. (I won't care if I ever decide to buy the 9-cell battery on eBay!)

The wireless card is a trickier issue. I recommend an upgrade because with OS X, this one is nothing but trouble. The two dual-band (2.4 GHz + 5 GHz) options are the Broadcom 95322 or the AR5008, both on eBay for 20 and 30 USD respectively.

I noticed the AR5008 I ordered is a AR5418, a slight upgrade from the somewhat more finnicky AR5416 in my Toshiba. If I add a 3rd antenna, I'll do so when I hack in a 3G modem at a later date.

The Broadcom one may be the wiser choice since it's what Apple uses in its new Unibody line. Linux support at the moment is probably better, but it's proprietary, so that might change in the future as the Ath9k Atheros driver improves. (it's still not as good as the old madwifi project, IMO)

If an external DVD drive proves too costly, or just plain doesn't work, make sure you have a large USB thumbdrive for the Retail Install image, (8 GB+) and a smaller one too use as a "pre-booter." (128 MB should suffice) If you want, you can also pare down the retail image to 4 GB, but I won't cover that here. Google is your friend.

 

MacOS Installation (Direct Method)

Direct Method

This method is ideal. It does not require installing to one partition, then booting into that partition, and then installing the ideal final copy on the other partition.

If you can boot a BOOT 132 disc from your external DVD drive and then get it to successfully find your Retail DVD:
First of all, I envy you. Burn the generic .iso that you can find at InsanelyMac, or the one that I link to below. Hit Esc, (2 times if necessary) enter 9f for the DVD drive, switch out the discs, wait for the lamp to go off, and hit enter to boot from your retail Leopard install DVD. (Note that my .iso was designed for versions 10.5.5 and earlier, but I think 10.5.6 should work too given that DSDT is not necessary for our hardware)

Keep in mind that you will need to boot with the "cpus=1" argument. (I also recommend the "-v" argument so you can see what's going on. No quotation marks, of course.)


If you're like me and your pre-booter can't find your DVD drive and the Leopard Retail disc to boot it:
There are two sub-methods for the next part, depending on whether Windows or MacOS is already your weapon of choice.

If Windows is your weapon of choice:
Get your little, bootable USB thumbdrive ready. Download my AOD150 slimbuild ISO:
(http://sites.google.com/site/ultimat...ild-AOD150.iso)
and follow the instructions to use it with Syslinux:
([How To] Create bootable USB with BOOT-132 loader - InsanelyMac Forum)
Ignore the part where it says you can only boot from a pre-existing OS X installation. He just wants to discourage people from trying to boot DVDs like this. I'm not so convinced. It may still work, but I've seen crazy references to DVDs showing up as hd(12,0) when booted, but I don't have time to try all 16^2 options.

If MacOS is your weapon of choice:
Format my .iso (linked above) so that it is restored to your thumb drive. Then Google the EFI V9 one click installer and run it on said thumb drive. Now you have your pre-booter ready. Wasn't that easy?


Onward:
If you manage to boot your retail DVD like this, congratulations.

If not, you'll need to borrow a friend's Mac to restore your DVD image to a large thumb-drive. You should follow the instructions here:
(MyDellMini • How-To: Install Mac OS X - DellEFI Method)
You can also use their .iso files if your Mac partition isn't booting if mine doesn't work for you. (they're great except they have extra drivers for the Mini 9 that may or may not confuse your system)

Basically you just use Disk Utility to restore the image to the USB drive. I recommend GUID partition scheme. You also have to verify the image before you can restore it using one of the menus.

Again, hit Esc (2x sometimes needed) and type in 82. 80 is your internal HD, 81 is your pre-booter USB stick; now be ready to type in your arguments: "-v cpus=1" and then hit Enter. Hopefully you will be able to boot and install this way.

Even with the fastest of thumb drives (OCZ Rally2 or Patriot XPorter last time I checked) the install will take much longer than it does from DVD, and the countdown will speed up and slow down numerous times. It's a pain, so make sure you're using the 10.5.6 image instead of teh 10.5.1 image to save time. (I did the latter since I thought the version had been messing me up when it was actually the cpus=1 argument)

If all goes well, you should be able to install MacOS to your HD, assuming you format your disk with a GUID partition scheme and at least one HFS+ Journaled partition. My scheme was as follows:

100 GB Windows (FAT/MSDOS)
70 GB Macintosh (HFS+ Journaled)
~28 GB Linux (FAT/MSDOS)
100 GB Storage (FAT/MSDOS)

I then installed 10.5.6 on the Macintosh partition. Technically the install will "fail" at the very very end, (after the progress bar has filled; be patient until then or watch the Installer Log via the Window menu) and that's just because the partition can't be marked "bootable" in the EFI BIOS since you don't really have EFI onboard. Instead just reboot, again booting from your pre-boot USB drive. Drive 81 is the one you want this time.


Another fork in the road: red pill or blue pill?

Red Pill
Just boot away. (maybe the kexts do get loaded and this won't be an issue; I 've never tried it, but this will be the case if you use the Dell Mini9 pre-boot USB) Your resolution will be screwy, you won't have audio, and you might end up in a horrible, horrible installer loop thanks to no network access and a possibly malfunctioning WIFI chip.

Then you can install the appropriate drivers after booting using OSX86Tools. Google it.

Blue Pill
Instead, put my Driver Script on a USB stick, boot into Single User mode, "-s cpus=1" at the prompt, and navigate to my script and type ./post-patch.sh and then Enter. Keep in mind, you will have had to name your Mac drive "Macintosh" or modify the script.

You can also do this with a GUI by choosing the Terminal option from the menu after booting a retail or hacked install DVD. You will still have to navigate to /Volumes/USBKeyName/ScriptLocation/ and then execute.


Wow that was long. I'm tired.

Since I was tired, I forgot the link to the drivers and script. Here it is:

(AOD150 Retail Files Script V1.zip)

 

MacOS Installation (Indirect Method)

There isn't as much to say here, so I'll also use this post to discuss some post-install modifications and why I included the drivers I did.

This method provides a nice GUI the whole way through, especially if your first install is a hacked disc, such as XxX, that gets installed on "Windows" using the partition scheme mentioned above. Once you have your hacked install set up to your liking, boot into it, insert or mount your retail DVD or image, open up Terminal, navigate (cd) your way to /Vol*/Mac\ OS\*/Sys*/Inst*/Packages/ . You'll understand what I mean if you use the "ls" command to "see where you are" after each successive directory change. (cd) [note that you can replace the asterisks with Tabs to autocomplete each name]

Then run "open OSInstall.mpkg".

Then run my script with a "sudo ./post-patch.sh". After "cd"ing your way to the location. And verifying that your hard drive is named "Macintosh" or that you modified the script accordingly. Verifying permissions will take some time, so go get a cup of coffee.

You should be able to handle the rest. Be sure to install the EFI V9 one click Bootloader before rebooting. Then you can boot into the new install and format/recycle the "dirty" partition that was installed from a hack.


The Retail Rationale and Why I Included What I Did

I prefer "retail" or "vanilla" because while you may not have every feature ever demonstrated on InsanelyMac, updates go smoothly and behavior isn't unexpected.

If you use the XxX method mentioned in another thread in this forum, you might have kernel panics thanks to the Voodoo kernel used. Also, it turns out the ICHx kext (driver) is unnecessary. (I can't help but ask is it counter-productive?)


Here is a list of the files installed by the script: All of the key old important kexts are backed up.
*Two kext drivers for PS/2 mouse and keyboard found on most laptops. One of the kexts hooks into (vanilla/default) ACPI and the other is provided by Apple for Darwin.
*"dsmos" kernel decryptor. There is a newer rendition called "AppleDecrypt", but dsmos is still being used in a form for Snow Leopard Developer previews, so I'm sticking with it until netkas or another OSX86 legend changes his tune.
*Three Graphics Kexts: FrameBuffer (older version but allows backlight change), GMA950 (customized for our device ID; I know little else about it except that it seems to be fairly recent), and Naitt.kext (required since our GMA950 comes from the Leopard Graphics Update. That's all the research I cared to do about it, because it seemed to work pretty well, and it seems GFX strings (more elegant solution) only work on desktops with GMA950.
*IntelCPUPMDisabler. This allows the 10.5.6 update to proceed since it checks for AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement. You can remove this kext after you're all set up if you want to lower your system temperature and possibly power consumption. Do research if you care more about this; I was trying to roll with a minimalist solution, but let me know if you think Disabler.kext is a better solution. I guess there's also NullCPUPowerManagement...etc.
*VoodooHDA. I didn't want to include this, but having audio is nice, and volume control works, and it's nice to demonstrate that. Also, I like getting the full experience of a retail start up video, sound and all. The video doesn't even stutter when you have this audio driver loaded! I will look into getting a good codec dump for Taruga's patcher or another solution. The KDE4 latst version of Mandriva was a recommended source, but I couldn't get a codec dump for our ALC272 onboard Intel HD Audio. I was amazed since the sound worked. I'll try my Ubuntu install next, but don't hold your breath. The long-term answer is for someone to develop something like was done for the AOA150 or the EeePC line.
*AttansicL1e driver. This is for ethernet. Atheros bought Attansic, hence the name. 'Nuff said except that it's nice having this install/load before your WIFI driver so that ethernet gets marked en0 and WIFI gets marked en1. Helps with Time Machine and such. Also, I think the funky "card icon" menu refers to the ability to power down this card. The driver seems as though it was designed for a PC card/removable version of the Attansic adapter. That's fine with me.
*#10 isn't a driver, but it's a file that holds your boot settings. I just added the kernel flag to ensure that boot occurs with only one CPU, and that there's a 3 second timeout so that you can use other arguments such as "-x, -v, -s, Graphics Mode", etc. Also, if you use the Darwin bootloader as your only bootloader, you need the timeout to select another OS (should you choose to install one)


Helpful Notes:

Included in my helpful driver package is also the latest Voodoo kernel. I do not recommend installing software and doing updates with this kernel, since in my experience it will crash. (on Mac there's a "kernel panic" which is an analog to the windows BSoD, and it's arguably uglier) If you just copy the kernel to your boot drive, you should be able to boot with it by typing "Mach.kernel.voodoo" at the Darwin boot prompt.

I also included Taruga's patcher (good old reliable) for fixing audio if you're uncomfortable with using VoodooHDA which incorporates a whole load of funkiness carried over from BSD/Unix/Linux/Godknowswhatelse. If you boot verbose, you'll see all this wonderfulness. Still, it's a temporary, working solution and can easily be removed via the Terminal or OSX86Tools.

I thought about putting the nice Prefpane touchpad tap access in the script, but I left it out in case anyone wants to use VoodooPS2 or the ALPS/Synaptics two-finger-scroll drivers/app available on InsanelyMac.

I think that's all I need for rationale. Shut down and restart work fine. Sleep does not, even when you check the "reboot after power cut" option in Power Settings.

I haven't really examined the "hibernate" function of the EFI v9 bootloader. When you sleep the image gets saved, but I think it's encrypted, so that's an option that needs to be changed. If that's the case, I don't know how to "Sleep" without "Hibernating," but maybe that's not so bad. Requires further investigation. The Chameleon (v1) bootloader might allow sleep since it doesn't allow hibernating, but EFI V9 is designed for 10.5.6. I'm also not brave enough to try Chameleon v2 RC. I don't need the extra graphics. Maybe I'll do it at some point.

If you're co-booting with Windows, you might want to Google "utc fix insanelymac" to have a script run at startup and shut down to glean from and restore the system clock to local time instead of UTC. Mac and Linux like UTC, but Windows won't run on it, (there's a registry hack but it has all sorts of side effects) so make sure Linux is set to local time as well.

I think that's all.

 

Ubuntu Installation

Install:

Ubuntu installation is quite easy with 32-bit (need I remind you?) 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope since Canonical were targeting netbook compatibility.

It is also trivial to add the netbook remix via the package manager. I chose to do install UNR on top of a default install to ensure that I had all the key base packages. Doing the install from a USB key is also an option with the UNR image. Just try not to install a distribution that uses "Intel lpia" packages. You'll get a 10% battery life increase, but you'll be vastly limited in terms of what you can install without some Terminal trickery and the loss of the ability to update.

{Once you've booted into the live environment, I used Partition Editor (gparted is installed by default on the LiveDVD) to delete the EFI Fat32 200 MB partition, but I realized this was an error, since you'll have to run Disk Utility again from MacOS and then run the EFI V9 installer again before you can install Windows should you choose to do so.}

So after you've safely learned not to do the last paragraph, install Ubuntu. I used ext4 since it seems like it's just ext3 with benefits. I used custom partitioning, mounting said "Linux" drive on "/" and I didn't create a swap partition since there isn't room if I want Vista to see the Storage partition. More on that later. I recommend changing your Sources to a local mirror for increased speed. On academic networks, you can get upwards of 20 MB/s on connections to MIT, Duke, Chicago, etc. I'm living off campus so the benefits are much less pronounced, but still there. If you want to know why the difference, Google/Wikipedia "Internet 2".

(Did you notice how Ubuntu recognized the OS X partition in the partitioner? That's new, quite funny, and very cool.)

One last important step is the bootloader option under Advanced in the last screen. Default is hd0 which will overwrite the Darwin bootloader. You'll have to manually re-load OS X using boot0/chain0 chainloaded into Grub. Yeah, I didn't think that sounded fun either, but you can Google it.

Thus I recommend changing hd0 in the dropdown menu to the partition you installed Linux on. It's OK if you don't remember, you can go back a few screens.


Customization:
I already mentioned the netbook remix. If you install it as described above, you can switch in and out of it to your heart's desire. I also recommend adding the repositories for Opera, the Chromium pre-alpha, and medibuntu so that you can play DVDs with VLC or SMPlayer, etc. Google Earth runs pretty poorly. There are all the awesome open source packages like Inkscape and Blender, but I'm digressing. You can modify your Firefox menus like jkkmobile does and use F11 for fullscreen. Google it. Acrobat reader and Skype are also useful. Ditto for the Flash player and Moonlight. (Linux Silverlight)

Changing the theme to Dust or one of the new ones makes Ubuntu less fugly.

Changing the DPI (under Font preferences and then advanced) to 72 makes your limited screen real estate more usable.

I use Ubuntu because again, like vanilla OS X, it's best supported. You can get your question answered in a forum quite easily.

I've tried OpenSUSE, Mandriva, OpenGEU, CrunchBang, Ultimate Edition, and others, but vanilla "retail" (haha) Ubuntu is the least hassle. And the final 9.04 version will be released in mere days.

Sleep works.

I recommend making a swap file (Google it; remember that you didn't make a swap partition) so that hibernate works. Haven't tried that yet though.

Ubuntu, aside from the relatively poor graphics performance (due to regressions on the open source driver that is currently under MAJOR reconstruction) is probably the most ideal platform for a netbook, due to the DPI change and UNR.

Unfortunately it seems that the Intel driver is the last (after AMD and nVidia) to get redirection support. This means that 3D OpenGL won't get redirected or warped or modified if you're running desktop effects. Google Earth doesn't seem to want to play nice at all. Silly Google Earth. I haven't tested out SketchUp via WINE; so far I've only seen it work on nVidia hardware (proprietary) with the latest version, (open source ATI might work) at least. I don't have high hopes. But then that's overkill anyway if you're running multiple OSes.

I recommend adding "profile" to your list of boot arguments after you've done all your updates to get a super-fast boot in 9.04. You do that once to enable lookahead while booting. Google it.

 

Windows Installation (XP, Vista, 7, take your pick)

I haven't tested installing XP after MacOS/MacOS+Ubuntu, but I assume it's the same. I'll describe the procedure for Vista, which I know is the same for Win7, with only noted exceptions.

Boot up off of your favorite 32-bit version of Windows. You should delete the first 200 MB partition so that you can see the fourth storage partition at a later point (only if you're triple booting and want a commonly-accessable storage partition) and then reformat your "Windows" partition to NTFS, and then install. Everything should go smoothly.

Note that you will have to get drivers for LAN and Video, arguably two of the most crucial components, which is a pain. If you upgrade your WIFI to one of the latest cards, chances are that Vista won't have the driver, so you'll have to get it from atheros.cz or laptopvideo2go forums. Keep in mind you might want to get a somewhat-out-of-date driver that has WHQL certification so that Windows Update will confidently update it for you. Windows Update will probably find all of the drivers you'll want for Windows, although you may want to choose a later Realtek driver from their website or laptopvideo2go, and then pull a good v10 hacked version of the Synaptics driver from laptopvideo2go so that you can add 2 finger scrolling from Google Code. Google it.

You'll probably have loads of Windows Updates to sit through, and that's a pain. Make sure you install .Net 3.5 and .Net 3.5 SP1 before you run the updates on XP and Vista; otherwise they will fail and not tell you why. It's been like this for a couple months now.

You can customize Firefox by Googleing jkkmobile's procedure. All Windows and Linux browsers go full screen except Chrome, but they're working on that.

Turning off Aero is probably a good idea. Disabling the sidebar will save you resources and memory. You may even want to consider reverting to the Windows Basic look. The reason to keep Vista is that it's probably just better than XP by now in terms of being well-supported. By turning off the eye-candy and using SP1, performance will be pretty close to XP. I'm not using Windows 7 because I think it's impractical when you have to do research to see if you can install VPN software and the like. Some stuff just isn't compatible.

To use the Windows bootloader and still be able to boot into Mac or Linux, you'll need EasyBCD. The default settings for each OS should be fine. For Linux, you already have GRUB installed and should know where. For Mac there should be no issue. For Windows 7 you'll need the EasyBCD beta to avoid F'ing your life. You'll need to do a free registration in their forums to access it.

You may need to reinstall GRUB when booting Linux, because you deleted that first partition. This part is actually tricky if you've installed EFI V9 again over GRUB, or reformatted your Windows partition with Disk Utility. You'll have to boot into an Ubuntu live environment and re-mark the partition as "Linux" or 83 with fdisk. That's because Disk Utility errantly changed it to FAT32. While you're at it, you could make the fourth partition as NTFS (code 7) and then use mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/sda4. That does a quick format; if you're paranoid about your storage drive, you can do the slow way, without the "-f" and you could also name it while your at it. I changed the name of mine to "Storage" from Vista.

Also, DPI changing is an option with Windows (it's not yet on Mac, but that may change with 10.6) so try it and see if you can deal with all of the glitches that result. Sometimes they're not too bad, but usually enlarging works better than diminishing on Windows. I checked on Vista and you can't go smaller, only bigger. Assume the same is true for XP. Shame.

As for performance on Vista, I'm still installing updates, but it seems fairly snappy. Everyone loves Windows 7 on netbooks, so I won't even talk about that. I would bet performance is comparable on battery in Classic appearance mode.

 

Updates and Personal

Now Outdated Intro: (thank God, I'm almost done)

I will post updates here, technical and personal. Otherwise I'll inevitably add my opinion and complaints into the walkthrough proper. Obviously that is not ideal.

For the record, I am typing all of this on my AOD150. MacOS is already installed to my liking, so I'm typing this as I install Ubuntu from LiveCD.

You all may post below this one now, but since I haven't written much yet, I don't see why you should!


The Meat:

Personal:
I'm an idiot for wasting 1 day of my life getting Mac to install on my AOD150 and 1 day of my life getting retail and tri-boot. But now you could probably pull this off in 4-6 hours. I hope this page becomes a reference for tri-booting on netbooks in general.

I skipped 2 classes to be able to finish this by a reasonable hour, which was particularly stupid when one of them was my last class of the semester, and I have papers due shortly in both of them. I don't want your sympathy, but I want to express my lunacy. I've been kinda psycho about this netbook business from the start, calculating how to optimize low-cost, long battery life, and the easy modding-capabilities of netbook hardware. I hope this closes a chapter of my lunacy so that I can focus a bit more on my schoolwork and get that GPA up a little more.


Hardware Hacks:
RAM, HD, and WIFI hardly count when there are easy access panels.

I plan to do 3G by soldering in a SIM card holder and cutting a bit of the plastic case with a hot knife. I can then use the second internal MiniPCI-E slot without paying big bucks for a sub-optimal 3G card with a built in SIM slot. I would also have to cut the plastic on the left side of the WIFI switch so that it could move in the left direction to turn 3G on and off. Pretty nifty, huh? Thank tnkgrl for that insight. Replacing the black plastic base with one from a new model might be the right way to go, and probably pretty reasonable if purchased on eBay. (i.e. puchase a base for a D250 model that hasn't released in the US yet that has either 3G or a TV tuner)

I also plan to add an NTSC/ATSC TV tuner. I already purchased it, but getting good reception has thus far been tough. I could mount a heavy duty antenna, assuming I can wire up the right connectors without any shorting or interference. The end result might be ugly, so I might scrap that plan and maybe just mount a connector not designed to be used on the run. That obviously reveals the shortcoming that the D150 only has 2 miniPCI-E slots. I'd have to use a USB to miniPCI-E adapter. (or give up, buy an OCZ Neutrino with its shitty trackpad, and use the ExpressCard slot, but that would be no fun) I already have a USB to MiniPCI-E adapter that has a SIM card slot and antenna built in, but I'm waiting for one to arrive that has neither of those since I don't need them. I suppose I could always solder/cut out the excess that I don't need, but I risk neutering the electronics inadvertently. I already have antennae galore of all shapes and sizes to use with 3G, (one for data and one for GPS, hopefully) the tuner, and the 3rd pole on the new WIFI card.

Bluetooth should be easy since Acers and Dells it seems use a standardized connecter that does not require another antenna. Getting the appropriate form factor of cable attached might be a little difficult, and I'll definitely pay above cost for that on eBay; they're around $30 where as the chipset goes for as little as $3. Support in Linux and Mac will definitely work since they're Broadcom 20x5 chipsets/

Touchscreen may not be possible given how thin the screen bezel is on the AOD150, but its built-in USB hub would be guaranteed not to melt my system, and I could use the hub to feed the PCI adapter whether I use it for the tuner or 3G.

Webcam shouldn't be too hard to upgrade to a higher resolution. (1.3-2 MPixels) No guarantees, of course.

Screen resolution upgrade might be possible, but it's unclear whether a BIOS modification would be needed. I'm also assuming the connectors are standard. However, the 1366x768 panels out right now are the form factor of the 10.1" 1024x576 panels out right now rather than our 10.2" 1024x600 panels, so at the very least I would have to build a shim. I wouldn't be surprised if the panel connectors differ with the form factors. I think LG makes one and I don't know who makes the other.

Fingerprint reader is possible, but would require dremeling through the case, which sounds a bit nasty. If I again used the touchscreen's hub I wouldn't have to worry too much about heat, although the units themselves do give off a bit. Upek works with Mac and Linux; don't know about other brands.

I can't really think of any more modifications! Best case scenario, I'd have added Bluetooth, 3G, 802.11n, HDTV, fingerprint reader, GPS, hi-res webcam. All of which could be turned off. And a big ass 6 or 9 cell battery. Mine came with the 6.

All that's left are some photos, which I hope I'll eventually post.


Mac Hints:
I recommend Opera for its fullscreen feature. The toolbars are hard to remove, though. Google Chromium will also support fullscreen on Mac. I've run a beta of it where that was working, but it doesn't on the latest builds.

I recommend Zephyroth's Local Time Toggler package installer that makes MacOS use local time. UTC is obviously the better option, but Windows messes up after suspend/hibernate and won't sync your clock for you if you switch to UTC via a registry hack. That's why I just set everything to Local Time. In case you can't tell, I prioritize Windows over the other OSes since the hardware was designed for it, it's arguably most versatile, and thus I'll probably be using it most for a little while longer.

That said, if you want as vanilla an install as possible, stick to UTC. You can just choose GMT or the Azores as your time zond depending on DST. That will screw up the time as seen on websites, though, and perhaps create database problems.


Updates:
Time sync update posted immediately above.

Also, GRUB reinstallation trick and storage partition format how-to added under Windows section.

Keep in mind that you can of course install any 2 of the 3 above OSes, you can still have a storage partition, and you won't have to delete the first FAT32 200 MB partition! That should save you some headaches. Keep this in mind, though, for the time sync issue as well. If you're using Mac and Ubuntu, leave them both in UTC! Ubuntu is very willing to do either; on its own it will use UTC, but most installs are done with Windows on the disk already, meaning Local Time is used. Mac was designed for UTC, but I'd rather make Mac a little uncomfortable (and I trust Cupertino more than Redmond) than Windows, like I already said!

For reference, the Atom N270 (I think the other author was mistaken; I don't believe the N280 Aspire Ones are out yet, but they're little different) performs pretty well without hyper-threading in MacOS X. From reviews of HT when it came out, I recall that it sped things up 100% for poorly written executables, but on average probably by 30%. The whole netbook craze also demonstrates that CPUs are rarely what holds a system back these days; disk speed means a lot in most scenarios.

Added drivers+script download link. What was I thinking?

AOD150 Retail Files Script V1.zip


Kind request:
If you have good suggestions on a better way to approach audio, power management, kernels, BIOS, etc., do let me know. Perhaps we can throw together some sort of wiki. I do know about booting from the EFI partition, but I had to delete mine, remember? But if you don't care about having a storage partition, or don't mind dropping an OS, make a swap partition (might fix Linux hibernate) or boot from EFI for a totally pure vanilla install that you could transfer to a MacBook if you wanted to. Crazy stuff.