Before anyone tell me this isn't a complete alternative to the MacBook Air, this is obvious, its my own little experiment to build a cheap alternative to one, The whole thing has cost me below $300 and I'm excited to see how it turns out. First off YES, I Have Bought both Snow Leopard And Lion, Lion on the App Store and Snow Leopard from an Apple Store, so theres that.
The Main Computer is an HP Mini 311-1037nr, The Special Thing about this Netbook is its an LED 11.6" (like the MacBook Air) has 2 PCI-e Slots (So we can pack a lot of features into this baby), and has the NVIDIA Ion LE (Which can be unlocked to the FULL Ion and the Ion is actually just a 9400m, which was used in the MacBook Air and is fully OSX Compatible).
Now I Also bought a 2gb and 4gb DDR3-1066 Stick, as some of these 311's can hold up to 5gb of ram (5gb? Yes, 5gb because 1gb is actually soldered to the motherboard and there is one DIMM slot. So if mine turns out to not be able to use 5gb I'll just throw in the 2gb and have 3gb.)
Next Up, we have to make use of the 2 PCI-e slots so I Went with a Full Size OSX Compatible Bluetooth 2.1 Card (Now you can actually get a 3G Card thats compatible with OSX and use that, which I Do PLAN on doing, but this is just for now.)
Theres also a Half size slot so I went with a OSX Compatible Wireless-N Card. (If you go with the 3G Card in the Full Size, you can get a Wireless-N/Bluetooth Combo half card that is OSX Compatible, so you have all these.)
Next, The MacBook Air is solid state, So I Got a 60gb Corsair NOVA 2 SSD, which is really the fastest SATA 2 SSD, and 60gb is all I need.
Also, What About the MacBook's awesome Battery Life? Well I Went with a 6600mAh Replacement battery which is no bigger than the default battery and gets 6+ hours, you can get 9cell 7800mAh batteries that are bigger, but get up to 12hr Battery life.
Finally The Keyboard on this netbook isn't something I would like on a MBA alternative so I Bought a HP Mini 210 Replacement keyboard which is the same size but a Chiplet keyboard like the MBA, the connectors look to be the same, so we will find out.
Now you may be wondering, but its a Atom system compared to the MBA's C2D (at the time when it had to 9400m), Well sure we aren't going to get a C2D in this little beast, but the BIOS can be flashed to an unlocked one and it gives full overclocking abilities, so I got the Mini 311 that has the 1.66ghz Atom with the Faster FSB, and We can overclock up to 2.5ghz, so its a little powerhouse for less than $300.
I'll be posting videos and giving updates to this thread as the parts arrive, and I really think this will turn out well, for less than $300 I think this will be a nice MBA hackintosh Alternative.
The Main Computer is an HP Mini 311-1037nr, The Special Thing about this Netbook is its an LED 11.6" (like the MacBook Air) has 2 PCI-e Slots (So we can pack a lot of features into this baby), and has the NVIDIA Ion LE (Which can be unlocked to the FULL Ion and the Ion is actually just a 9400m, which was used in the MacBook Air and is fully OSX Compatible).
Now I Also bought a 2gb and 4gb DDR3-1066 Stick, as some of these 311's can hold up to 5gb of ram (5gb? Yes, 5gb because 1gb is actually soldered to the motherboard and there is one DIMM slot. So if mine turns out to not be able to use 5gb I'll just throw in the 2gb and have 3gb.)
Next Up, we have to make use of the 2 PCI-e slots so I Went with a Full Size OSX Compatible Bluetooth 2.1 Card (Now you can actually get a 3G Card thats compatible with OSX and use that, which I Do PLAN on doing, but this is just for now.)
Theres also a Half size slot so I went with a OSX Compatible Wireless-N Card. (If you go with the 3G Card in the Full Size, you can get a Wireless-N/Bluetooth Combo half card that is OSX Compatible, so you have all these.)
Next, The MacBook Air is solid state, So I Got a 60gb Corsair NOVA 2 SSD, which is really the fastest SATA 2 SSD, and 60gb is all I need.
Also, What About the MacBook's awesome Battery Life? Well I Went with a 6600mAh Replacement battery which is no bigger than the default battery and gets 6+ hours, you can get 9cell 7800mAh batteries that are bigger, but get up to 12hr Battery life.
Finally The Keyboard on this netbook isn't something I would like on a MBA alternative so I Bought a HP Mini 210 Replacement keyboard which is the same size but a Chiplet keyboard like the MBA, the connectors look to be the same, so we will find out.
Now you may be wondering, but its a Atom system compared to the MBA's C2D (at the time when it had to 9400m), Well sure we aren't going to get a C2D in this little beast, but the BIOS can be flashed to an unlocked one and it gives full overclocking abilities, so I got the Mini 311 that has the 1.66ghz Atom with the Faster FSB, and We can overclock up to 2.5ghz, so its a little powerhouse for less than $300.
I'll be posting videos and giving updates to this thread as the parts arrive, and I really think this will turn out well, for less than $300 I think this will be a nice MBA hackintosh Alternative.
