Hackintosh Netbook, what size SSD do I need for OSX?

[Tronic]

Hello, I will be going on a 3 month photography trip which will be weight and space constrained. At first I was planning on bringing a PSD to hold my photos but then realized a netbook would be a better choice for the obvious reasons. I thought about the iPad but the lack of external HDD connectivity as well as Flash has turned me away from one, as much as I really do want to buy one.

So because I can't justify an iPad, I am leaning toward either a HP Mini 110 or Dell Mini (1011) Hackintosh. Not worried about specs since all I will be doing is archiving pics to multiple external HDDs via Lightroom 3 and browsing the web/Skype. However, I will be upgrading the memory to 2GB and would also like to drop in an SSD for the obvious reasons.

Now to my questions:
How much space would you say I need for OSX + a few apps? (Photoshop CS5, Lightroom 3, Firefox, Skype, Google Earth)

Can I get by with one of the 30/32GB SSDs or do I need to spring for a 60GB? Keep in mind, all data will be on external HDDs.

Thanks. I did try to search and do remember reading threads talking about the size of OSX, however I did not quickly come across any.

 

[spinnerlys]

32GB, even 16GB, will suffice.

Mac OS X takes up 7/9 GB, PS 1GB, Lightroom 100MB.

 

[simplebeep]

Yeah, 32 is a good size. My computer uses about 19 GB not counting my home folder or other CS3 apps. That said, I probably have plenty of “detritus” files about my drive.

In any case, one thing you want to remember is that you should always keep about 10GB of free space for swap/paged/virtual memory, especially if you’re using Photoshop.

 

[wordoflife]

Hackintosh works really well MSI netbooks, so take a look into that.

 

[steviem]

Ive installed on 8gb before (was a right palaver. Playing with plists and such). But 32gb should be the lowest you go to if you can. 64gb would be nice though.

 

[Tronic]

Hackintosh works really well MSI netbooks, so take a look into that.

Yeah I did see they had a a handful of netbooks that were completely compatible with OSX hacks. I was just browsing newegg and didn't see any so I haven't done any research on them, but I will keep them in mind for my final decision.

 

[altecXP]

A 60GB SSD is only like $150 why not just get one of those?

 

[Tronic]

Because I would like to minimize the cost of the machine as much as possible in case of theft and because as soon as I'm back, I will be selling the machine most likely

 

[fhall1]

Because I would like to minimize the cost of the machine as much as possible in case of theft and because as soon as I'm back, I will be selling the machine most likely

Yank the SSD drive out and reinstall the stock one it came with before you sell it. You can always find another use for the SSD.