I’m having myself a bit of geeky fun today, for no particular reason other than the opportunity presented itself. I’ve had a fairly nice 17" HP laptop computer in my collection for some time now, although I have no real use for it. My Dell Studio XPS laptop takes care of whatever Windows-related PC needs I might have (it’s really quite a nice little laptop, all things considered.) This HP is impressively large but at the same time suffers frrom distinctly sub-par design and build quality. It’s a big, clunky beast, heavy and graceless. On the other hand, it is loaded with features, being intended as a monstrous desktop-replacement kind of affair.
So I’m attempting to turn it into a Hackintosh. We’ll see how it works out. Right now the install is proceeding without much in the way of incident.
Well, one issue: I needed to restart with a USB mouse plugged in because the trackpad wasn’t recognized. (Makes sense.) I repartitioned the hard disk, using the appropriate partition type (GUID).
There’s no particular reason to be doing this, mind you, except for the fun of it. I have a gorgeous 17" MacBook Pro for a laptop, as well as my equally wonderful huge-slab-of-aluminum MacPro that is my main home computer. But why not find out what’s possible?
Chances are that I will have some problems; something critical won’t work. But even just to get the machine up and running on its own, from its own hard drive, will be something of an accomplishment, even if perhaps sound or the camera or the wireless or the trackpad doesn’t work. All of this can be dealt with, or not.
It’s weird, though, to see a Mac OS installation screen running on a generic laptop PC.