Is the Eee PC 901 too slow for OS X?

Eee PC 900 running OS X

While the Asus Eee PC line only officially supports Linux and Windows, people have been finding ways to load OS X onto the diminutive laptops for ages. But if you care about little things like performance, here’s a tip: You might want to pick up an Eee PC 1000H instead of an Eee PC 901 if you want to run OS X.

MacEee reports that the 901 is just too slow to run the Mac operating system. The problem isn’t with the CPU. The two computers actually have identical processors. Rather, the Eee PC 901′s solid state disk just isn’t fast enough to keep up with the demands OS X places on it. The Eee PC 901 actually has two solid state disks, a 4GB disk for the operating system and a second, larger disk for programs and files. The 4GB disk is pretty zippy, but the secondary disk not so much. And according to MacEee that second drive makes OS X kind of sluggish. OK, that’s an understatement. It reportedly takes 7 minutes to boot OS X on the Eee PC 901.

The solution? Pick up an Eee PC 1000H. It comes with an 80GB hard drive, and happens to be about $50 cheaper than the 901 anyway.

While I would never actually condone installing OS X on unsupported hardware (which is a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement), you can find a ton of information on how to do it at the Eee PC OS X Project wiki.

ASUS Eee PC 1000H

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ASUS Eee PC 901

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Posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008, 4:48 pm by Brad Linder

http://www.jkkmobile.com/ jkkmobile

Or is OSX too slow for Eee PC?
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/ Mike Cane

A EULA is nothing more than “Because we say so” in many parts. Those bits do not have the force of Law behind them. Because no one has (yet) brought them before a judge.
http://www.hitechsquad.com Gary Sims

We mustn’t forget that OS X 10.5 doesn’t install on all Apple hardware either… You need a 866Mhz cpu as a minimum. I wonder was this test done on the 900Mhz version of the 901 or the new faster 1.6Ghz?
http://blog.augmentedfourth.com/ augmentedfourth

It looks like they were trying to install Tiger (OS X 10.4), which doesn’t have the same CPU requirement as Leopard.
rsm

MacEee is wrong – the problem is to do with BIOS – once you install a hacked BIOS (Which is even linked to on MacEee?!) the 901 will bootLeopard in just over 30 seconds with a geekbench score of 900 and very usable!
Rob rear Enderle

Hmm, the Ubuntu Netbook Remix seems to be running very well with the EEE. Maybe it’s this OS X you speak of that is too much of a hog?
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kspr

rsm is right … with the hacked BIOS the machine is quite usable with OS X. I'm typing this in Firefox on the 4+16GB 901 running OS X 10.5.5. You can't expect to get some serious work done on this machine, but it's quite alright for browsing the web, reading Email and the occasional ssh session. In fact, I'm surprised how well the tiny machine performs.
kspr

rsm is right … with the hacked BIOS the machine is quite usable with OS X. I'm typing this in Firefox on the 4+16GB 901 running OS X 10.5.5. You can't expect to get some serious work done on this machine, but it's quite alright for browsing the web, reading Email and the occasional ssh session. In fact, I'm surprised how well the tiny machine performs.
cocoua

i'm using eee 901, with osx 10.5.6, on the 32GB runcore SSD, the boot time is arround 30 sec, and the performannce it's wonderfull.
in fact, it's faster than my macmini g4 1,42GHZ.

so the problem of the 7 min was beccause the old bios, and the slowly original ssd
Markus

>While I would never actually condone installing OS X on unsupported software (which is a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement),

Well, that part of the license agreement is illegal itself and therefore nil. It is a nice wish of Apple to protect their profit margin and you seem to be inclined to help them do it. More money for the company, less for you as the customer.
Fred

while I would never actually condone installing OS X on unsupported software (which is a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement), you can find a ton of information on how to do it at the Eee PC OS X Project wiki.

dont you mean on unsupported hardware ?
Fred

while I would never actually condone installing OS X on unsupported software (which is a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement), you can find a ton of information on how to do it at the Eee PC OS X Project wiki.

dont you mean on unsupported hardware ?

Is the Eee PC 901 too slow for OS X?

ASUS Eee PC 1000H

ASUS Eee PC 901

Apple Mac OS X Lion

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