Due to a recent transfer of old files at home, I came across an old email from my days in radio. One of the producers at the radio station I had been interning at had a problem. All the production studio computers were Macs, but he needed something to play on a Windows machine. He’d followed the instructions I’d laid out for him several months prior, but claimed that it completely refused to work on that Windows box. I had him send me the file, and once I received it, I didn’t even need to open the file to know what the problem was.

Like many Mac users, he hadn’t really given thought to the file extension, those sometimes cryptic letter combinations preceded by a dot at the end of most file names. While these file names are often invisible, and sometimes optional, under OS X, they are a necessity when  trying to open them under Windows.
If you’re going to be sharing your files with a Windows or Linux user (and if you’re on the Internet, you likely will – in one form or another) here are couple things you can do to make sure your shared documents are readable.

First, make sure your file extensions are all visible. You can do this by going to Finder > Preferences, clicking the “Advanced” tab and making sure “Show all file extensions” is checked.

Second, when sending the files, make sure they’re ones the recipient can view. Plain text (.txt) and Rich Format text (.rtf) are fairly easy to read, as are most Microsoft Office documents (.doc, .xls, .ppt), though you want to make sure to use common fonts for the documents, so they lay out right. TextEdit allows you to both read and write plain text, rich text, and Word-compatible documents, at least on a basic level. Apple’s iWork suite can open and save to their Office counterparts but, again, the transfer is not quite perfect. The same goes for the open source Open Office suite. If you find yourself doing a lot of transfer of Office documents, your best bet will be to bite the bullet and purchase Office for Mac. This will solve much of the document transfer problem.

Graphic-wise, common file formats seen on the Web (such as .gif, .jpg and .png) and in printing (such as .eps, .tiff and .pdf) should have no problems transferring. Files from specific programs (such as most Adobe applications) often work just fine with the Windows version as well, so if your recipient has Photoshop, then sending a .psd should give you no trouble.

Music and video is considerably much more tricky. If the recipient’s computer has Quicktime for Windows installed, then anything that plays on your Mac should play for them. If they don’t, then you’ll want to use something fairly common, like .mp3 files for audio and .mp4 for videos. QuickTime Pro can perform conversions to both these types.

Even if all you use are Macs, its not a bad idea to get in the habit of using Windows naming conventions. After all, you never know when you’re going to need it.

Its been a while, but we’ve got another video ready to go for you. This time around, we’re taking a look at one of our most common questions: how to remove the front bezel from a 5.25” optical drive.

Why would you need to do this? It turns out that on every tray-loading desktop Mac since the QuickSilver, the opening for the drive tray is extremely narrow. Installing a new drive right out of the box will result in the tray being unable to eject, due to this narrow opening. Fortunately, the solution for all these Mac models is the same. Removing the plastic bezel on the front of the drive narrows the front of the tray enough for it to fit though the opening.

The process is simple enough. Manually eject the drive tray. Push gently to detach the two tabs on the underside of the drive tray. Slide the bezel off. Close the tray. Sometimes, though, its easier to just see it being done, and so we have this latest video.

As usual, you can find the video both in our Tech Center, and on our YouTube channel.

As the summer approaches, more and more of us lucky folks with air conditioning will be sitting cool in the heat. For me, that means a lot of stress on my apartment’s very old electrical system and potential brownouts. To protect my computer equipment, I use an uninterruptible power supply for my desktop and surge suppressors on all my outlets. A surge protector plugs into your electrical outlet and protects any plugged in device from voltage spikes or fluctuations. It works by sending the interference or uneven power into the ground, instead of into your valuable equipment. It’s always good to update surge suppressors every few years, and I found this useful and environmentally friendly device in my own OWC backyard. It not only provides voltage protection and filters line noise, but also helps with unnecessary power consumption.

BITS Limited Smart Strip 10-outlet Power Strip

The intelligent BITS Limited Smart Strip 10-outlet Power Strip offers 2225 joules of protection with its 10 outlets. It is compatible with your computer and home entertainment equipment, and offers much more than simple surge and spike protection. It also powers down peripherals when you turn off your computer, depending on which of the ten outlets you use. If you think that’s just fluff, think again! According to some sources, your plugged in (and off) devices still use standby power; as much as 40% of the power that they use when on. According to Smart Home Systems, Inc., “Just a printer and a monitor can draw as much in idle current as a 60-watt light that is on 24/7.”

The Smart Strip Power Strip includes a Control Outlet, and three red-colored sockets that are always on. This means that your wireless router or telephone stay on, while your desktop Mac or printer are turned off. Another set of six outlets automatically turn off when you turn off the device plugged into the Control Outlet. This prevents the drawing of phantom power and consequently saves you money in your electric bill. Other features includes a six-foot heavy-duty power cord, lighted power switch, 45 degree angled plug, a 15 amp circuit breaker, and up to 60 decibel (dB) line noise reduction.

To satisfy your inner Geek, Smart Home Systems, Inc. displays an annotated photo of the Smart Strip circuit board on their site and another annotated graphic of the Smart Strip’s features.

While I can’t guess how much money the Smart Strip might save you, an equipment loaded-household may easily save the purchase price in power usage in only a few months. I can say that it is environmentally friendly, and with all its power saving features, it’s a good buy at only $34.99.

There are many different bus-powered portable hard drives on the market, but most fall short in delivering everything you need. Bus-powered means that you do not need an AC-adapter to run the drive and that your FireWire or USB port powers it. Iomega, LaCie, Apricorn, and others sell 500GB portables that fit in your pocket, include some kind of shock resistance, and as I can personally attest, work flawlessly. What these companies do not offer is a portable drive that offers multiple types of connections, a speedy hard drive mechanism accompanied by a reasonably sized data transfer cache, and a suite of useful hard drive utilities.

Enter the Mercury On-The-Go Pro. What sets OWC’s new portable solution apart from other brands are these features: Drive speed, data cache, software, and warranty. The newest option finds a massive 500GB 7200RPM drive with 16MB data cache – suitable for video and sound editing on the go – securely housed in our proven shock resistant polycarbonate acrylic transparent case. While big on performance, this little powerhouse will fit discreetly into your pocket and weighs only 2.5 lbs.

This 500GB baby fills your travel bag or pocket with a complete solution, perfect for photographers who depend on RAW file capture or the video or audio editors that need portable speed and space. When you need to preserve your MacBook’s or laptop’s battery life, you can use the OWC Mercury On-The-Go AC Power Adapter. The adapter sells for only $4.99 and uses a standard US AC plug.

If your technology budget hangs over your head like the Sword of Damocles, OWC offers other Mercury On-The-Go Pro solution in a variety of affordable FireWire/USB 2.0 interface and RPM speed models.

Included with all these perfectly portable storage solutions are a carrying case, all the cables you need, a 3-year warranty, and a CD with OWC’s signature disk utility software bundle. The $200 retail value bundle includes a retail version of Prosoft Data Backup 3 for OS X, NovaStor NovaBACKUP for Windows, Intech HD SpeedTools, and Carbon Copy Cloner. These applications are not required to use the On-The-Go, but are useful utilities for backing up data and managing your hard drive.

Don’t Take Our Word For It

While our newest, speediest solution hasn’t been on the market long enough to generate any reviews, we can link you to reviews of our other Mercury On-The-Go products. Read for yourself how the experts liked the ultimate portable Mercury On-The-Go solution. Please note that the prices listed in the reviews may not reflect current pricing.

BlogCritics Technology Review, by Mark Buckingham, 3/13/09: OWC Mercury On-The-Go 320GB 7200RPM External Hard Drive.

ZDNet, The Apple Core, by Jason O’Grady, 5/6/08: Review: OWC Mercury On-The-Go 500GB portable HDD.

Macworld.com, by Chris Holt, 12/09/08: OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800/400 + USB 2.0 320GB.

CNET Editor’s Review by Dong Ngo, 5/13/08: OWC Mercury On-The-Go (500GB).

OWC's American Flag at half-mast

On Monday, May 25th, OWC was closed in honor of Memorial Day. This solemn day, originally designated in 1868, is now observed as a federal holiday on the last Monday of May. Designed to commemorate the lives given in service to our fair nation; parades, speeches, and family observances occur nationwide to honor those thousands of fallen men and women. To learn more about the history and meaning of Memorial Day, www.USMemorialDay.org is an excellent resource.

OWC proudly flies an American Flag at our headquarters and in compliance with Memorial Day decorum, it was my personal honor to set our flag at half-mast at sunrise and then restore it to full mast at noon on Monday. The entire OWC team takes its responsibility to our members of the Armed Forces very seriously and we support their efforts far beyond honoring those who have lost their lives.

OWC's American Flag raised to full mast at 12:00PM

In 2008, as part of our support project for the soldiers of the McHenry County National Guard Unit (Delta Company 1st Battalion, 178 Infantry Regiment who had been recently deployed to Afghanistan, we shipped individual care packages, one for each of the 55 soldiers, plus letters from the local elementary school children. We truly find it an honor to know and support our local National Guard Unit.

Earlier this year, we learned those troops, currently deployed in Afghanistan, were trying to start up regular softball games but did not have any equipment.

So, we felt it was our duty to send them a shipment of softball equipment. We received this grateful acknowledgement:

“I just wanted to write and let you know we have received the equipment you sent, and thank you again for your support. The guys are excited to get a few games going. We are waiting for a down day when we can get a couple of games in. We will try to get some pictures and send them to you. I hope everything is going well back home. I’ll be in touch. Thanks again for your friendship and your support.” SFC Bill Hornbeck

Two months ago, we learned with great sadness that three of our local heroes lost their lives in Afghanistan. Our American Flag was lowered and each employee engaged in a moment of silence to honor these young men. In a small town, the loss of one life reverberates across the community, and three fallen heroes is more than one town should have to bear.

Our sincere thanks and gratitude goes out to all those serving today, as well as those who have served in our Armed Forces across time. We remember and honor those that have fallen in the line of duty. Our hearts go with all of you who have lost loved ones in time of war and strife.

With the tax season finally receding in memory, many of us now have previous year’s financial data buried quietly on our hard drives. Most of us need last year’s tax files for the current year’s taxes, but you should also  make a backup you can find easily. You should save it as the original file from the tax program you used and, create a PDF, in case your software disappears.

If you used Intuit’s TurboTax for 2008, they recommend you open the return and choose Save As from the File menu, and create another copy for posterity. To make sure you can open that file from a Mac or PC, make sure you add the .tax2008 file extension to your saved file.

How Long to Save Taxes

Have you ever thought about what would happen if the IRS decided to audit you? While some records need only be kept for three years, you should keep your tax records for up to seven years. The length of time recommended depends on the period of limitations for a particular problem.

The IRS Publication 552: “Record Keeping for Individuals,” states: “You must keep your records as long as they may be needed for the administration of any provision of the Internal Revenue Code. Generally, this means you must keep records that support items shown on your return until the period of limitations for that return runs out.” Yes, in that same publication the IRS also states that if you receive W-2 wage forms, you should keep your Copy C until your social security benefits kick in. For some of us, that could be more than 40 years!

CD/DVD for Backup

The question remains, what do you use to backup your files? Burning files to CD AND DVD may last for some years and you should create backup media of your taxes, as insurance. Your experience may vary, but I have some CDs, only five years old, that no Mac will read today. So, I suggest you duplicate your discs and move your files from one disc to another every couple of years.

Hard Drive for Backup

A hard drive, used sparingly may last for years. I can attest to that. I have a seven-year old OWC Mercury Elite Pro Classic drive that still functions flawlessly. I use it weekly to back up my music files. My three-year old OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Quad Interface drive, holds my photo library backup. A 1TB version of this robust drive is on sale now.

The bottom line is, make multiple copies of your tax and other important files using different kinds of media and copy the files from an older solution to a newer one every couple of years. Plus, you can’t go wrong with a hard drive solution from OWC.

Please realize, we’re posting this information as a courtesy only and are in no way are representing ourselves as tax advisors. Any tax questions should be referred  to a licensed tax attorney, your accountant, the IRS, or the company who develops your tax software.

Every once in a while I like to throw out something fun that you can do with your computer, without all the hassle of taking it apart or rearranging your files.

This time around, I’d like to talk about a Web site that’s fun for the whole family; it’s even more fun than shopping at OWC (though not by much)! All you need to take part is an Internet connection, a Web browser, and… a dollar.

I am, of course, talking about longtime Internet mainstay, “Where’s George?” (or its Canadian cousin, “Where’s Willy?”).

After a quick (and free) registration process, the actual participation is fairly simple. Enter in some basic information about the bill (denomination, serial number, etc.) and ZIP code of where you found, then submit the information. Once you’ve done that, clearly print the URL of the site (www.wheresgeorge.com) on the bill.*

Then, go spend it!

If someone finds the bill and goes to the Web site, they can enter in the bill information, and you’ll get a notice telling you that your bill has been found. You can then go to the site to see where it was found, and you can track it over time. It’s actually quite fascinating. I’ve had bills cross the country twice.

Of course, there’s another piece to this, too. If you get bills that have “www.wheresgeorge.com” written on them, make sure you enter them in and help others track their bills.

Who knows, you may even wind up helping me…

Have a happy and safe holiday weekend.

*According to the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, ”…currency defacement is generally defined as follows:Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued…” so as long as you keep the printing small, and don’t damage the bill, you should be okay.

Just in case you can’t get enough OWC tips, hints, news and specials, and want to be on the bleeding edge of what’s going on here at our Woodstock, IL facility,  we’ve got yet another way to get your OWC fix.

Subscribe to the OWC Twitter feed, and not only will you have your finger on the pulse of OWC, but you’ll also get updates on new posts at the OWC Blog.

But the Twitter-tastic fun doesn’t stop there. No-sir-ee-bob! Do you want to share that nifty tip we posted with your friends? Well, we’ve made that easy, as well.

Look at the bottom of this post. See that row of icons below “Share and Enjoy“? Well, on the very end is the option to Tweet this (or any) post. Just click it and you’re on your way to sharing the OWC goodness with the Twitterverse. How’s that for making it easy?

One of the little things often overlooked by many external drive manufacturers is the drive’s Desktop icon. In many cases, all you get is OS X’s “generic” orange external drive icon. That’s fine, I suppose, if you’re only using one drive, but what if you have a bunch of external drives, like I do? That’s a lot of orange!

All OWC and NewerTech External Storage Solutions, however, not only come pre-formatted for OS X, but every drive has a custom icon that was specially designed to blend right in with Apple’s default icons, as if they were always part of the system. If you have a Mercury Elite-AL, that’s what you see on your Desktop. Same with the On-The-Go, the miniStack, or any OWC or NewerTech Storage Solution. Our products are designed with Macs in mind, and it’s that attention to detail that helps make OWC a standout in the Mac community.

What happens, though, if you reformat your drive, erasing the icon with it, or if you put your own drive in an OWC or NewerTech enclosure? Are you doomed to a life of generic orange icons? Is the joy of having your OWC or NewerTech drive gloriously represented on your desktop merely a dream, never to be realized?

Of course not!

Right on the OWC Web site is a repository of all our Storage Solution icons, as well as some original Time Machine icons, too. Simply download the appropriate icon set, pick the icon you want, and follow the simple replacement instructions on the page. It couldn’t be easier!

Many of you have come to know OWC and myself over the past 21 years via the Tips n’ Deals newsletter as well as various forums and events we are active in. As these modes of communication are continued, we felt a quick conversation exploring OWC today would be of interest to you.

Did You Know?
Our OWC Tips n’ Deals newsletter is available for everyone. This free newsletter, sent about once a month, provides performance tips and tricks, the latest Apple news with perspective, and offers just for subscribers. It’s free for the ‘taking’ and can be started/stopped at any time. Just visit our online resource page for more information, past editions, and to subscribe today.

OWC is pushing the limits of going green
For over twenty years, our focus has been on getting the most from existing resources. Such a philosophy resonates in our own product lines, which help you expand the capabilities, increase performance, and maintain the usability of gear you already own and extend its useful life. The same OWC headquarters location that designs, distributes, and even manufactures these products is also ‘green’ itself with compliance to LEED Platinum specifications. The latest news, which you are among the first to know, is that our facility will soon be 100% Wind Powered! Our on-site Wind Turbine will generate enough power for our operation as well as a surplus further reducing the draw on non-renewable energy sources. Learn more about OWC’s Green Evolution online.

OWC offers free installation videos with new videos posted weekly
With the typical service center charging upwards of $80 for an easy memory install, you can’t afford not to utilize this free resource. Many popular upgrades such as hard drive, memory, and optical drive installations are ‘demystified’ and can be performed in the comfort of your own home in as little as 15 minutes following the step by step video guide instructions.

The Mac (or PC) you have now could be better and do more than new
The easiest way to boost performance of a system is to add more memory. Typical factory configurations provide a minimum amount. When you have more memory for your applications, the system doesn’t slow down as much or as often (spinning beach balls). Having more memory easily trumps having a faster processor and usually for a fraction of the cost too.

If you’re running out of room on your hard drive, it’s easy to plug and play additional storage via USB2 or FireWire. Also, it’s a good consideration to look at your internal hard drive too. Not only can you significantly increase the storage capacity inside your Mac, but the much higher performance of today’s hard drives can give your system a bonus speed bump in addition to that needed drive space.

When it comes to reading & writing CDs, DVDs, and even Blu-ray discs – being able to handle different available formats or do so with greater speed usually doesn’t require a new computer, but rather can be accomplished via an internal or external SuperDrive solution.

Watch and Record TV, Import Video – Add additional Displays with ease too. We cover it all in our Video section.

If you’re serious about music and audio on your Mac, our staff expert Rick Van Dyne is here to provide exceptional advice and manages our music/audio product line to ‘rock your world’. Also listen to what Grammy award-winning musician Chris Vrenna has to say about OWC’s products.

As always, on behalf of the OWC team, thank you for choosing us as your trusted upgrade and accessories solution provider. I hope you’ve found the above highlights informative and should it spark any questions, we stand ready to serve you via email, Live Chat, and even toll-free 800-275-4576. To see current offers, read the latest Apple news, and follow staff insights on our blog, this is the ’spot’.

The new OWC Express USB 2.0 Enclosure is one of the most reasonably priced small hard drive cases you’ll run across. This $19.99 stylish drive in Discreet Black, Sleek Silver, or Smooth White holds any 2.5″ Serial ATA hard drive, also referred to as SATA I or II. At only 2 oz plus the drive weight, and with sleek dimensions (3.07″ Width x 5.12″ Depth x .55″ Height), it fits into many pockets or purses easily. We even include a carrying sleeve and a double-shielded USB 2.0/1.1 connector cable, so it’s a complete package. (Mouse in photo not included.)

You can easily use any 2.5″ drive up to 9.5mm height and up to 7200RPM speed. All you need to know is how to twirl a screwdriver to install a drive mechanism. If you don’t have a spare drive handy, OWC offers drives from trusted sources, such as Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital mechanisms to fill ’er up to 500GB starting at $47.99!

If Your Port Isn’t Up to Snuff

Now, one USB port supplies 500 mA of current, which is usually enough to power up any bus-powered drive, but sometimes, you need more power. If you connect your Express and it just sits there and doesn’t mount, you may need more power. You can solve this problem without an AC adapter, by adding a USB “Y” cable, also called a double USB cable or dual input USB cable. OWC sells this handy accessory in clear or black, and it incorporates a 1-meter cable with one USB 2.0 Mini-B connector and two USB 2.0 A connectors. It’s even designed to stretch behind your laptop, so that you can reach the USB ports on both sides of your PowerBook or MacBook.

Basically, this USB  cable doubles the power your bus-powered drive receives, so that it works flawlessly. While most Mac users may never need such a cable, it’s a handy item to keep in your computer tool arsenal, especially for computer consultants.

One note of caution though, do not use this cable to connect your new OWC Express to more than one computer at the same time. It won’t work and it may damage your drive. No USB or FireWire drive can be connected to more than one computer at a time; that’s why we have file sharing and networking so easily configurable on the Mac.

Don’t tell some of the designers around here, but I really hate Flash content embedded into Web pages.  Sure, its great when you’re watching YouTube videos or listening to streaming music on sites like Pandora Radio. When you get to things like animated images or (worse yet) banner ads, however, its “No Thanks” for me. Don’t even get me started on those evil, evil designers who do their whole sites in Flash – there should be mandatory prison sentences for that sort of thing.

As one who’s still using G4 Macs, Flash’s drain on my system resources is quite a pain. It also eats up bandwidth. This may be fine if you have a fast connection, but it slows things down tremendously for those of us with slower connections.

Is there a point to this short little rant on Flash? Of course there is!

I recently came across ClickToFlash, a plug-in for Safari (or any Webkit-based browser, such as Opera) that simply and cleanly blocks Flash content from automatically loading. When the plug-in is installed, wherever Flash content is located on a Web page, a simple translucent gray box appears instead. If you want to see the Flash content, all you need to do is click the gray box and the content loads. You can even set up a whitelist so that content you do want (such as the aforementioned YouTube or Pandora) is automatically let through.

Of course, there’s the matter of price… How does “free” sound? All it costs you to get is the time it takes to download it.

Firefox users, you’re not left out in the cold, either. Flashblock is a free plug-in that offers similar functionality for many Mozilla-based browsers. You can find it in the Firefox add-on section.

Take back control of your browser and bandwidth, and install the plug-in for your favorite browser.

Late last year, we discussed using your Mac as a DVR to record your favorite television programs using the Elgato EyeTV hardware & software. As part of that article, we briefly looked at their Turbo.264, a device that used its own processor to quickly convert videos to the popular H.264-compressed MPEG-4 videos, playable on devices like the iPod, PlayStation Portable, and the AppleTV.

The Turbo.264 was a pretty cool device when we looked at it, but Elgato raised the bar when it releasted the Turbo.264 HD a couple of months ago.

Not only does it add HD support, but it also… well… maybe you should just read the full overview.

While we at OWC always work to bring  our customers great products with great support, we’re not “all work and no play.” If you were at the movie theater in Crystal Lake, IL  (the next town over from our Woodstock facility) last night, you would have come across a large contingent of the OWC Family on an outing to see the new Star Trek movie.

The turnout was tremendous, with OWC employees representing over 90% of the crowd at the showing. We even had our own “Trek Girls” show up in costume, and a great time was had by all. You can check out some more pictures on the OWC Facebook page.

Of course, it would be just a bunch of pointless bragging if I didn’t somehow tie this into a plug for a product via horrible Star Trek puns, so without further ado…

Looking for an easy way to use all that storage “space” that’s going to waste on your older drives? Do you find yourself “shuttling” drives back and forth between a single connector? Well, maybe this will “Spock” your interest…

OWC is “beaming” with pride over the great bundle deals for the award-winning Newer Technology Voyager Q & S2 external drive docks (Get it?… Voyager…)

No “Bones” about it, these are some pretty great deals. Not only do you get a up to 2TB worth of storage, but since it’s Voyager, you can easily pop out out the drive, and use the dock to access any other SATA drives you decided to “Klingon” to – from a slower, smaller laptop drive, to the largest, fastest “Enterprise”-class drives.

Go ahead and “Chekhov” them out. Otherwise I may be forced to subject you to my “warped” sense of humor some more…

_\\//

I thought I’d follow up on a previous blog post by OWC Chris S. covering how to relocate your Home Folder for anyone with a machine that’s tight on space with an in-depth examination on the use of Mac OS X on a Netbook.

While rumors abound that Apple may never produce a Netbook for those of us who would love such a machine, there are a number of stalwart types who want one badly enough that they have provided tutorials on how to install Mac OS X on a PC Netbook. Referred to as a Hackintosh install, three sites have posted step-by-step instructions, each with their own style of detail, so I recommend you peruse all three sources.

Obviously, your first hurdle is to pick a Netbook upon which to perform this OS surgery. All sources point to the excellent “Mac OS X Netbook Compatibility Chart,” at Boing Boing. The Dell Mini 9 seems to be the weapon of choice by some notable Mac writers.

Second, you must acquire a complete, retail version of Mac OS X. Update disks will not work correctly and pirated disks may not contain all the original code, which hampers any OS updates you may want to apply.

The third requirement is either an 8GB or higher USB flash drive or an external USB DVD drive. Instructions for using both to install Mac OS X are on the sites linked below.

Fourth, you must use the Type11 Bootloader, called the DellMiniBoot123v8.01.iso.zip, downloadable from Dell Mini forums and posted by a helpful person named “bmaltais”. (Note, the forum requires registration.)

At this point, your entry cost to create your own Mac OS X Netbook is between $500 and $650, including the cost of Mac OS X. Now, once you’ve completed your install, following the instructions in one of the resources below, you may find your space squeezed a bit. As OWC Chris S. suggested, you can use OWC’s handy resource for relocating your home folder onto an external drive to preserve your precious storage capacity.

The ability to tote around a lightweight and very useable PC are your rewards in creating your own personal Mac OS X Netbook.

Links to Tutorials on Creating a Mac OS X Netbook

Installing Mac OS X on a Dell Mini 9 – the easy way (Updated 3x) by Jason O’Grady on ZDNet.

How To: Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook by John Mahoney on Gizmodo.

OS X on a Dell Mini 9 Netbook, by Steve on Accelerate Your Mac.

How to build the OS X Dell Mini 9 Hackbook – The Easy Way, by Tomas Ratas on Test Freaks blog.

How To: Load OS X DIRECTLY onto RunCore FROM a Mac, by Iantzn on DellMini.

MacResource Forum posts about this method

Loading OS X DIRECTLY onto Runcore FROM a Mac, MacResource Forums.

Dell Mini 9 Leopardized: The RunCore Direct Install Edition, MacResource Forums.

Disclaimer: OWC does not support or endorse any of the above methods to create an OS X Netbook. Information and links are provided as a courtesy to our readers. In addition, an interesting discussion on the legality of installing Mac OS X on a non-Mac appears in the MacResource Forums.

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Netbooks seem to be all the rage today. Unfortunately, none of them are made by Apple, meaning none of them ship with OS X.

By amazing coincidence, though, it turns out there’s one netbook out there that you can apparently install OS X on with relative ease; the Dell Mini 9. I even hear that, once installed, OS X behaves as if it is running on a MacBook Air.

The main trouble with doing this is that the stock internal drive on the Mini 9 is, at most, 16GB. Even after pruning out things like extra fonts, applications like iMovie and iDVD which don’t work well (or at all) on a Mini 9, and other such items, an install of Leopard takes up about six gigabytes of space, leaving less than 10GB for all your files. That’s not a whole heck of a lot of room.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way of adding more space for your files. Just use our guide for relocating your Home folder to move it to a USB drive, be it a nice, large OWC External Storage Solution or a simple (though smaller) flash drive.

Now, your Mini 9 has much more room for your files, music and photos, making your “Mac Netbook” a little more convenient.

There are very few certainties in life. Death and taxes are, of course, the most popular, but right up there is the fact that – barring mechanical failure – your hard drive is going to fill up.

With all the music, movies, files and other stuff we tend to collect on our Macs, it really is a matter of time before you start running out of space. While it is fairly simple to gain some more space by cleaning out some of the accumulated junk, sometimes its preferable just to upgrade to a larger hard drive instead.

OWC has instructional videos for replacing the hard drive in a large number of Macs. This week, we’ve added yet another one: The 17″ MacBook Pro (non-unibody). If you’ve been feeling the hard drive pinch, but haven’t yet made the leap, check out the video in our Tech Center or on our YouTube channel, and see how easy it is.