Turn Your Dell XP Mini-Note To A Mac-Note

Can you do that? Do you want to try?

Well this is possible …… it is not as easy as it seems like installing a new WIndows operating system on a new laptop ( not so direct though). But if you are up for the challenge then note down these steps below.

First let’s get the stuffs prepared for this operation (it ain’t going to be a medical room ).

1. A Dell mini-note notebook with at least 16 GB of SSD of hard disk space
2. A retail copy of Mac OSX - don’t use the oem version that comes with the MacBook
3. An external USB drive
4. The “Type11 BootLoader” at this link here
5. A blank CD to burn your bootloader

After all of the requirements are satisfied, let’s begin the installation process …..

The easiest way to begin is to install your system with both your “Type11 Bootloader” (CD) and your Mac operating system (DVD) via an external DVD drive. However certain optical drives might not be easily detected by the DELL mini-note so you must be very carful on this part.

Lets begin the steps:-

1. Once you have downloaded the “Type11 Bootloader“, unzip the file and burn it on a blank CD.
2. Once completed, make sure to boot your DELL Mini 9 mini-notebook to boot from CD with the “Type11 Bootloader” cd to begin first.
3. You will see that the boot loader will give you a prompt to insert your operating system .
4. Once you see the screen above, remove the bootloader disc and insert your retail Mac OSX DVD.
5. Press the ESC button to return to boot options, and type 9f to continue booting from your external DVD drive. From this on should start installing the OSX to the mini-note.
6. Now the first thing you need to do ( which occurs with any operating system) is to format the hard drive. Go to “Partition“ and make it a single MAC OSX extended partition. Go to “Options” and select GUID Partition Table and hit Apply button after that.
7. The installation process will continue installation of the OSX and if your hard disk space is small I would recommend you not to install language packs and printer drivers and these occupies quite a lot of space.
8. The installation will take around an hour and you might receive an error message right at the very end of the installtion. Don’t worry it is normal and it won’t affect your OSX installation. Reboot the mini-notebook once the process is completed.
9. This is critical - on your first reboot you still need to insert the “Type11 Bootloader” cd upon the boot up. This is because your hard drive has not been configured to boot up using the OSX operating system.
10. Choose option 1 again (install OSX operating system - don’t worry you are not going to wait for another hour ).
11. Hit the ESC button again and this time type 80. This will install the other neccessary kernal extensions (.kexts) and drivers like networking and webcam.
12. Once you have booted up with OSX successfully, you will need to free up some space on your hard drive. FOr a 16 GB SSD you will be left with 1 GB of free space after that.
13. So from here you might need to uninstall some unwanted programs that come with the default installation.
14. Once you are done with the above step, reboot your mini-notebook again. This time it will successfully load straight your OSX menu.

You will have a Mac-note which you can glamourised among your friends . Neat ……

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Software That Can Make Us Extra Lazy

The signs are there …. and it’s true.

One of the main reasons softwares are invented are to make, we, users simplified our jobs on the PC and so on. The other aspect it can make us complacent and lazy as well.

When it comes to speech recognition softwares, there’s 2 ways you can think about it …. make it easier or make us lazier.

I was browsing through the internet yesterday and I was in awe when I saw the demo of this software, the “Dragon Naturally Speaking 10″ speech recognition software.

It actually computes what you say in speech and actually processes commands to the computer via you talking without you actually touching the keyboard.

I did heard about speech recognition softwares before but this one tops it all.

You can actually tell your PC, “Search google for sports” (for example). The software will actually loads up Internet Explorer automatically and do the search for you. How fun is that.

Apart from that it can do more wonders like getting your e-mail and type your document all via you saying rather than typing.

Check out the demo in the video clip below and you will exactly know what I mean.

Now you be the judge .. is technology making it easier or making us lazier .

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Is your Network Connection Keeps On Reconnecting

Though I’m attending a Microsoft Certification course on Windows Server 2008 right now; some of the items that I’ve learn along the way are very useful for the laptop an desktop users alike.

One thing that I find common in Windows systems alike is when the TCP/IP protocol becomes corrupted, symptoms like your internet connection connecting and reconnecting every few seconds appear.

It is one of the biggest headache for users as the repair function of this network connection did not work. You might see your IP address appears as 0:0:0:0 !

To solve this problem, rather than re-formatting your computer of course, is to use the netshell utility.

Simply follow the steps below and you will get your network connection working in a few minutes.

1. Open the command prompt of your computer. You can access this by clicking the Start button > Go to All Programs > Go to Accessories > and clicking the command prompt.
2. Next type the following command netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
3. Restart your computer.

By doing this the netshell command will reset your TCP/IP stack and ultimately refresh your TCP/IP protocol (in other words your IP address).

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Lots Have Been Going On…..

Well guys …. it took me actually 2 weeks since my last (short) post and I have to say again I am still busy with lots of my current projects coming on….

Well this post has nothing to do with laptops or technologies in general but what I want to say to my loyal visitors out there, “This blog ain’t dead yet”.

I am (ever) presently busy with my sharepoint stuffs and yes (it is confirm), I will be doing a SharePoint blog to share my tips with you on this mostly sought collaboration portal. That blog will be at www.sharepointeasy.com .

The whole 2 weeks ago was quite tensed (from my point of view). I had screwed up the domain transfer to my godaddy account and moving 2 of blogs which are Izzy Rocks Music Site and Laptop Info Today. As this was my first experience on moving blogs to another hosting company (how I’m on Hostmonster), I tend learn things the tough and rough ways and like any first-timers making mistakes that could nearly ruin everything! I was grateful everything turn out fine till yesterday (except some minor wordpress plugins glitches on my music blog). For the domain part ….. I was persistent enough to get transferred in a week (with some minor glitch up to my previous domain registrar).

But to be on the positive note, I’m back and hopefully soon enough (this week) you will see great contents that I’ll be posting on this blog and my SharePoint blog and of course you will be enjoying great music videos daily from my music blog……

Till then ….. cheers and rock forever.

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One Laptop Bad Habit Which I Never Realized

As an avid laptop user, I (like many others) make this same mistake over and over again.

A mistake which over the years have become a very bad habit.

What is it you might wonder?

As seen with many others including myself, we tend to charge our laptop while working on it. In other words, we leave the power plug of the laptop on with the battery of the laptop intact (even though the battery is full !).

This will actually cause the battery to loose its lifespan.

So what’s the best practice or good habit as opposed to the above?

1. The best practice in lengthen the lifespan of your battery is to charge it only when you are not using your laptop.
2. When at a stationary location (where the power source is available), remove the battery. This allow discharging process to take place and help keeping the health of the laptop batteries itself.
3. Use the laptop with the battery only when power source is unavailable.

This post is rather short but meaningful as laptop batteries can cost a hefty these days.

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A Laptop Cooler Investment, Why You Need It

Invest some of your money on a laptop cooler. Trust me you will never regret it.

This is one of the aspects that most users neglect. How come?

Firstly, most users have already forked out a substantial amount of money in acquiring a laptop themselves and coming out money for laptop accessories might not be the first thing on their mind.
Invest some of your money on a laptop cooler. Trust me you will never regret it.

This is one of the aspects that most users neglect. How come?

Firstly, most users have already forked out a substantial amount of money in acquiring a laptop themselves and coming out money for laptop accessories might not be the first thing on their mind.

These days laptops are already built with sophisticated designs and a must powerful hardware specification. But all these will come at a price. Similar to all electronic products out there, laptops also disseminate a high of heat.

Unlike desktops where modification can be done easily and air cooling is easier to manage, most laptops will have their fans (to cool of their processors – be it Intel or AMD) on the bottom or base part the laptop. What users never realized is that when they place their laptops flat on the table, very little air is absorb to cool the processors and hence sometimes in certain situation it might suddenly turn off your laptop automatically as the processors get too hot.

Not only that these heat, over a period of time (without the proper ventilation), can damage certain components or chips of the laptop’s main board or the memory cards pcb. Not only that hard disk can easily be damaged due to overheating.

Nowadays laptop coolers are quite cheap in the market. I recommend those with a 3 fan base type laptop cooler with an aluminum base. But before you actually buy a laptop cooler, check the base of your laptop first. It is important to know where actually the location of the fan’s processor is. You will notice it by the narrow exposed areas at the base of your laptop. Once you take note of it, then you make the purchase. If you are still uncertain, then bring your laptop with you when making the purchase of your laptop cooler.

One other advantage that you can find in a laptop cooler is the ability to elevate its height and it will not cause a strain in your neck. We know by working long hours on a laptop and at a posture that you neck is feeling downward can have some painful effects on the back part of your neck. At least, you do not have the strain while typing your documents or simply surfing the net.

Thus you have seen above, that not only the laptop cooler reap benefits for the laptop but to the human as well.

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Windows 7 - Device Stage

One thing that you will noticed once you’ve upgraded to Windows 7 is the Device Stage.

Actually it ain’t something new, but Microsoft has integrate all USB devices and printers to one common location.

Windows 7 is available for download under RC2 (release candidate 2) and RTM (release to manufacturers). However it is yet been officially released, words coming from the official site saying it will be the 22nd October 2009.
Now back to the Device Stage.

From the Start menu on XP it is to be Printers and Faxes while in Windows 7 it is called Devices And Printers. In Vista however you need to go through the Control Panel to get to the Printers menu.

As you can see from the picture on the right, the start menu is similar to as Windows Vista.

Well Devices and Printers will give you more than that .

As you can see from the above screenshot, not only printers but all other devices such as mp3 players, web -cameras, handphones, scanners and other usb devices such as keyboard and mouse are listed.

By clicking on the individual device, you will see more info.
From the above example, you can manage your phone properties easily from the menus given. Features like synchronization or coping images for example can be done with ease with this simple GUI interface.

There are more new features that makes Windows 7 the much anticipated release by Microsoft. How is this operating system going to out-do Windows Vista or even Windows XP …. only time will tell.

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Johore IT Fair Now On

For those who might want to go to this year’s Comex 2009 but hate the crowd, you can cut across the Causeway and go to the Johore’s ECOM 2009 (IT and Electrical Fair) in Malaysia. For me, though I stay quite close to JB, however, I’m unable to go for this one as my International passport has already expired :P .

It happens at Persada Johor International Convention Centre which should be right behind the Public Bank building near Johor’s City Square shopping centre which is located at Jalan Trus.
From the map above, Persada Johor International Convention Centre is located at the item “B”.

From sources which I gather, the IT & Electrical fair will be broken into 4 event categories.

1. Electrical Home Appliances
2. Compute & IT Products
3. Digital Cameras & Camcorders
4. Online Gaming Show & Tournament

The IT Fair will begin today (11 till 13 Sept) and starts from 11am till 10 pm.

According due some of of Malaysian colleagues, it would be a bit cheaper to buy IT goods from the Johor’s IT fair due to the currency exchange. As for now SGD$1 is equivalent to Ringgit$2.40 !

Furthermore IT goods brought in from the causeway should not have any tax according to one of them (how true is it I have no idea). To be on the safe side ….. just throw away the box and just bring in the goods (don’t quote me on this … haha).

Now you can choose, where to go right :)

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