My Advent 4211 / MSI Wind U100 experience

[Guest E=mc²]

I'm happy to admit that I successfully managed to run Kalyway OSX on my Advent 4211 without any major issues since before 10.5.6 was released update, and managing to upgrade through to 10.5.7 successfully in the meantime. I managed to keep it synced with my Macbook Pro and iPhone with absolutely no issue to speak of, I never needed to reinstall any kexts and the battery life was impressive.

If anybody thinks they can get a netbook running as well using Linux, they've been smoking too much gas!

I recently thought I'd give Windows 7 a try (Which is a leap for me considering I've not used Windows in 6 years after being completely put off by XP) and after a month I think I might just leave it the main operating system since it highlighted a few niggles with OSX's inoperabilities with what I assume is the 4211's hardware.

Maybe it was a glitch with my particular install, but did anybody notice that the battery manager doesn't seem to work particularly well when running out of battery power? I found that the netbook didn't go into any sort of hibernation mode, and I was left to reboot the OS upon reconnection of a power source. It would also revert my desktop wallpaper to one I used briefly a while ago, and only that one oddly. The battery's life when sleeping seemed to be little more than when using it in light/normal conditions.

Another issue was simply because of my lack of inclination to getting a different wireless card. The drivers for the default card are great for getting the card to work, but the interface isn't designed as nicely as you would like it to be and it can also be fairly glitchy, sometimes leaving me connectionless and with no obvious resolution without rebooting the OS. Neither turning the card off and on using the Fn keys or restarting the driver software seemed to do the trick. Plus, I'm a bit of a tidy freak, so the lack of airport-style menu bar icon and the added fact that you need to keep a very nasty-looking icon in your dock put me off a bit.

Has anybody else experienced either of these problems?

I love my Mac and use it as my main computer, and I don't intend on changing that any time soon, but I guess for using a netbook as it was intended, Windows 7 seems to do the most seamless job. I'd recommend anybody giving it a try on a separate HDD, it's already got me considering buying it when it's released in October.

Installation took a reasonable amount of time, it instantly detected my wireless card (An invaluable feature considering XP couldn't), and the OS has a lot more consistend and stable feel to it. Not to mention I'm running it using all the fancy Aero features! I've not managed to crash it yet (System uptime of 22 hours since last reboot), when the battery runs out it goes into hibernation and wakes up again in relatively decent time.

I suppose in the end of the day I just use my netbook like a play-thing, but unless those 2 OSX issues are fixed (Or if they don't bother you), I wouldn't recommend using it if you want to take your netbook out and around with you. Which is to be expected considering it's not even native hardware!

I'd like to hear other people's experiences, and whether they're still using OSX? It's gone a bit quiet on this board lately! Has anybody tried Snow Leopard yet?