Even you won’t be able to control your laughter. This is what the Font Book on Mac OS Snow Leopard version shows if you select Devanagari MT font. Apple, please have some mercy on us! 😀 Thankfully they changed this message from Mac OS Lion onwards! 😉
I have been using the original Macbook Air 1st Generation 1,1 Laptop for quite some time now and like many others i was also wondering what can be done to speed up this beauty. The only component which can be upgraded easily is the hard disk and that’s what i started searching for. This laptop comes with Samsung 1.8” 80 GB PATA Hard Disk by default and replacing it with another HDD makes no sense at all. So after searching on the net, i found out that people are using third party SSD’s which are specifically designed for this model and they are getting very good performance after this upgrade. So i started my bit of research to find out which one to buy. The one which i shortlisted was KingSpec. The reason was simple, it’s the cheapest SSD available for this model. I bought a 128 GB KingSpec SSD for 130$ off eBay. The other alternative no doubt was OWC, but it was expensive, for a 60 GB SSD, i will have to shell out 159$. The reviews were very strong for OWC as compared to KingSpec but for me VALUE FOR MONEY was more important because no matter how fast the SSD is, the legacy PATA connector required for connecting the SSD to the Mac would limit it’s capability unfortunately.
After receiving the SSD, it was time to open the MBA and all thanks to ifixit, it was just a matter of 15-20 mins of investment, my MBA was all set to boot with a brand new SSD for the first time.
The setup was done using an USB installer for Lion which i had prepared. All the steps required like formatting the disk, creating partitions went on smoothly. There was no noticeable performance difference when installing Lion. I thought it will complete in a breeze, but it took the usual 30 mins approx to get the system ready. So the first reaction was that there is no difference in performance after upgrading to this SSD. Even there is no major difference in the boot time in my case.
But yes, there is a significant performance improvement no doubt. Before upgrading to this SSD, i was running Snow Leopard on this Mac because Lion was struggling like anything. But now i am running Lion after upgrading to this SSD and the performance is much better as compared to what it was before. I am able to smoothly run Lion now which i wasn’t able to before. Applications load quickly and honestly speaking i am very satisfied with KingSpec.
I ran xbench to find out the real story. Have a look at the difference between the read/write operations of the old Samsung 80 HDD vs the KingSpec 128 GB SSD.
All in all, a 50% boost in the overall IO operations and what else can i say, i am quite happy with the change.
I recently bought this ASUS X53SC Laptop and the very first thing i wanted to do was install Mac on it. I am an Hacktint0sh user and i love it more than a real Mac. What i would like to share in this blog is how did i manage to get Lion running on this Laptop and what were the problems i faced.
I went for iAtkos L2 because my retail USB installer didn’t work for this very popular error “still waiting for root device”. All the common solutions i found on the forums, none of them helped me initially. But the surprise was, even iAtkos L2 also got stuck on the same error. That’s when i understood that even the retail USB installer would have worked if i am able to solve this error. So there was obviously something else which was causing this problem. AHCI was enabled by default in my BIOS as that was the most common solution found on the net so solve this error. One more solution given was to enable/disable Legacy USB support, but as we all know Laptop BIOS’es have all such options disabled.
Finally the solution which made the installer move forward was rd=disk1s1 -x -v
I was so happy when i saw the installation welcome screen. Big sigh of relief! The reason for disk1s1, because the internal Laptop hard disk was referred to as disk0. So somehow the installer started and i carried out the common steps required for setting up Lion. After the installation succeeded, it was time to boot from the internal hard disk. Since i had used iAtkos for installation, chameleon got installed by default in the same step. But once again i was greeted with the same “still waiting for root device” error. This time it was frustration when i saw it.
According to the install, i had Windows 7 already running on the first partition on my disk along with an extra 100 MB partition which windows creates. So that means I had installed Lion on the 3rd partition of my disk. So once again i tried the option which helped my external USB installer work, rd=disk0s3, but hard luck this time, it didn’t work.The only option which worked for me is no more working. 🙁
After again scratching the head for some solution, i restarted the installation from the external USB and this time i selected additionally the AHCI option from the customize window in iAtkos and what can i say, it worked. I need to see what that option did, but most probably it’s the AHCI injector. Now i was able to complete the rest of the steps like providing personal details, username/password, timezone and others.
Apart from this i also remember, i had to use PciRoot=0 instead of PCIRootUID=0 or 1, but now it’s all mixed up, did the AHCI option from iAtkos solved my problem, or did this chameleon option solved my problem? I am going to try a fresh retail install very soon to confirm but for the time being, no more waiting..i am happy 🙂
I will update this post with more information on the progress i made further.
Sometimes, it’s so difficult to make things work and especially when you don’t have the knowledge and that’s exactly what happened this time. My next task was to make the Graphics work smoothly. The device id of the HD Graphics is 116, so I thought myself lucky, but that wasn’t to be the case. Till date, I haven’t been able to solve the artifacts and the mirroring problem. Tried all possible options found across different forums, from kext editing to DSDT patching, nothing fixed it up for me. I think I need to live with it for some more time till someone finds a more concrete solution. Everytime I play the game of Chess, it hangs after 2 moves. Although all other features are working smoothly. So I believe, QE/CI is working but not 100% though.
In between I managed to install Mountain Lion Developer Preview 1 to see what’s new and yes I can confirm the artifacts are still there, but the game of Chess didn’t hang at all. So let’s hope artifacts also go away for ever very soon.
And for me mirroring is a must. After editing the connector table, extended display works without any problem but as soon as I select the mirroring option, it freezes with no further log, just a nice blue color screen. I found on one forum that mirroring is working over HDMI port, so that’s why I’ve ordered a HDMI Male – VGA Female adapter. Once it reaches, I will confirm if this is true. My main purpose of mirroring is to be able to connect to Projectors for my training sessions.
Edit: Didn’t work. The HDMI-VGA Female Adapter didn’t work for me.
I think i am able to convince enough that instead of investing 40k in buying this laptop, i should have rather added another 10k to buy a real mac. Till DP 2, i was able to install and run it on this laptop, but since DP 3 and DP 4, it’s otherwise. It simply freezes when it’s time to load the Graphics. The new AGPM has something to do with this, i am sure. Only if i boot in safe mode (-x) i am able to log into the system. So one more disappointment on the floors for me.
The whole journey is taking a U-turn and i don’t know what to do. Nothing is working smoothly on this i7 Quad Core Sandybridge hardware. As of now i reinstalled 10.7.3 on it just for the sake of it.
I sincerely miss my Lenovo B450 Laptop which was a 100% Mac compatible laptop. Miss you baby!