HackBook Air (Indigo RS130)

This article and video were kindly contributed by guest author Gino Punsalan regarding his real world experience of purchasing a MacBook Air clone and his hackintosh project.


When I first set my eyes on the white MacBook Air clone featured on www.shanzai.com I knew I wanted one. A few days after someone in a local Apple Users Group forum tipped us off on a $400 black MacBook Air clone being sold in a local shop here in Manila, Philippines. Google led me to the store www.compexinternational.com. While they have a website, it is not really an online store. Compex is known for its chain of computer shops around the metropolis.

I bought the Indigo RS130 netbook form Compex. It came in a typical Chinese generic box that left little clue on who made this or how to contact them. They did leave a website, www.fireflymobile.ph. It had nothing more than Windows drivers. In the box was the netbook wrapped in a thin foam sheet and cradled on inch thick foam cutouts. Along with it were a remote, a generic user's manual, a mini cd for drivers, and an ac/dc power unit.

I I chose the Indigo RS130 with a Hackintosh in mind. It has a 13' LED backlit screen with typical MSI Wind components: Atom N280 processor, Intel GMA 950 graphics card, 1GB DDR2 667 ram, Realtek LAN and a Realtek 8191SE Wi-Fi- mini pci, 160GB hard disk, a 3 cell 3500mah li-poly battery, an SD card reader, and presumably an IR device for the remote.

I installed Windows 7 Ultimate just to see what hardware the netbook had and to check what works. Upon booting, there was no welcome sound, no Wi-Fi. I did not test LAN. The website suggested an online update using LAN to load the Wi-Fi driver. I did not do that. Instead I manually installed the Wi-Fi and sound drivers from the mini CD using an external DVD rom drive. Upon reboot, I had Wi-Fi but no sound. It seems Windows 7 was rejecting the unsigned Realtek audio drivers. Even the web sourced drivers were fruitless. Then I recalled that the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers worked well on my MacBook. I manually installed those and voila, I had sound on both internal speakers and headphone output. This netbook really thinks it is a Mac!



Having inspected the hardware properties I knew that the Wi-Fi card had to be changed to run OS X Snow Leopard. I ordered a Dell 1490 mini PCI Wi-Fi card. Then I gathered my installation tools: an 8GB USB stick, a legit retail copy of OS X Snow Leopardl NetBook Boot Maker, voodooHDA.kext file, and KextHelper app.

The hard part was the research. Installation was straightforward. With some System Preferences tweaks I got the trackpad working the way I wanted. It ran smooth, had single and double taps, and edge scrolling. 2 fingers scrolling was buggy. 3 finger scrolling was smoother. This suggested it was multitouch. However, I had what I needed so I did not look for better drivers. Video was perfect. A lot brighter than my MacBook 3,1 screen. Sound was a very weak almost useless. But this had been this way on Windows 7 Ultimate. Speaker output was decent but sounded crappy on audiophile grade in-ear monitors. What did I expect? Wifi worked very well and showed up as a native Apple device. SD card reader worked liked it was oem. Even my Ambicom Bluetooth usb dongle was plug, restart, and play. I got an unidentified network controller icon on my menu bar. I recall that too wasn't installed in Windows 7 Ultimate. It could be the lan but I did not pursue it further. Who uses lan on a netbook?! I did not need that so I just powered it off.



It's been a week on my HackBook Air. For my day to day tasks of browsing and working on documents, I can not tell any difference in experience with my MacBook. I do miss the 2 fingers scrolling but the edge vertical and horizontal scrolling are way too cool. 2 finger right click is gone but I have a real right click now. I can swap that with the left button. Tap for left click and left button for right click. Sweet. Avi videos play well but crawls on 720p HD. It does Handbrake video conversions but Activity Monitor shows a maxed out processor. I have not installed iLife and iWork yet so this review may need an update. Well it is mission accomplished. A $416 Mac netbook.

[Editors note: thank so much Gino!]

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