Is it me, or is anybody else slightly annoyed at the current round of "innovation" for ultraportable computers ?

There was this big hype about iPad, and when it finally came out, it lacked the absolutely critical things I need as a technology professional: 1) Flash support (duh!), 2) A camera for video conferencing, and 3) any way to use external storage, be it USB or SD, or micro SD.

I myself was intrigued by the hype of tablet computing, and tried out the Lenovo S10-3t convertible tablet PC. I found it a little flimsy and clumsy, and my hope was that I could run Mac OSX on it, which failed (note: technically it does run, but none of the good hardware is supported). I was quite disappointed when I found out that Lenovo decided to install Windows 7 Starter edition on their already expensive netbook. Windows 7 has great support for tablet computers, but not in the Starter edition. So, somebody there thought "lets release a cool netbook, but lets distribute a crippled version of the OS, just to annoy people." I can't figure it out.

Now we have the HP slate coming out later this year. At first glance it looks pretty decent, until you realize that it is just a plain netbook with a touchscreen and a resolution less than full 6:9 video. This is HP's chance to make it all right, but they need to take advantage of ALL the technology that is out there. Why aren't manufacturers using nVidia's ION chips ??? why wouldn't you choose to use a standard resolution screen? If HP charged a little more money but got it all right, they would have a lot of happy customers. I wonder if the slate can run OSX... hmmm

Technology has advanced to a point where there are certain things people need. If manufacturers simply ignore the customers need, then once the "hype" is gone, you only have loyalty to fall back on. If you aren't careful with taking care of your people, then you will ultimately lose them. A great example is Palm Computing. I LOVED their treo phones -- the first smartphone I used, and it did everything I needed. Palm got sloppy and stopped fixing bugs, and never innovated enough on the Palm OS, until it was too late. They should have been doing the WebOS and apps thing when Apple was doing it. They waited years, and now there is no market share for them.

Lots of innovation happens in the bits and pieces. I don't understand why somebody can't say, Ok, I'm going to make an ultraportable computer, and actually put in the things people want: video camera, a proper HD screen, and a video chip that will handle HD video, good battery life, and external storage? Seems like HP's slate is closest, but still not there yet.

After a few weeks of working in my spare time, here is what I managed to accomplish:

1. I could get a copy of 10.5.4 (slipstreamed for MSI wind) to install, and bluetooth worked, which I could hack to give me internet access. No Wifi, no QE/CI video, no ethernet, no touchscreen support, never bothered with sound, but supposedly it is similar to the lenovo s10-2 and should work.

2. With a custom chameleon 2 rc3 cd, i could boot and install snow leopard 10.6.0. Bluetooth worked out of the box, no wifi, native resolution 1024x600, but no QE/CI acceleration, no ethernet, no touchscreen, again, never bothered with sound.

3. Since Wifi is a deal breaker, I bought a dell 1395 WLAN 1/2 height card to drop in. No go :( The lenovo bios detected a WLAN card that it will not support, and won't boot. I've read on how you can hack the bios, or hack the rom on the WLAN card to fudge it, but yeeeshhhh.... thats not the simple $15 fix i was looking for.

So after evaluating all of the above, I've decided that although the hardware is very cool (and with win7 ultimate, this is a VERY cool little machine), it just isn't ready to be made into a hackintosh.

Real shame tho, i would have liked a proper mac tablet. If you like windows 7, I highly recommend this netbook. If you are holding out for mac osx, I hope it comes some day. Not looking good right now.

So what is next? because I never just give up without changing my strategy... ? The HP slate looks pretty fantastic... I can't wait to see the specs on it, and see if it can be made to run mac osx. Other than that, I think I will use my iphone more :)

First reports are a little frustrating, but I will update this as I go along and find some wins.

boot 132 final + retail 10.6 dvd = hangs at boot of SL disc. Not sure whats up.

boot 132 final + retail 10.5.4 dvd = boots to installer (space screen) and sits at the pinwheel screen indefinitely. I'm going to try some bios changes to see if I can get it to go.

Using the handy old MSI Wind slipstream dvd = installed osx 10.5.4 no worries, nice and smooth. The only problem is, all my kexts = fail.

I thought I had kexts from various places for wifi, touchscreen, and audio, but none of them seem to work yet. The wifi is a broadcom

I went ahead and placed my order today for a lenovo s10-3t today from amazon. They say it is in stock, and i'm looking forward to playing with it. My intention (for scientific purposes only! haha) is to set it up as a dual boot with the windows 7 starter that comes installed on it, and mac osx.

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