I was wondering if anyone can recommend a decent site/guide for getting OSX onto a PC? My Dell laptop has finally become too intollerably slow and I plan to reformat the drive and start from scratch. Obviously I could stick XP back on, but I'd far rather take advantage of the 'dark side' style installation of Steve Jobs software on an Andy Dell piece of hardware. I'm pretty computer competant so painstaking technical stuff is fairly up my alley if needbe.

Mac hardware is basically a PC now anyway. Anything preventing OSX running will be Apple trying to ensure you buy Apple hardware.

Now there's a storm brewing!

This may be of interest:

http://www.elitistsnob.com/archives/2006/05/turning_an_old_dell_pc_into_a.php

Simon.

Calvin:

I was wondering if anyone can recommend a decent site/guide for getting OSX onto a PC? My Dell laptop has finally become too intollerably slow and I plan to reformat the drive and start from scratch. Obviously I could stick XP back on, but I'd far rather take advantage of the 'dark side' style installation of Steve Jobs software on an Andy Dell piece of hardware. I'm pretty computer competant so painstaking technical stuff is fairly up my alley if needbe.

The OSx86 project is what you're looking for -- and it's not difficult. Looks cool to see the Apple OSX interface on a PC.

http://www.osx86project.org/

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Vmware_how_to 

I've done it and it's not worth the hassle. It breaks every time there's an Apple update (which is very very frequently), doesn't give you Quartz Extreme (part of what makes OS X so efficient) and you'll have serious issues getting drivers.

RE Macs being PCs under the skin, completely not true. Macs have an EFI instead of a BIOS, they manage their power completely differently, they manage graphics and sound completely differently (in terms of how it's actually configured from a hardware point of view) and Apple really makes more of the hardware themselves than any other company out there.

Yeah right! - They use the basically the same bus structure (pcie), the same processor hardware, same harddrives etc and can run the same operating system with a modicum of effort - how different can they really be??

Regarding Apple making more of their own hardware - this is the crux of Apple's famed reliability - open up the system to all manufacturers and you'll find you end up with all sorts of "XP" type issues - i.e. the reliability is as much (if not more) a function of the limited range of hardware than it is the operating system.

Oh yeh sure they use the same processors, hard drives and RAM, but the most important bit in any computer is the bit in the middle - the mother board (logic board to Macs). This is where Macs still differ hugely to PCs, logic boards have functions software in OS X expects to call which just doesn't exist on PCs, Quartz Express being a perfect example.

Puncher:

Yeah right! - They use the basically the same bus structure (pcie), the same processor hardware, same harddrives etc and can run the same operating system with a modicum of effort - how different can they really be??

Regarding Apple making more of their own hardware - this is the crux of Apple's famed reliability - open up the system to all manufacturers and you'll find you end up with all sorts of "XP" type issues - i.e. the reliability is as much (if not more) a function of the limited range of hardware than it is the operating system.

 About the same as a Porsche and VW or B&O and Samsung, they share parts too!