Seven Book Air

• Configuring a Hackintosh   - main page

A reverse Hackintosh - Installing Windows 7 on a Mac Book Air as the main o/s

A quote from Scott Raymond:

"...... it was a fairly simple procedure to install the Windows OS from a USB stick with the use of rEFIt, an EFI boot menu toolkit."

He then goes on to say that he tried the CNet procedure but ended up using:

"..... the USB-based system rescue drive that Apple provides and wiped out the drive partitions, ......"

... here I get a conflicting message as he then goes on to describe booting from a DVD and then installing the  Boot Camp Additions. I can't really see the benefit here of having Windows as the only operating system and when I tried this I just followed the Boot Camp instructions.

While the Boot Camp instructions and installation procedure were not perfect I managed to do so using an external USB DVD drive. I did not want to crack the seal on the Apple recovery USB stick as it was my intention to return the MBA after I have  performed my proof of concept on it. That you can install Windows 7 in Boot Camp and fully activate it using Daz. Even with Boot Camp you end up with a Mac Book Air that will boot either into Windows or OSX (depending on your last boot - there the are options to boot into the other o/s - but I forget what the exact procedure is)

Like many of the commentators on the article I found that I spent most of my time in OSX even though I had the option of using Windows 7 and MS Office on the Mac. In closing I cannot see the value of using a MBA when I can purchase 4 similar Windows 7 machines for the same price. I know that they are not a sexy and they may break sooner but the time value of money being what it is, I can take my $750 after a year of use of my Acer 522 and put it towards another MBA or whatever is available in the sub-notebook/Ultrabook range at that time.

• Windows 7 On The MacBook Air: Don't Go There  -  Scott Raymond ZDNet July 28, 2011.
• Install Win 7 on MacBook Air from a USB drive - Dong Ngo CNet