Oct
10
What do you say about something that "just works" ? That is what EFI-X does. I built a machine with components only from the (short) HCL, connected the EFI-X module to a spare motherboard USB header, switched on and then installed from a retail Mac OSX X 10.5 DVD.
Once past the EFI-X boot screen, it is just like using a real Mac. Compared to the Power Mac G5, it is very fast, and somewhat quieter. There's no hacking, disabling, fiddling, modifying or other faffing about required, even updates to OS X install from Software Update as they would on a real Mac.
No product is perfect, but the limitations are few and minor and include:
- The EFI-X booter is not Open Firmware, and therefore cannot boot from Firewire (yet.)
- Windows and OS X can't share a single drive due to the different partitioning schemes required (MBR vs GPT)
- Booting into the EFI-X environment adds about 10 seconds to the bootup process.
- Audio doesn't automatically switch between line-out and headphone out when you plug headphones in.
- Scraping the bottom of the barrel here .. System Profiler shows the graphics card as 256 Mb when it is actually 512 Mb ... cosmetic only.
So for $1000, you can have your very own yum cha brand Mac Pro.