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Is the World Wide Developers Conference too far away for you? Are you desperate to get your hands on an Apple netbook straight away? The folks over at TestFreaks.com couldn’t stay away any longer, so they took a Dell Mini 9 and decided to install Mac OS X Leopard. The process seems surprisingly simple, and gave them a fully functional MacBook Nano (or close enough) within an hour.

So, other than a Dell Mini 9, what would you need for this task? Well, you’re going to need a legal copy of OS X Leopard, access to an Intel-based Macintosh, a little extra RAM, and a RunCore SSD. The first two are quite obvious; you need a copy of the OS you want to install in any instance, and the need for a Mac is similar to reasons why you might need access to one when you’re using the MacBook Air; there’s no CD/DVD drive, so you can’t simply install the OS disk and boot up. A little extra RAM goes a long way when using OS X, and if you’re using the base model Mini 9 with only 512MB, you’d like to increase that to about 2GB for optimum performance. The RunCore SSD is the only thing that may be new to some of you. It’s basically a solid-state hard drive, with no moving parts. One day, they’ll be in every computer, but at the moment, their prices are still quite high compared to standard hard drives. The nice thing about the RunCore SSD is that it has a USB connector built in—what is needed to connect to the Macintosh to install Mac OS X straight onto the hard drive.

There are a few tricky parts, such as ensuring the OS boots correctly from the SSD when its not connected via USB, but the instructions clearly guide you through the process, as with all the steps. I won’t go into too much detail at this point; if you’re thinking of trying this out for yourself, the article over at TestFreaks has the full step-by-step guide to get you on your way.

So, when this process is complete, you’re left with a netbook running Mac OS X Leopard. Sounds great to me; small size, ultimate OS. There seems to be a rising trend with people thinking the same, and when a conversation begins about installing OS X on netbooks, people begin to look ahead to WWDC. Whether Apple release a tablet or netbook, we don’t really mind. Yet Apple has always made a point of their laptops having full-sized keyboards, so would they skip that for a netbook? I haven’t had a lot of experience using smaller keyboards, but the keyboard on the Acer Aspire One is very nice to type on, even though it is nowhere near full size. Then there’s the idea of an Apple Tablet. A touch-screen device, with possibly an on-screen keyboard. That’s not practical for long-term typing, although I would imagine it would sync with a bluetooth keyboard for when you need to do more than a write few e-mails or browse the web.

People who have used netbooks running Mac OS X have been pleasantly surprised at how well they’ve ran. Leopard is known for its great management of usable RAM, and it’s noticable when there’s limited RAM available in such small computers. Even though it does run well, there’s a big chance that Apple may produce a seperate version of the OS for a netbook. This would certainly apply to a touch-screen tablet, where things would need to respond to the touch as they do on the iPhone or iPod touch. It’s also likely that a netbook or tablet could appear alongside the upcoming version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard. While Apple may show us what they’ve got in terms of a netbook, its release may not follow in the immediate weeks afterwards.

Have you had any experience of installing Mac OS X on another computer that wasn’t a Macintosh? How did you find the installation? Would you prefer it if Apple made Mac OS X available to run on any computer, or should the entire Mac system stay as one; a computer and software bundle? Let us know in the comments!