Dell Mini 9 Mac ( or should I call it a Delmac?), software usability and software updates

[Panopticon]

What BGnR said, so let's leave it @ that.

To demystify it for you, every GUID partioned drive has a hidden {200MB} EFI Partition. That partition is part of the GUID partitioning standard that OS X complies with.

As 10.5.x on Intel CPUs is now certified as UNIX 03, it's highly unlikely the GUID partition standard will be abandoned. Thus, the EFI Partition will stay put. As OS X updaters never touch the EFI, it's very unlikely an updater will "break" your Mini 9.

btw, EFI stands for Extensible Firmware Interface. It is the replacement for the old PC BIOS and Apple's {PPC} Open Firmware.
All Intel Macs use it, that's how Bootcamp works its magic.

So basically, when you boot the Mini 9, the boot loader in the MBR {Master Boot Record} loads the EFI boot manager which first loads the EFI's files into memory, among these is a few kernel extensions {kexts} & the Darwin loader which gets you to OS X.
Just think of the EFI Partition as a replacement for the BootROM chip found in a real Intel Mac.

[tenders]

olnacl wrote: I've had no luck watching a movie on the built in LCD. I tried DVD player.app and VLC on a movie I copied to the SSD card. None worked. Please tell me what I did wrong. In my case, it's an (mostly) uncompressed version, about 4.33 GB. I'm in the process of copying another movie to a USB drive and I'll try it again with VLC.

OTOH, External monitor works fine on VGA out mine, a 19" Fuji and I've also used it with a 1920x1080 37" monitor. The built-in monitor goes dark, just like my MBP, but if I close the lid it goes to sleep (unlike m MBP).

OK, I lied. Copied a Toast DVD image to my 8 GB flash drive, opened VLC, navigated to the .VOB file and it's playing (on the fuji monitor anyway).

My theory is that the Atom chip has finite capacity handling I/O, decompressing data, and playing video. I suspect the unusual screen size on the MacinDell requires some video conversion on-the-fly, so with high bandwidth (ie uncompressed) video files, the I/O and heavy video resizing demands swamp the processor's ability to play it.

VGA is less demanding, so it can handle playback.