We’re approaching the winter holiday season fast – and that’s always something to look forward to, especially since the Tux Geek is giving away a fully working brand spanking new Hackintosh PC to its readers. This is our first year as an emerging tech blog – and we’d like to celebrate it with this giveaway.

What is it?

• A Hackintosh PC is a computer built with similar hardware to the original Apple counterpart, capable of running  Mac OS X, while benefiting from hardware accelerated graphics, full sound support, wireless connectivity, and installing applications and updates(!) with ease.
• We achieve full compatibility by carefully selecting parts which we know are present in current Mac’s or have similar architecture. Alternatively, the OSx86 community has written a number of patched .kext drivers that support a good deal of modern hardware.
• Basically this is a DIY, home-made Macintosh for the cheap.

How do we do it?

• The Tux Geek team created a hardware parts list, which we need to buy and assemble.
• We’ve put 100$  towards the hardware and a valid Mac OS X license from our own pockets.

Photos courtesy of MrKon and Dana Web.

• To complete the build we need YOU to participate with any amount of money greater than 10$. Every 10$ donated will give you one chance to win the Hackintosh PC. If you give 30$, you get 3 chances – just like those Coke promotions.
• On December 20, we will pick the lucky winner randomly from all the donors(each donor will be given an number which will be entered in the draw).
• If we don’t manage to get enough money to build the system all donations will be refunded except the PayPal commission for sending it back.
• We purchase each of the components, assemble them, install a ‘patched’ version of Mac OS X and ship it to the lucky winner.
• We will document each step of the building process and post it as a tutorial.

Hardware List

We configured a pretty powerful system – comparable with the iMac for a grand total of 800$; If you contribute with the full amount or at least 200$ we’ll let you choose any other accessories you might want and install them for you, as long as we can track down a driver for it.

Bellow is a screenshot of the Newegg Wish List:

Lawyers and legal issues

• We’re just a bunch of computer science geeks running a website, please don’t sue us into oblivion. As far as we’re concerned we’re not a company – we don’t have ads or revenue and these contributions are a donation; the computer is a gift.
• We won’t use your email to send you anything but the notification when you win.
• The package will be shipped before 20th December 2008 12:00EST or earlier via UPS AirMail with insurance. We will cover the shipping expenses as long as they’re not over 50$.
• All donations gathered after the 800$ mark will be refunded if the donor requests it.
• Stefan Neagu (owner of Tux Geek) and Bogdan Stroe(editor in chief) will be building your system. We both reside in Romania, Europe.  Stefan Neagu previously wrote for How-to Geek, iSmashPhone and others; currently writes for MakeUseOf. The Tux Geek has got numerous Digg Front Page Articles and is here to stay for a long time.

Previous experience

Stefan Neagu previously managed to install Mac OS X on his Acer laptop – which has all sorts of weird hardware in it and posted a guide on his personal blog. We’ll go even deeper with this tutorial.

Screenshots of the Acer laptop running Mac OS X. More available here. Link to the tutorial.

Let’s Get It Started!

Use the donation widget to pitch in and get the opportunity to own a Hackintosh.

We know it sucks to have to Donate – and we would have bought it out of our own pockets if we could afford it. Because we have a no ads policy things are kind of tight around here. Every time we get Digged, BlueHost decides to take us offline for a couple of minutes because we’re on a shared server.

Want to sponsor this giveaway? Contact Stefan Neagu via launch_pad@rocketmail.com. Post any questions in the comments; they will be shortly answered by someone from our staff.

[UPDATE]Thanks for donating. We’re looking for a sponsor to complete the build. However, if you want your donation back, just send me an email.