HP Spectre 13T-3000

Yes, I had 2 FHD Spectre's that had a back light bleed problems, so I'm trying the QHD screen. Actually I find that the screens are very similar but then again I don't have them side by side. But both the FHD display and this QHD display are capable of getting brighter than I need them to be.

 

Randy, are you now pleased with your screen? Other than being free of backlight bleed, do you see much difference between the FHD and QHD when looking a 'normal" text and images? BTW, I've been a Firefox fan for years and, like any addiction, it takes a price: great add-ons but really slow you down. In any case, there is an add-on in Firefox (for all I know the other majors have it to) called "No Squint." It enables you to set the text zoom level and the overall zoom level at different levels, and it puts a handy set of +/- buttons to click on to change it on the fly. Way more convenient than having to go back into the Windows text setting every time you're on a different web site, and you can have custom settings for each website. Just consider this a little "help from Heloise" regarding text scaling.

 

The QHD is great but I also thought the FHD screen was great as well. If I am looking at a detailed photograph I THINK it looks better on this QHD screen but I would really need to see them side by side to be sure. I think for normal web browsing as far as the clarity I doubt there is a noticeable difference.

If I had kept the FHD screen I would be just as happy I believe.

So far I have not noticed any drawbacks from having a QHD display but I don't use Chrome.

 

I think I will keep my 2nd FHD Spectre13 (unless I run into any other problems). It has some backlight bleed but it's much better than my previous unit. The price is also very good at the moment in the UK - it is £300 cheaper than the XPS13 (around $500USD).

 

Can someone please highlight how to do the 2-finger drag shown in the HP control zone app. I can't seem to get it to work. Is there some other setting I need to check as well?

 

Yeah, the XPS 13 is a nice looking laptop, but it's significantly more expensive and not without its problems (heat related, from what I've read). Plus since Dell couples all of the options you have to pay for an i7 upgrade just because you want a 256GB SSD, etc...

 

I contacted HP about the control zones and spent over an hour on the phone with them as well. I spoke with several different techs working my way up to higher level techs. The last one I spoke with told me it was a hardware issue and should be returned. They seemed as baffled by the control zones as I was. When you go into the control zone settings it shows video of what the actions look like and should be doing. But it didn't seem like hardware to me because then none of the actions would be working at all. I think it it's a driver problem and maybe HP wasn't aware of the issue yet. Maybe if more people called in about the issue they will look into it further and find a fix.

When I get my new machine I'll let you know if it works properly.

 

Hey Katmom,

When I bring up the left control zone to scroll between apps, I have to click on down on the left control zone first before I can scroll.

Swipe right+left => brings up list => no scroll

Swipe right+left => brings up list => click down on control zone => able to scroll

Not sure if you tried that already, but I semi freaked out when I read your post and couldn't scroll!

 

All the gestures work for me except the two finger swipe left or right (which is probably the second most useful gesture next to two finger scroll). This would allow me to go forward or backward on a webpage. Does this gesture work for anyone else?

 

Yes I tried everything I could think of, HP was having me try different things, tap, swipe, etc. I sent the unit back yesterday so I'm not able to try anything
else. But as I said before I'll let everyone know what happens with my new machine. Unfortunately that won't be shipped out until the 18th.

 

Here's my report after 1 week of ownership.

1. Trackpad is buggy, very buggy
Touch sensitivity is touch and go, multiple fingers will sometime see as single. Dragging is a pain because it will drop suddenly when it loose the sense, but the finger never left the pad. 2-finger scrolling has to be exactly vertical for it to works unfortunately the human body does not allow this to happen unless we start growing an arm straight out of our chest.

Severity: Deal breaker

2. Scaling so far is good except for HP own set of software.
It's sad that HP can't even get their own software to work with their own pc.

Severity: meh

Everything else is ok
8GB
i5
QHD
Everything is up-to-date according to HP support software.

 

After two weeks of ownership I note the following differences with your assessment :

1) I've yet to encounter a touch pad other than on a Mac an then only in OSX, that is any good or, on balance, meaningfully better than this one. The more I play around with settings and learn its quirks, the less annoying it becomes. If you don't care about the winged "control zones" (which I don't) you can get driver updates from Synaptics so expect this to get better, just as earlier Asus and Samsungs did. The Spectre's is not yet ok, but it is not for me as bad as you describe. Annoying? yes. Dealkiller? Not even close.

2. All the rest of areas you call "ok" U think vary from very good to class-leading.

3. You can get the best of anything for a price. When I pay $500 less than nearest competitor and all I can find wrong is the typically wonky Ultrabook touch pad, I give it a grade of at least 9/10, which is about what notebookcheck.net gave it, and they've tested every other premium UB on the planet. I value its superb performance and battery life, outstanding QHD screen and amazingly high end design and build quality. I feel confident labeling this product the "Audi of Ultrabooks" - at the price of a Honda!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

 

mine seems to be working perfectly, my QHD this time has a image retention problem. Now there are stuck pixels starting to show up around the bezel.

 

aznstuart,
I had forgotten about these other configuration options-- thanks for reminding me. Though I can't find a way to configure two finger swipe (with the .18 level driver), there is a way to configure 2 or 3 finger click ( to navigate forward/backward in a web browser or do a variety of other actions). Those gestures seem to work fine.

I also noticed they seem to have provided a way to turn the touchpad on/off with a single tap (under Tapping> "TouchPad Disable Zone Settings") however the option to configure this is greyed out on my machine... I wonder if it's just another driver bug, or if there is some way to enable it?

 

Wow, sorry to hear that. Are you likely going in for a 3rd attempt or are you getting worn down by the process?

 

I have worked on a lot of laptops over the years. That said, the track pad on my system is absolutely one of the best I have experienced. I have worked on Lenovo, Dell, Acer and other HP models. Sounds to me like that track pad has definite issues. The pad on mine is very sensitive, no accuracy problems or loss of detection during swipes. The only minor complaint I can possibly muster is the max pointer/drag speed is still too low for my taste. Not a hardware issue but a driver short coming.

I really like the over sized track pad a lot but do not prefer the functionality of the control zones. I just disable the control zone functionality and enjoy the full real estate of the track pad. Scaling is so much improved from 8.0 to 8.1 that unless I needed to work in an app on a daily basis that was scaling handicapped, the one off short uses of utilities are a non issue to me.

 

Hi,

Just wanted to update, for all those who ordered their machine with b.g.n and not AC.
After looking around the web, I found that the WIFI card of the spectre is M.2 format (cant check it myself since I still havent got mine), there are currently two versions of this chip(AC), but the one that fits the spectre is the same as the one found Yoga2(newer version of AC).
Replacing the chip shouldnt be that hard, and you can purchase it on this website:
7260NGW Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 802.11ac, Dual Band, 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0* - M-FACTORS Storage - The only one I found on the web.

I ordered one and Im planing on replacing my b.g.n

I will update again after replacing

 

Don't forget to take some pictures of the internals of the machine (disk, disk connector, battery, wifi module)
I would love to see them as a report on how difficult it was to open it. I expect this to be simple but didn't dare as there was no real need for me to do it for now.

 

The Maintenance and Service guide (select it from the linked page) shows how to open it up and replace things: Manuals for HP Spectre 13t-3000 CTO Ultrabook | HP® Support

 

When I listen to music at top volume on Beats, sound often gets muffled. Anyone else notice this? Is there anything that can be done to prevent muffling at top volume?

 

Help me, please!

(Sorry for the long post to describe and ask help troubleshooting. You all must know by now that I don't know how to write succinctly! This time I really just wanted to include everything I've done and why, and hopefully lead someone more quickly to advise a fix.)

I seem to have done something that has caused the sleep/resume cycle to get bogged down. Suddenly instead of resuming in a couple of seconds when I open the lid, having closed it hours before to put it into sleep, everything has shut off and I have to push the power button (rather than touch the touch pad, hit Enter, or do anything to "wake it up.") It then takes about 15 seconds - about the same time as a cold boot - but instead of booting from cold, the screen finally comes back to where it was when I last closed the lid, looking as it would if it had correctly (and quickly) returned from sleep.

You may be tempted to say that I must have something set to put it into Hibernate mode, and I agree it is behaving that way. But I have completely disabled Hibernate, with a Command Line "powercfg h off" (or something like that) command I have used before, including on my similar Envy 14 Spectre. So Hibernate doesn't even appear as an option in the "Shut down" menu. I've also uninstalled "Intel Rapid Start" from programs and drivers, for the sole reason that it was what it took to fix this problem in my Spectre 14 machine when the same problems presented from new. I was told then by a member that the "Rapid Start" technology was only useful for the hybrid SSD cache/HDD systems, and was somehow slowing the all-SSD system down in resume from sleep.

The difference here is that it was working fine, and I disabled Hibernate simply because it frees up SSD space and, in general, most people I know do that as a matter of course with an all-SSD system, that can boot cold as fast as from Hibernate. I'm a bit tempted to try to undo all that I've done and put Hibernate and Intel Rapid Start back, but I'd rather your advice for the best way to resolve this problem.

Thank you very, very much.

 

Turn the bass level down some in the Beats audio control panel

 

I would not like to have a system that is not capable of hibernating or doing "Rapid Start". I avoid as much as possible to reboot and I keep my programs opened all the time.

If you disable Hibernate and Rapid start then you are only left with standby.
This means that it will remain to consume battery while it is not shutdown. And, when it run out of power it shutdowns and you need to start from zero.

Rapid Start is kind of Hibernate but instead of using a file it uses a disk partition.
The main difference is that with Rapid Start you don't need for the system to finishing the transfer of the memory image from disk.
If a block of memory is still not restored it will be obtained from the disk itself. So it starts much faster but it is a bit slower in the beginning due to this temporary access to disk instead of memory. This can only be done if the disk is a SSD disk (in theory).

My expectation was that the 8Gb OEM partition was to be used by Rapid Start. But I couldn't confirm this yet.
My feeling is that my machine is not using Rapid Start at all. only Hibernate :/


So in your case I would do the following:
- See if I can make Rapid Start Work, If not then re-enable hibernate

 

Unfortunately I can't seem to get it working properly without reinstalling Rapid start and re-enabling hibernate. This is all ok, but it does take away the precious SSD capacity reserved for hibernate, as it is a useless vestige of the time of the slow HDD. I have not had hibernate installed on any laptop for 4 years and I never had a problematic battery rundown or data-losing shutdown, and that has been primarily with SSDs that were RAID0. What's really strange is that this all worked out perfectly with my HP Envy 14 spectre with Ivy Bridge silicon, overall a very similar system - though it was W7 not W8.1.

Anyone else have a different idea?

 

You're right, Rapid Start doesn't seem to be configured to operate on the machines as shipped, though the software is installed (at least partly; the Rapid Start Technology Manager 'operating panel' which should be in the tray isn't there). Why they did this I don't know-- its very cool. Its designed explicitly to work with SSD's (not to be confused with the Intel Smart Response tech which is geared towards using an SSD to cache a conventional hard disk) and instead of using hiberfil.sys it uses its own dedicated partition on the SSD (the 8GB OEM partition fills this role nicely, so you actually gain space by using it instead of hibernation). I got it working on my machine (not sure if I needed to, but I deleted the OEM partition and recreated it, set the vol. ID according to Intel's directions, then re-installed the software to get the control panel to appear-- the Intel PDF file on their download site is helpful; just make sure to use the EFI version for a GPT disk); so far I'm impressed. It basically replaces hibernation yet provides all its battery savings. The machine resumes from hibernate about as fast as it resumes from sleep... no 'spinning wheel' at all.

 

Rapid Start has a software component (in the add/remove programs) and system firmware (EFI) component. There is an option in setup to disable it; have you tried setting it to 'disabled' in system setup (hit F10 during restart). Maybe you had it 'half uninstalled' and that's why it was working like a 'slow resume from hibernate'. Note that for Rapid Start to operate, you actually do turn off hibernate (you don't have a hiberfil.sys, and you won't see the hibernate option). At least that's how its working for me.

 

Burd,

Thanks much for the info. I'm going to have to review it when I am more coherent (still a shot for the present decade ). I had a feeling there was a BIOS aspect to this. It sounds like there is redundancy between the hibernate function and the Rapid Start Technology. I have little in the way of studied knowledge as to how all of the numerous Intel management modules perform and it seems that I too am missing the control panel for the Rapid Start Technology and so shall study your two posts word for word, attempt to implement same and report back as soon as I can honestly say I've got it figured out in my head and working as it should.

Thanks again,
Jeff

 

After reading the recent e-mails on Rapid Start Technology above, I realize that it may have been what the 8GB OEM partition I deleted was for. Granted, I never noticed any difference between startup before or after removing it and merging it with my C: drive. That being said I read up on Rapid Start and it said that the partition would've needed to be a "hibernation partition" and explains how to make one with diskpart. I always thought that hibernate was done using the hibernate.sys file? How can I confirm that rapid start is working or not? My machine is already very fast starting up, both from cold boot and waking from sleep/hibernate. I noticed there was supposed to be some software you can open for Rapid Start. All I've ever noticed was the Rapid Start program entry in Add/Remove programs. No actual program though. Attempting to install the Intel version results in a "minimum requirements not met" error. This might be due to OEM configuration or lack of hibernation partition. I don't know. I read that many machines will show an error message if Rapid Start is enabled in the BIOS but not working in Windows. I have no such error. Please help me 1) decide if Rapid Start is worth it, 2) confirm mine is active and work and 3), if not, how do I get it working seeing as I don't have the OEM partition anymore.

 

As I understand it, Intel Rapid Start technology essentially replaces (rather than augments) the traditional hibernation mode, though its operation is similar-- if you're using traditional hibernation, you're not using Rapid Start, and vice-versa. It also seems to be bound to the 'sleep' mode, transitioning seamlessly from the RAM 'keep alive' power state of sleep to the 'zero power consumption' state (as in hibernation) when the relevant parts of the RAM image have been saved on disk. In fact the 'manager' interface (which is missing in the configuration that HP ships) allows the user to set this transition time from 0 to 120 minutes-- so for that amount of time the machine will be in traditional sleep mode; useful if you plan on using the machine right away, since resume from sleep is still a mite quicker (though, amazingly, not all that much).

The description that follows is again based on what I've been able to pull together from various sources so take it with a grain of salt: old school Hibernation, when invoked, writes a snapshot of RAM to the hiberfil.sys; this may include virtual memory pages which are actually already backed up elsewhere on disk (the pagefile.sys?) or marked by the OS as discardable-- hence no longer really needed to restore the machine state on resume. This make the hiberfil.sys larger than it needs to be and more time consuming to write out and read back in on resume; kind of a 'blunt force' approach. Rapid Start keeps track (while the machine is in use, by shadowing them in a dedicated SSD partition) of the 'live' virtual memory pages, writing them out to a dedicated hibernation partition in a more granular fashion. Hence the amount written is less, and the time to resume can be quicker.

I found the following threads helpful in understanding how Rapid Start works (ironically the first one is a Samsung notebook thread, so some of the specifics don't apply, but a lot of the implementation is similar including the registry keys used) http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/660222-samsung-series-9-np900x3b-c-np900x4b-c-guide-intel-rapid-start-technology.html

While it seems to me that the 8GB OEM partition has been created for just this purpose (I've looked and haven't been able to find any documentation of its intended use), it's not clear to me why HP doesn't include any info describing how Rapid Start should be set up to work, or why the 'manager' interface isn't included. The partition needs to be set with a special ID via diskpart when you set up Rapid Start-- maybe it has already been set up that way from the factory (which would make sense); I went through the exercise of deleting it and recreating anyway, then re-installing the Rapid start software to get the user interface set up . Though I haven't run into any problems yet, I'm hoping that it isn't 'half baked' like the CPPC implemenation.

 

Thanks. I think I'll shrink my current partition by 8GB (the recommendation is for the hibernation partition to be the same as RAM) and then use diskpart to create a hibernation partition (the id you mention is supposed to be "84" I guess). Then I'll try to install the Intel version of Rapid Start that should include the Manager you're talking about. As for the CPPC implementation, I agree. I installed the latest Intel version *.1015 (HP is 1013) and while it might have affected the throttling better (it seems like it but I can't say for sure) there is still the error in event log that the BIOS (firmware) doesn't support CPPC. Uninstalling CPPC, however, results in an Unknown Device error in Device Manager.

 

I'll take a stab at answering your questions: as to whether or not its worth it, I'd say in all honesty, that's a tough call. Resume with traditional hibernate is lightning fast on this machine; I've probably timed it at less than five seconds or so (it varies depending on how many applications were open when hibernation was invoked). Rapid Start can shave a second or two off of that; again that may vary depending on what the machine has running (how big the 'working set' is). I'd expect Rapid Start to be more effective when you typically have lots of applications going. What I don't know (and haven't been able to detect) is if there is any significant penalty for the stuff that I assume it is doing concurrently while your machine is in normal operation (updating the hibernation partition?). All in all, if I didn't have it I probably wouldn't miss it. It is probably worth more to me for its 'gee whiz' value (I admire optimizations, or at least the promise of them) more than the second or two per resume cycle that may be saved.

For your second question, it's easy to tell if its working when you have the 'manager' for it in the tray-- it tells you when its active, and there's an 'on/off' setting, as well as the timer setting for the transition from 'keep ram alive' sleep to 'zero power' state. Also, if you have it set to 0 seconds of sleep, you'll notice a (documented) behavior of transitioning into and out of the sleep mode once before appearing to be fully shut down. As mentioned before, you won't have a hidden hiberfil.sys or see a hibernate option when you shut down.

If you want to get it working and you've deleted the partition, if you're familiar with using diskpart it isn't difficult to recreate it. You need to create an 8GB primary partition, use the 'detail disk' command to see what the resulting volume number is; select it and use the 'set id=' to the huge string of numbers mentioned in the Intel PDF document for EFI machines at the Intel download site for Rapid Start Technology. You'll know you're using the right documentation if the set ID command includes a huge string of numbers (our disks use GPT instead of MBR, you have to refer to the document for machines with EFI -- don't set ID=84; that won't work). I found that this command also would fail until I deleted the hiberfil.sys (using the powercfg command to turn hibernation off; probably the two types of hibernation partitions cannot coexist) Once you do this, you must reboot the machine (for some reason the 8GB partition still shows up as just a 'healthy primary partition', not specially designated as a hibernation partition as shown in the PDF illustration-- maybe an 8.1 quirk?) and then download and run the install of the Rapid Start software from Intel's site (I didn't use the one on HP's site, though it may be the same, and I ignored the fact that the 'applies to' commentary in Intel's documentation listed only Intel desktop boards). You shouldn't see any error messages, just an indication that it successfully installed. The 'Rapid Start Technology Manager' will then also appear in the tray.

If you want to have your machine to appear to hibernate immediately with the power switch (as opposed to sleep for a while first), set the time to 0 in the user interface.

 

Mikeynavy1, just to re-iterate, don't use ID=84; that won't work for disks formatted as GPT.
You want to follow the user guide for UEFI Mode (the second one listed here); it shows the ID string to use: Intel® 7 Series Chipset Boards — Intel® Rapid Start Technology user guides

 

which is best and safest to use on a regular, daily basis,,,,,,,,,,, sleep or hibernate???
thanks
tom

 

Yep...figured that out...thanks. Unfortunately, even after disabling hibernate using the powercfg command the partition isn't being recognized as a hibernation. It is still stuck as a standard primary partition. Do I need to do something else? Rapid Start still won't install. Also, unfortunately, I discovered that my QHD display suffers from image retention. In particular the task bar icons and time.

 

Mine also shows as a primary partition in diskmgmt. Do you get an error message from the Rapid Start install? I assume that it is checking for the ID of the partition; did you do a 'copy' of the Set ID= from the Intel document when you did the set command (you can paste it into the admin command prompt window); with a string that long it might easy to transpose a digit or two....

 

I have to make a confession: I opened up a can of worms that turns out to be a bit over my pay grade in sys admin capability. I have certainly managed things at this (I know, not really very difficult!) level of system management complexity, but frankly I don't seem to have the time/concentration for it right now. I'm immensely grateful to you, Burd and mikenavy, for sweating the hard stuff. I will continue to follow any further discussion/discovery and await a bit more "paydirt" to make the changes I need to. That said, I have an interim request:

Can you advise me what to do for the time being, having restored my system to before I tinkered with Rapid Start and hibernation, what has the best chance of allowing me to simply let my computer sleep virtually all the time when it is plugged in, not in use, and to instantly resume upon, say opening the lid. This is where I think I am:

1) In original as-shipped configuration of all features relative to this discussion - both Rapid Start and hibernation are enabled, the former both in the BIOS and with the program appearing in Programs and Features

2) What I have not done - and prefer not to now - is to complete the diskpart work to create the Rapid Start/Hibernation (?) partition as described in the Intel PDF

3) What I wrote earlier turns out not to be true - at least not always - sometimes I get immediate resume from sleep, but sometimes - I think after sleep for longer time - I open the notebook and everything is off and dark, I have to hit the power buttton, and the keyboard lights up and it takes that 15 seconds and resumes exactly as it was when last active - ie, not a reboot, acting more like a slow-ish resume from hibernate

Key question: without going into the disk partitioning, set ID = , etc, is there something basic I can do for now to get it to resume from sleep, no matter how long it's been asleep, provided its been plugged in the whole time, instantaneously? My thought: now disable hibernate with a powercfg command, leave everything else as is. I could just do that and see what happens, but I'd rather a more informed suggestion. Alternatively, though I know this wasn't occurring when I first set up this computer - two long, long weeks ago! - am I stuck with a 15 second resume from sleep until I master the configuration of rapid start?

Thanks. I know the question is way longer than the answer! I don't even need you to explain much, just treat me like a 5 year old and tell me what I should do

 

It sounds like your machine is behaving completely normally (aside from the 15 sec. time which is kind of long), for a power plan that has both sleep and hibernate timers configured. When in sleep state, it will remain so until the 'hibernate' timer kicks in, at which point it writes the hiberfil.sys and pulls the plug. Don't understand why the resume should be so long, even when hibernated I don't think I've noticed more than a 6-7 sec delay. But to check for this scenario, go to the 'advanced settings' for the power plan of your choice and look for the 'sleep' setting. It should have a timeout associated with it (the auto sleep setting, which is mostly broken in Win 8.1). If hibernation is enabled, there will also be a hibernate entry. This is the amount of time that will elapse after sleep mode before hibernation ensues (this timer does work in Win8.1) Set it to 'never'. But if it's already set that way, I'm out of ideas....

 

No, I think we're cool.

1) So, first, I was exaggerating the re-start time from, apparently, hibernation self-invoked after X time in sleep. It was more like 6-7 secs - seems like an eternity (also, lazybones was using time from my Spectre 14 when troubleshooting same issue - was a Sandy Bridge version (now gone) SATA II SSD, was taking 25 secs to boot, 15 resume from hibernate). So, 6+ secs, not 15.i

2) I now have gone ahead and removed hibernation and I think I am back in nirvana! Need to do longer test, but shut lid and reopened after 30 mins and it was immediate resume. That may or may not have been long enough to have kicked it back to hibernate (or some state that behaved like it) before, maybe not, but I think it was. Will know for sure overnight.

Thanks for all the hand-holding

 

Yep...I keep getting the error stating that my machine doesn't meet minimum requirements. I just ran through the process again and the partition sets up right (except for never saying hibernation in Disk Management) but even the HP Rapid Start installer won't run. It gives the same error too. Like you mentioned before, I disabled hibernate and checked that the hiberfil.sys file was no longer on my machine. I've got to be missing something. Is there something in the BIOS (e.g. I have Rapid Start enabled) that I need to do to get the new partition recognized as a hibernation? When I get home I'll look at it again...I think I'll make sure that the original Rapid Start program in Add/Remove is uninstalled as that could have something to do with it. I'm open to any other suggestions.

 

What did you make the partition size? I used 8192 . I have seen conflicting info on this; somewhere I read it should be set to 8000 which didn't sound right; elsewhere I read it should be set larger. You also have to restart (not shutdown) after setting the ID and before the software setup. I have since read that for GPT disks the partition will show as a healthy primary partition (diskmgmt would show it as a hibernation partition only if the disk was formatted as MBR).

Rapid Start has to be enabled in EFI (I think it is enabled as shipped). I didn't uninstall the original Rapid Start software; just ran setup after downloading it from Intel's download center.

 

Yep...I did just as you described. The partition is 8192 MBs and I restarted (not shutdown/start) after exiting diskpart and cmd. When I get home I'll uninstall the existing Rapid Storage software showing in Add/Remove and see what happens before trying to run setup again. Maybe there is some setting telling it to look for the original OEM partition only or something. Rapid Start is set to "enabled" in my BIOS.

 

Mike, I'm just curious; are you experiencing the kind of problems I had? If so, the combo which now seems to be working for me is leaving Intel Rapid Start in the Add/Remove Programs and enabled in the BIOS but to disable hibernation via the powercfg (not the actual command) cmd code.

 

There was a short discussion earlier regarding the image retention (ghosting) issues with these displays. Not sure if it is QHD only or if the FHDs are exhibiting it as well, but I noticed it on my QHD last night. I noticed the retention of the task bar icons and date on my lock screen. Likewise for the close button where my browser was open. With the machine off for a little while it went away, so it isn't "burn-in" but it was a bit of a let down to see it. It also doesn't take long for it to be noticed. This morning, I had my computer on for a few minutes and it was already there when I logged off. Aside from that, I have minor backlight bleed, mainly noticeable during the HP boot screen, and the already noticed scaling issues with some software. Adobe Acrobat is the most current one that doesn't work well with high resolution screens and Win 8.1 scaling. Has anyone found any ways to reduce the image retention.

 

I did do the disabling of hibernation from the powercfg command. I used powercfg -h off and it worked as I don't have the hibernation option in the shut down menu anymore and a search for hiberfil.sys doesn't bring anything up. Unfortunately, without being able to install Rapid Start, how am I supposed to know if my machine is entering the rapid start hibernation or just staying in sleep? Likewise, the fact that I can't even install the HP version of Rapid Start, which should be the same one in the Add/Remove programs means that it probably isn't working and that if I uninstall it I might not be able to reinstall. Strange.

 

I don't have any information specific to the Spectre13. But based on a thread on the Dell forums about XPS12, the following seems to be the case:

The IR gets worse over time
There is no solution (even a hardware replacement develops the same issue eventually)

It might be possible to make the IR less noticable by playing with the monitor settings - some people reported in the Dell thread that it helped (although some said it didn't). But it isn't really a solution and effects the picture quality too.

Thread in question is here - http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/t/19497269.aspx

Does anyone know if this affects the FHD screen?

Does anyone know how to check the manufacturer of the FHD screen to see if it's LG?

 

I found the same thing was occurring with the XPS 12 and Macbook Pro (someone mentioned this earlier as well). I also found that it was affecting NEC monitors. I wonder if using certain backgrounds (e.g. darker might not show the ghosting as much) might help.

 

any info yet???

 

I think I might have found out the problem. I did a system recovery from my HP recovery media last week. It looks like when it re-imaged my machine it made the first ~400MB on the disk unallocated now (I can't remember what kind of partition it was supposed to be either) and the next ~250MB a simple partition rather formatted for EFI. I can't remember but is it necessary to have that 400MB space at the front or should I set up the EFI partition to be at the front and then the c: drive next.

 

With modern hardware, it's difficult to say, as they have kind of become more like each other in terms of pros/cons. In the old days, when it took considerably more battery life to maintain the contents of the machines' RAM, hibernate was a winner if you wanted to leave your machine alone for a weekend and still be able to get to work quickly without having drained away 10 or 20% of your battery's charge during sleep. And if you just wanted to close the lid and take a short break, sleep was preferable because you wouldn't have to wait for thirty or forty seconds of resume that it normally took for resume from hibernate (and either one was better than waiting for the two or three minutes to boot XP and have it reach a useable state, not to mention re-opening all your applications). Today, sleep drains the battery much less (I haven't measured it but I wouldn't be surprised if it is only a few percent overnight) and resume from hibernate may only take a couple of seconds less than resume from sleep so it's kind of a toss up.

Maybe using both is the best option... set the sleep timer to transition to hibernate automatically after a couple of hours so your machine is instantly available if you need it, and doesn't drain the battery if you wind up not using it as quickly as you expected. As far as the safety aspect is concerned, I doubt either one is risky; if the battery drains down enough during sleep, Windows will automatically transition to hibernate at the critical battery level (assuming you've got hibernate enabled, or enabled hybrid sleep). When SSD's were cutting edge, there were concerns that writing gigabytes of data for a hibernation partition would shorten their lifespan; reality is that it's not an issue. Some people still worry about it, but the odds, are you will have retired your laptop long before you have worn out its SSD (owner of T400s with 64GB SSD, hibernated multiple times a day since 2009 speaking from experience).

 

Using the disk management interface, the Volume column for my machine shows 6 volumes (D is shown twice for some reason); all blank except for the last three entries which shows 'Recovery (D)' twice then Windows (C); layout is 'Simple' and type 'Basic' for all. File system column shows blank for all except the last two entries which shows NTFS. Capacity is (in order shown): 400MB, 260MB, 8.00GB, 13.79GB, 13.79GB, 215.91GB. Status (again in order) is Healthy (Recovery Partition), Healthy (EFI System Partition), Healthy (Primary Partition), Healthy (OEM Partition), Healthy (OEM Partition), Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition). After a system recovery your layout is different than this?