Razer Blade Owner's Lounge

Like many others who bought the R2, I have no issues with my screen. Never had a problem with the vertical viewing angle or anything else.

I do web work and technical manuals so having "exact" colors is not an issue. Especially since I have no control of the quality of client screens. Once it leaves your 'calibrated' screen, your work is subjected to everyone else's uncalibrated and variety of screens which rarely match exactly what I see.

Unfortunately, this is a fact of life with displays. Heck, we have two of the same manufacturer desktop displays in our office and my wife and I are constantly seeing color variation in the same graphic.

Anyway, I'm happy with my display for exactly what the computer was advertised for - gaming.

 

You are right sir its not that bad. I own a MB Pro and MB Air as well. I sat this display next to the MB Air display and although the MB Air had better viewing angles. In my opinion mostly due to the the glass display vs the matte display. when looking dead on there wasn't much difference. I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not like most people because when I use my laptops I look at them dead on from a seated position. So for me not being able to stand and look down on my screen without having to adjust it is no big issue. BTW I tried just that with my MB Air and guess what? It washed out and I had to adjust the screen.

EDIT: I was referring to the 14" Blade the original poster was referring to the 17" Blade Pro

 

I think people keep missing the fact that the display since razer blade 17 r1 is better than average, and all this confusion stems from the name change of the 17" unit, which is now called the pro. Simply put, 17 has good a display the 14 doesnt.

thats not hard to grasp

 

I misread the original poster but I was referring to the Blade 14" and yes I absolutely understand the perceived quality difference between the screen on the Blade vs the Blade Pro.

 

I'm unsure if I should start a new thread for this, but id figure id start here other then clutter up the main page.

This is to those who own the first and second revisions of the Razer Blade (Pro now) and have or plan to open them up. I am trying to find a connector for the R3 Razer Blade Pro to connect a 2.5" drive as there is still space for one even with the upgraded battery. I am simply asking for a picture of the SATA connector the next time you open your Razer Blade R1 R2 or Pro. Mainly the connector that plugs into the motherboard along with the one on the motherboard. I am searching threw old laptops of mine looking for one that are comparable to the ones in the photos, but I cannot see the mother board connector. This would be great and help me out a lot. Don't feel inclined to open your laptop if you don't already plan to.

 

In case you missed it:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/razer/725432-new-razer-blade-pro-owners-lounge-17-a.html

 

Damnit Razer...stop making cool speakers and in ear headphones...here goes another 120 on payday!

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

 

Let me know how you find the new (?) Ferox! I have the older one, got it last year, and I'm really curious as to how they've improved it. Hammerhead is a great earphone, it's made me prefer it over my Krakens!

 

Def will. My fiance has the older ferox, our game room is basically a green vs blue Razer field. I have all the green glowing things and she has all the blue, even non Razer items are color coordinated and our lamps we have, have colored bulbs with Razer logos I stenciled in on them lol...

Said all that to basically say we have the old ones so I'll be able to compare them and we can see whose are better lol...the color battle rages on!

Happy to hear about the hammerhead I'm really interested and in getting those! I did recently buy a pair of Bose in ear headphones and they sound great I'm just not a fan of how the fit, they have these silicone pieces that fit into the contour area above your ear drum area and it just gets really uncomfortable after awhile even though it does help keep them in your ear really well.

I love the look of the hammerheads. I'm a fan of the thin strip like wiring then the typical way others do it (or like the morays were) and I dig the green color of course lol...biggest concern was sound and if they had a microphone built in so they would work well with the blade. Well after checking website I see they do have a mic, and you just confirmed you prefer them to a typical headset so sound should be good so now I'm even more pumped about them!!


Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

 

I envy your setup

Yes the Hammerhead mic is actually really good. What makes the Kraken 'better' is the fact that the mic is directly in front of your mouth, while the Hammerhead's mic is roughly on my chest/under my chin.

The changeable earpiece was definitely a great feature for me, I cycled through all of them until I found the right ones. I personally use the Medium sized ones since I find them the most fitting, the large ones were bordering on discomfort.

Enjoy them!

 

What is this falange or fangle thing they say it comes with? Comes with 3 ear pieces and a filange or w/e its called -- what is that?

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

 

I wasn't aware of it until I saw it as well. It's basically an earpiece, but with a double layer. Picture a regular in-ear earpiece stacked on top of the other. Apparently it's meant for better audio quality or something, but I haven't really noticed it. I don't like using it since the second layer can drag in my ear when I remove my earphones. Lol.

 

I've hear of fanboys, but fancouples

Wish I could get my wife onboard.

 

lol yep, we're a rare find! It was all her though, she made me a convert. I've always used just regular mice and keyboards, now I'm razer for life

 

Maybe a dumb question. I have the Razer Blade 2, it came with windows 8 and I decided to downgrade to windows 7. Once I did this I noticed the tap to click function on the trackpad no longer worked (after installing windows updates and drivers). Any suggestions? Thanks

 

Maybe try look for Razer Blade gen 1 trackpad drivers on the Razer support page? Otherwise I'm not sure if the Win8 drivers would work

 

Hmm I couldn't find a driver that seemed pertinent to the track pad. If you saw one, please enlighten me!

 

Honestly my best guess would to be to reinstall synapse and or check the firmware - you can download that on their website and just make sure that's up to date. From my experience downgrading to 7 the firmware is what caused any issues with keyboard/track pad not working.

What I would suggest you really do though is email [email protected] or call 1-855-87-BLADE (1-855-872-5233).

This is what they're there for!

 

What is this upgraded Battery you speak of? Battery is exactly what i'm looking for in my new computer, and the Blade Pro is litterally perfect except for its 5ish hour battery life.

 

AFAIK There is no battery upgrade that is official from Razer - suppose he's talking about just modding it with a different non OEM battery.

 

Anybody wanna buy my razer blade 17? .its the 660m with an upgraded 512gb ssd. Have only been needing my 14" blade and edge pro lately...

 

I had guessed that much, just wondering if its a homebrew mod (which im assuming it is) and how many hours he gets on it.

 

Yea the 14 '' blade I find really is perfect. I found myself not looking at my 17 inch blade since I got it, so I sold mine as well.

I am sure someone will be getting a great deal on this unit, good luck with your sale!

 

Hey john, is the battery life a lot better on the 14 than our 17s?

 

It is better.

 

I got my 14 inch laptop about 2-3 weeks ago, but today it started displaying the battery as "No battery is detected" and I can only use my laptop when it's plugged in. Does anybody have any idea of what the issue is? I didn't even know that this laptop's battery was removable.​

 

Might be cable seating issue. If it doesn't fix after rebooting and uninstalling the Microsoft AC Adapter driver under Battery in Device manager, you could try open it up and reseat the big cable covering the mSATA drive (on the left side right between the battery and fan)

 

The 14'' literally gets twice the battery life if not more than the R2's. Also your able to play off the batter with SIGNIFICANTLY less performance loss.

 

Has anyone else had to get a unit completely replaced before? Had to send my Blade Pro back for replacement and they can't seem to give me a shipping date. :/

 

I'm over two weeks now waiting for a replacement Pro (256G). Waited for the original order for weeks and had the Pro in my hands for about 24 hours. :-/ Will be 7 weeks altogether this Thursday.

Razer has been great (SO nice to talk with someone every time I call) and I know it's just a supply issue. I've toyed with the idea of just cancelling the replacement and buying an in-stock 512G (which would be a least a week's ship time)

 

I sent mine in yesterday to get the fans fixed on it. Hopefully they don't do a full replacement on it. Did anyone noticed that under the hinge on the lower piece of the laptop, the metal doesn't sit flush? I would take a picture but Razer has mine.

 

Anyone ever cut their switchblade ui lights down to save battery and then they don't want to come back on?

 

hi all!

I have some questions about the razer blade 14. rbp owners can chime in if they want to.
1. Can you lift the rb14's screen to open with one hand when its placed on a surface? Or do you have to do the typical two-hand maneuver when opening a closed laptop?

2. Does the razer logo on the rb14 actually glow when the rb14 is on, like the macbooks' apple logo? or is the razer logo just a plain sticker/attachment?

3. Does the 765m gpu and/or intel hd4600 perform well when rendering is involved, such as video editing, photo editing, and autoCAD?

I appreciate the help and input to answer these questions, thank you!

 

Yes, you can open with one hand - it's actually a really well-balanced hinge.

Yes, the logo glows. It's a little silly, and I don't love it, but if you're not in a professional environment I doubt anyone would care.

Not sure about video and photo editing stuff, sorry.

 

Hi all!

For the past few days, I am having some problems with my Blade R2.

For no reason whatsoever, my Blade would hang or freeze rather. What's more, it happens randomly and the trigger is always different.

The weird thing about the freeze is that not everything stops working. When the computer freeze, I am still able to move the mouse, Caps Lock still lights up when depressed. However I cannot open any folders or any applications. If I press on one, the cursor will switch to the loading cursor. That's it. It would stay like that for hours.

What is annoying is that I am unable to CTRL ALT DLT and the computer just stays there as if frozen in time. No blue screen at all.

I cannot seem to find the source of the problems.

Here is a list of triggers that causes the computer to freeze.

Clicking on Google Chrome after some idle time.
Clicking on My Documents after some idle time.
Defragging and optimizing my HDD. ( Happens during anytime of the defragging )
Windows Update. ( The update would be stuck at some point of time and if I click cancel or click on any application, it freezes. ) ( Update bar still haves the green glow moving after freeze, along with mouse movement still working )
Playing Battlefield 3 Multiplayer. ( This was the very first trigger, the computer froze the instant I clicked on QUIT GAME )
Playing Crysis 2 Singleplayer. ( The computer froze during the loading sequence. )
Clicking on the hidden icon tab. ( It froze when I clicked on a application. )

So when the computer freezes, I am unable to do anything except hold down the power button and cause a force shut down.
The computer would then take 4 times longer to boot up then usual after that.

Do anyone have any idea what is the problem?

 

This sounds like an HDD problem, that every time you try to access something in it, something goes wrong. I could be wrong though, but that's my impression!

I have no idea how to go about it though

 

I don't know the manufacturer of the drive, but most (Seagate, etc) have diagnostic utilities on their website to check their drives. Probably a good idea to run one to see if that's the culprit.

 

People will care about this as much as they will care about the Apple logo on a MacBook lighting up in a professional environment.

 

Hi everyone, just got my Razer Blade on Saturday. Love it so far. I do have one issue with it though. Is anyone's lid not even with the body? I attached some pictures to show the problem.

 

That isn't normal. I would RMA it.

 

Only if you're willing to wait for a potentially backordered replacement! (finally received mine early this week)

 

I am using something called Battery Bar, it says my battery is already at 9.1% battery wear. What am I doing wrong? How do I take care of the battery? It already doesn't last too long off battery and I don't want it to get to the point to where I cannot use it unless it is plugged in.

 

I discovered I am unable to boot off of any usb thumb drives. They aren't w=even recognized by the bios that it's plugged in but under windows the thumb drive is available to be read and written to.
This is happening on my 14" Razer Blade. They locked the laptop down so other os's can't be installed? I tried playing with settings in the bios but nothing's worked.

 

OK slightly boring question...

I understand that the Razer Blade 14" has 2 msata ports - admittedly the shop I am buying this off claims that it has only one.

So I am getting the 256GB version. I want a 256GB C: drive and another D:drive. I have ordered a 480GB msata SSD.

My question is this. If I take my new Razorblade to a competent computer technician will he be able to install the msata. I realize I will void my warranty, I just wondered whether a decent tech guy could do it or whether specialist knowledge is required,

 

Save yourself some money and do it yourself. It's extremely simple. Open the bottom, find the msata port, remove the screw, insert the msata drive, secure it with the screw, replace the bottom of the laptop, boot the laptop and you are set.

 

I have read letting the battery drain all the way down is bad for the battery, I have also heard leaving it plugged in during every use it bad could too. Could someone tell me what the best way to take care of the battery is?

Also a couple things I have heard at school with my laptop is. "Oh cool, is that an alienware", "Wow it is so big" lol. What are some things you guys have heard?

 

Ok thanks. I can certainly manage that.

However, I want to create 2 drives. The original SSD as a C: drive and the new SSD as a D: drive.

Is that possible? Do I have to go into the bios and change something?

 

I've heard the big thing.

Older laptop batteries required conditioning, etc, doesn't really need to do that stuff now a days, at least thats what I've read when looking stuff up online

 

Razer Blade 14 working on Linux!

Hi, I've been watching this thread for linux info and finally got my razer blade 14, and got everything to work on it, so I thought I'd post my notes so that others can benefit. I also posted them on a linux mint thread: Linux Mint Forums • View topic - Linux Mint 15 on Optimus - Bumblebee works NVIDIA/Intel


STEPS TO GET RAZER BLADE 14 WORKING WITH LINUX:

Note: I am a computer scientists/computational neuroscientist, so my needs may be slightly different from yours. But, generally my uses are:
-Basic everyday use as primary machine (presentations, connecting to internet, browsing, music, long battery life, etc. etc. etc.)
-Running code via CUDA on GPU (C++)
-Playing 3d games on nvidia GPU (e.g. heroes of newerth linux client)

I got all these things to work nicely. So, my setup will get it in condition to do this type of thing.

Follows are problems, fixes, and notes about what works.


--PROBLEM: BIG (initial) problems with nvidia card.
Solution: Had to switch to manjaro linux, use a special patch on the 3.9 kernel to get the ACHI/ACPI stuff to work correctly. 325 driver. NOTE format USB drive to fat16 or fat32 (mkfs.vfat /dev/usbstick) before you write the iso image to it. I now get a draw of about 9 W with wireless on and half brightness while browsing, giving 6-7 hours of battery life.

Had to switch everything in bios to legacy mode to install linux (UEFI was messing stuff up). (also disable quiet boot, fast boot, etc., and mess around turn on that thing to let you set everything to legacy mode).

This (manjaro 0.87) only got kernel 3.4, so X wouldn't start initially because of haswell video stuff (i915 drivers?) not supported in that early kernel.
Had to connect to internet via command line networkmanager (nmcli, connect to network, etc.). Don't remember the exact commands but you can google it.

Updated system with:
sudo pacman -Syu

Now X works and we have integrated card running, now we need to patch to the kernel that has the support for the bbswitch AHCI (ACPI?) stuff that the nvidia card is connected to in the razer blade 14. I followed this chain of links:

via https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168622
bbswitch does not work on my Sager NP7330

Basically, inside manjaro you run
sudo pacman -Syu
wget http://www.paradoxcomputers.com.au/manjaro/packages/bbswitchfix/"$(uname -m)"/linux39-bbswitchfix-3.9.11-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz && wget http://www.paradoxcomputers.com.au/manjaro/packages/bbswitchfix/"$(uname -m)"/linux39-bbswitchfix-headers-3.9.11-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz && wget http://www.paradoxcomputers.com.au/manjaro/packages/bbswitchfix/"$(uname -m)"/linux39-bbswitchfix-bbswitch-0.6-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz && wget http://www.paradoxcomputers.com.au/manjaro/packages/bbswitchfix/"$(uname -m)"/linux39-bbswitchfix-nvidia-325.15-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz && sudo pacman -U linux39-bbswitchfix-3.9.11-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz linux39-bbswitchfix-headers-3.9.11-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz linux39-bbswitchfix-bbswitch-0.6-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz linux39-bbswitchfix-nvidia-325.15-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz && rm linux39-bbswitchfix-3.9.11-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz linux39-bbswitchfix-headers-3.9.11-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz linux39-bbswitchfix-bbswitch-0.6-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz linux39-bbswitchfix-nvidia-325.15-1-"$(uname -m)".pkg.tar.xz && echo "** NOW REBOOT AND SELECT THE -bbswitchfix KERNEL FROM YOUR GRUB MENU **"

Then had to go inside /etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf and set Driver=nvidia (it was noveau for some reason, causing big problem when I tried to start optirun etc.).

Then reboot, and your nvidia/bumblebee/bbswitch should all be working dandy!

You can check it with lspci | grep 3D (should be rev ff if turned off, rev a1 or something when its on).
Can try :
optirun glxgears




--PROBLEM: WEBCAM FLASHING (red-green etc. when indoors). Also in VLC etc., regardless of nvidia/intel GPU. (this also happens in windows -- haha those poor suckers)
FIXED by downloading guvcview and turning off white balance temperature/auto.

--PROBLEM: Battery charge threshold (always charges to 100%) can't be set?
Need solution from razer (I don't think this can be done in windows either -- I'm scared to try the thinkpad utilities b/c might brick battery?)

--PROBLEM: Touchpad multitouch doesn't work b/c no driver (jittery, double-click doesn't work, slide scroll doesn't work, no turn off when typing, etc.)
Need driver from razer (no synaptics available)
Some discussion (razer says it's proprietary hardware): Help getting mouse working on Razer Blade 14 : linuxquestions
I found a forum post where someone was starting to reverse engineer it, but I can't find it again.
(xinput -list and the other thing shows there's no synaptics available.)

--PROBLEM: Hardware brightness control doesn't work (function f8/f9). But, can do it from within linux software.
Need solution (driver for keyboard?) from razer

--PROBLEM: Battery applet thing doesn't display discharge rate etc. (battery isn't recognized maybe?)
Solution: you can see via terminal (dunno where fans are though):
cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/uevent
Note, I also tried "sensors" program (lm_sensors) which at one time caused some weird screen colors (no problem after reboot) (when I let it do all the possible sensors, nvidia card etc...?)
Also used powertop, but that wasn't reporting discharge...



PROBLEM WITH MY MACHINE (?): Some weird jittering sound from left fan in back (at a certain angle)

PROBLEM WITH MY MACHINE (?): Screen is slightly off flush when closed (hinge on back-right is slightly off, causing it?). But <1 mm, barely noticable, but hopefully won't cause problems later on.

OBSERVATION (REVIEW): Screen is nice. No "pressure points" from carrying it in bag all day even. Don't know how it will react to doing that in heat/cold though, or being banged around significantly.



EXTERNAL SPEAKERS work
HEADPHONES work (properly turns off speakers when plug in jack, etc.)
SUSPEND/HIBERNATE works (?)

--WORKS: Hardware keyboard backlight control DOES work

--WORKS: print screen (fn+f12) DOES work

--WORKS: volume control (fn + f2/f3) DOES work

--WORKS: pgup/pgdown/home/end (fn + left/right/up/down arrow keys) DOES work.

--WORKS: HDMI-VGA output to external screen.
For VGA connection via HDMI, had to go via XFCE "display" program (just using the hardware switch didn't work so hot I think?). And adjust resolution, etc.
HDMI->VGA (for presentations) works nice (using QVS HDMI to VGA adapter HDVGA-ME)

--WORKS: USB ethernet plug and play:
USB ethernet works nice (using DLILNK USB 2.0 fast ethernet adapter DUB-E100).



Some other things I did (personal stuff, needed Japanese input, needed java RXTX, etc.)

get Japanese IME input to work: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Smart_Common_Input_Method_platform

after installing scim-anthy and anthy:

in: ~/.xprofile

export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"
export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"
scim -d


NOTE: packages opencv, gsl, java jdk, skype, etc. all went smoothly. vlc plays fine.


For virtualbox:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox
needed to do dkms stuff (i.e. select dkms option for the module stuff when you do -- for me it was option 5
sudo pacman -S virtualbox





HOW to install java RXTX:

from AUR:
Download rxtx package from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rxtx/

mv file into a directory (e.g. ~/aur_packages)
tar xfz packagefile.tar.gz
cd packagefile
makepkg -s #-s resolves dependencies?
sudo pacman -U packagefile/packagefile.pkg.tar.xz

I also had to do (b/c dir structure was a bit different).
sudo ln -s /usr/share/java/rxtx/RXTXcomm.jar /usr/share/java/RXTXcomm.jar

 

I haven't been able to get my laptop to switch from UEFI to legacy os. I didn't mess with fast boot and quiet boot. What is the version of your bios if I might ask? If it's a more recent version, might have to pester Razer to send me a copy.