2013 Ativ Book 9 13.3" Ivy Bridge NP900X3E / NP900X3F

I don't think the newer batteries need this kind of care anymore except that a charge of 50-70% is recommended when you want to store the laptop for some months without usage.

 

Do you have the X3E or X3F?

Can you notice a significant increase in speed with your new Intel 7260 AC card? What kind of speeds were you getting with the original Intel 6235 card? Also, what model AC router do you have?

 

I had silent mode running but somehow Ubuntu didnt throttle or do anything "power saving" stuff. Sysfsutils didnt help, those settings didnt stay on. Today i installed Crunchbang because issues with ubuntu and upgraded Crunchbang to "Jessie" version now.

So far those intel_pstate and silent mode things are staying like they should. Also CPU throttles down much better than in Ubuntu, but laptop still gets bit more hot than windows. Maybe that is because customized power profile in Windows rather than original.

Battery life is now better than in ubuntu but bit worse than in Windows. I think i can get 4 hours of continuous usage with surfing and using terminal/ssh to connect my server. Or at least i hope so. I will test later today and see how it will perform.

So far: Thank you Oled for genuine help and im really glad you shared your wisdom with me(or us)

 

What version of settings are you on? I didn't know there was a bluetooth toggle in there.

 

Silent mode lets the fans spin slower (and even shuts them off when in low usage), so it's normal that you have slightly higher temperatures. But at the same time it might save you some power.
Btw do you run samsung_laptop in UEFI mode?

Have you had a look at this link Linux powersaving?
If all those setting are applied you might gain another hour or so of runtime. You can verify some of the applied settings with powertop --> Tunables

Also switch off either WiFi / WWAN when not in use. For WiFi that would be

Code:

echo 0 > $(dirname $(grep -l wlan /sys/devices/platform/samsung/rfkill/rfkill*/name))/state
modprobe -rv ath9k

I don't know whats the name of your modem module though.

Can you post the output of both:

Code:

ls /sys/bus/usb/drivers/
cat /sys/devices/platform/samsung/rfkill/rfkill*/name

As I mentioned earlier using udev is a neat way to have your desired power settings automatically changed according to the power state.

Additionally I use triggerhappy hot key daemon to fine tune Fn keys. You can find it in the repos with apt-get install...
Fn-F11 I now have setup to cycle through 4 custom CPU setups: 800MHz / 1.4Ghz / 2Ghz (no turbo) / 3Ghz (turbo), all in silent mode and scaling activated.

 

Do you have any link stating why this care isn't needed anymore?

I'm aware Samsung claims it isn't, but they lack giving any explanation. Could the removal of BLE just be for selfish reasons?
- selling more batteries which also means having the laptop serviced
- not having to deal with support request complaining about low battery runtime unaware that BLE is active


As far as I know X3E-A and X3E-K eg use the same battery, yet only the latter has BLE removed!?

 

I installed this distro in 'csm/bios' mode, not uefi. Could not risk my new laptop

I checked that power saving page but havent tried those yet. I will as soon as i can but my schedule is too tight to mess with computers right now. I think i can try that in day or two. Also i will check that udev trick.

Can you share your code with triggerhappy? I installed it but havent got time (or skill...) to do it totally myself. I would really appreciate it if possible.

ls /sys/bus/usb/drivers/
ath3k btusb cdc_mbim cdc_ncm cdc_wdm hub usb usbfs uvcvideo

cat /sys/devices/platform/samsung/rfkill/rfkill*/name
samsung-wlan
samsung-bluetooth

I hope i answered all questions and raised couple of new ones.

 

Those cdc drivers appear to be the WWAN modules. Try to remove one by one with 'modprobe -rv module_name' when you don't use it. They most likely depend on each other and you might get a 'Module in use' error. If you pick the right one though, it should unload all of them alltogether.

See attachment

 

Is each Settings version made for a specific model's hardware configuration?

For example, I have the NP900X3E-A02US and it's on Settings version 2.0.1 and there isn't a newer available version of Settings in SW Update for this specific model. However, there's a Settings version 2.3.0.17 available for the new NP940X5J model and I've read different threads where people with various Samsung models are using this latest Settings version on their machine. Is that really safe to do?

 

I have an X3E. I've noticed a pretty significant increase in transfer speeds with the new card. Whereas before I was hovering around ~21MB/s tops in transfers I'm now hitting ~43MB/s at the top end. Very nice speed bump for those large files. I'm using a Netgear R7000 router.

My settings version shows as 2.0.1 in add/remove programs. Actually now that you mention it I don't remember seeing it either until I installed the new card. I'd always deactivated it manually by disabling Bluetooth in the Windows network settings.

 

Settings is generic and the installer will customise it according to the hardware that it finds.

However, the more recent versions of Settings seem to have lost the Battery Life Extender switch and if your notebook has this facility then you don't want to install a version newer than about 2.0.0.38.

John

 

I think all versions 2.0.x still have BLE. My favorite is 2.0.0.55 which still has it. But any versions 2.1.x and newer don't have it.

Maybe it is for that same reason why SW Update will not offer the new versions of Settings if you currently have version 2.0.x installed. But if you install a new version (such as any 2.3.x version) it will offer you the latest (currently 2.3.0.17). It is essentially two different branches of Settings: 2.0.x is one branch, while 2.1.x and newer is another branch.

 

Interesting. Do you know if fast start is working, i.e. when you sleep the laptop does it wake when you open the lid?

 

Windows Programs and Features (Add/Remove) rounds to 3 digits, so 2.0.1 is probably 2.0.0.55 or 2.0.0.68 or 2.0.0.72. I would expect Fast Start to be enabled in this one (as per this discussion) but would like to hear confirmation as well, since it may differ from one model to another.

Come to think of it, I do remember someone mentioning Bluetooth being back in newer Settings versions ( here) contrary to what I may have posted not long ago. But I am pretty sure I tested it then and found it only works when Samsung's own Bluetooth driver is installed, not Intel's or Microsoft's driver.

 

Thanks guys. Yeah, I'm just going to stay put with my current 2.0.1 version because I wouldn't want to potentially lose the BLE feature.

Also, go45cvi - about your Bluetooth toggle question: there is a Bluetooth on/off switch under Network >> Wireless in this Settings 2.0.1 version. What version of Settings are you on with your X3B?

 

As I posted in my reply to go45cvi, your Settings version 2.0.1 is probably just Add/Remove programs rounding up version 2.0.0.55 (or later). SW Update will tell you the exact version number, and so will Properties on the Settings.exe file.

Even if you go to a later Settings version (such as the new 2.3.0.17) your computer will still have BLE, you just have to use BIOS to toggle it on/off. Still, I prefer 2.0.0.55 as well because it's convenient to have BLE (and ExpressCache for Series 7 and 5 models) in Settings.

 

Ah, I see thanks. Looks like I'm on version 2.0.0.72 with a creation date of 1/29/14.

I have a question about the USB Charging setting - does turning it On (i.e. which supplies power to the chargeable USB port even with the computer turned off) cause wear to the battery at all if still plugged into AC? For example, if the computer is turned off but plugged into AC and I then start charging my phone via that USB port, will that hurt the battery at all?

 

Bingo. You should be fine staying with that one.

I would be very surprised if USB charging uses the battery when the computer is plugged in. I am almost certain it is just like any other power draw: If plugged in, it uses mains power (NOT affecting the battery) and if unplugged it uses battery (triggering a charge cycle and thus causing a little wear).

But I have not tested it to verify that. You could test it easily: While plugged in and fully charged, use HWiNFO to check the number of charge cycles (assuming your battery reports that, mine doesn't), then charge your phone, and see if it increases the number charge cycles.

 

Thanks for the info. Is that 43 MB/s the speed from your wireless card to your router, or your typical DL speed from a site like speedtest.net?

Did you uninstall the Intel 6235 drivers (or anything else?) before removing and replacing it with the 7260?

 

So read the thread and under SW Update it lists my version as 2.0.0.72. And yup Fast Start is enabled.

It was a ~600MB file transfer from my NAS to my laptop. My broadband isn't nearly fast enough to saturate wireless AC. I did uninstall the drivers, wireless and bluetooth, before replacing the card with the 7260.

 

Thank you for confirming that.

Combined with other evidence (as posted here) I think we can establish with some certainty that Settings versions 2.0.x do indeed have Fast Start enabled, while newer versions (2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x) have it disabled. And this seems to be true for several models (possibly all). Neither versions have it user configurable as was the case in Easy Settings (for Win7).

If more users can confirm or refute this, I am very interested.

 

I didn't realize (or forgot) there was a samsung bluetooth driver, I installed but it looks like its just the Intel Proset package? Bluetooth still doesn't show up in easy settings for me in W7 on the 7260 like it did when I had the 6230. Not sure if I need a different samsung driver than the one for the X3B's 6230. Wouldn't think so, I also tried easy settings 2.0.0.55 without luck. I still have to uninstall easy settings to get bluetooth to work, but I don't use it much. I think I've only tried the MS and Intel drivers in W8 and didn't have bluetooth in settings there either. I also don't understand why a bluetooth driver download takes up 150MB for W7 and 300MB+ for W8!

 

I agree, those PROset Bluetooth drivers (both from Samsung and from Intel) are insanely bloated, which is the reason I prefer using Windows' built-in BT driver. But that driver (built-in Windows) does NOT provide a BT toogle in Charms-Settings-PC Settings nor in Samsung Settings. As I recall, neither does the one directly from Intel. Only the Samsung' provided driver provides that toggle. And of course the Samsung provided driver for your model doesn't support 7260.

You could try the Bluetooth driver in SW Update under model NP940X5J-K02US, since that model comes with 7260 AC.

 

The bluetooth does work when easy settings isn't getting in the way, but you're right I should try the AB9+ driver. Unfortunately, I cannot uninstall the 6230 driver because I don't have the 6230 card so the uninstall won't proceed. Stupid intel. I'll have to wait till I reimage to try again. Thanks.

 

You might want to try the suggestions here.

John

 

Thanks for that, it was an amusing read ("this is an evasion of responsibility"). In my case, in order to uninstall the bluetooth package I have to put the 6230 card back in. Intel in their infinite wisdom allows you to install the driver without checking for the card, but does do a check on the uninstall. It's not really hurting anything and it's easier to just reimage than worry about stripping those tiny screws (mine are particularly stubborn).

 

How many hours of real usage you're getting out of your laptops? I'm lucky to get 4hrs wifi surfing with 30% brightness on my X3F. HWinfo shows 11.6% wear with 140 cycles. Haven't calibrated in a while.

 

It would be worthwhile running the battery calibration to see if it will reduce the reported wear.

4 hours WiFi surfing is slightly on the low side. You need to figure out where the power is going. I discovered years ago are that Flash can be a power guzzler so I run Firefox with Flashblock (plus AdBlock Plus to reduce the amount of unwanted web page content).

Start by checking the power usage (HWiNFO's Sensors tab will show this) without any web browser running. This should be below 6W at the minimum display brightness (also check the CPU usage in Task Manager). Then see how much extra power the 30% brightness uses. After that you can open the web browser and see how much further the power usage increases.

The battery holds about 45Whr when new but the effective capacity is more like 40Whr (assuming that Battery Life Extender, if you have it, is disabled). If the power drain is 8W then you can run for 5 hours.

John

 

That is indeed quite stupid on the part of Intel's uninstaller.

I suppose you could still forcefully uninstall the adapter in Device Manager and choose Delete driver software for this device.

I believe the good old trick to show non-present devices in Device Manager still works:

(command prompt)
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
devmgmt.msc

Then enable View-Show hidden devices in Device Manager.

Edit: Just to make clear to others who might see this: This is far from a clean way to uninstall drivers, particularly for something as bloated as Intel drivers, since it leaves much of that bloat behind which is not directly linked to the device.

 

I managed to get everything working with your help in Ubuntu too. Thank you for your help! Battery lasts 3-5h now

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk

 

What's the name of the battery calibration tool to use?

 

It's in BIOS (boot F2). Charge fully to 100% before and after running the calibration.

 

My recommended procedure for calibration is (i) disable Battery Life Extender (if your notebook has it) and fully charge the battery to 100% then (ii) use the notebook on battery until the charge is around 5% then (iii) shut down and boot into the BIOS, find the Calibration option (it's on about the 4th top menu option if I remember correctly) and let it run until the computer stops because the battery is fully drained, then (iv) fully charge the battery.

Then check the reported wear.

John

 

Ran calibration twice. Wear jumped up to 15% after the first run and stayed there.

I need to look into this a bit more when I have time... I'm using Chrome and with 15-20 tabs my power drain was on average 12W (min 9W, max 21W)...this was with 70-80% brightness. Are you aware which Wifi drivers are better, latest (from station-drivers.com for example) or use Samsung's own from SW Update? I mean power drain and signal wise?

 

Are you still under warranty or has it conveniently run out? If wear has increased as a result of calibration then that might be a sign that the battery is dying. If so, running another calibration cycle is likely to further increase the wear.

Check the CPU utilisation. I suspect that all those instances of Chrome add up to more than 5% CPU. 70-80% brightness is also quite high. I prepared this graph for the NP900X3B which shows how the power increases (the rest of the system needs around 4W on idle).

View attachment 112741

The best source of the drivers for an Intel WiFi card (which you probably have) is direct from Intel.

John

 

Ran another calibration and wear dropped back to 11.6%. My laptop is still under warranty but I don't live in the country anymore where I bought it and haven't found much info about international warranty.

I recorded the HWinfo logging today when draining the battery from full to empty. It took 3 hours to go from about 91% to 6%. Here's the graph with discharge rate (avg. 10.8W), charge level and cpu usage.
Just normal web browsing (chrome, 15tabs), few youtube videos, brightess 30-40%, thats it.

 

That's a nice graph that clearly shows the relationship between CPU usage and battery discharge (-ve of the charge rate).

There is information about the Global warranty here and there should have been a booklet included with your computer.

However, I don't think that 11.6% wear would be considered sufficiently abnormal to justify battery replacement.

John

 

I have some out of warranty S9's.
Is it possible to get replacement screws for those that secure the bottom plate?
If so, is there a known size, and where can they be obtained?
I am in USA.

Thanks!

 

Try this.

Also see this thread which suggests that the price may be for one screw when I would have expected 10.

So you may first want to try a bag of these assorted screws and see whether the M2x4 in that set is suitable. The critical aspect is the shape of the head.

John

 

I recommend searching ebay for np900x screws. I picked up a bag from a teardown. It's so easy to strip the heads so make sure you have the correct screw driver.

 

Thanks all!

Just ordered a used EBAY set that should do me fine.

 

Did you (or anyone else here who has installed Intel 7260 NIC and removed 6235 from X3E or similar model) ever get their configuration resolved?
I have several X3E's and tried a 7260 in one. I was able to get the wireless configured but not the Bluetooth, and I understand from this thread that the Settings utility will slam the Bluetooth setup. I tried drivers for Windows 7 and 8.1 Upgrade, and tried getting Intel drivers direct from Intel's downloads.

I gave up, but would certainly like to try again, if there is a better way to accomplish it?

 

Yeah, I got it working in W8.1. If you install the bluetooth driver from the AB9+ before you install settings, it should show up. However, I realized I don't really need it as the windows driver works and if I turn off wifi, it turns off bluetooth as well (doesn't seem to persist across a reboot though). Windows 7 was another story. If I wanted to use bluetooth, I had to uninstall easy settings (and rely on loading the hotkeys separately).

 

Thanks a lot for the update.
I want to run Windows 7 on this particular one, and by re-reading through (almost) everything including the threads:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/727499-wifi-remedies-samsung-laptops.html

and

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/729139-settings-easy-settings-what-you-need-know.html

and even the trials and tribulations here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/745930-force-settings-easy-settings-detect-bluetooth-3.html

I picked up most of what Samsung has turned into what seems like an unnecessary hassle with their "software" (to use the term loosely, and be kind).

Nobody seems to have been able to uncork a true workaround to this, and since this is an X3E I am working on I am posting in this thread.

The only thing I did not find the answer to was:

If I want to run Windows 7 with a 7260 in place of the original 6235, and load the hotkeys separately from Windows Startup as you did, was a solution ever found to enable Fast Start in Windows 7 (not referring to Rapid Start, Rapid Storage, or Fast Boot!) or does anyone know a way to make Fast Start work with this setup?

Also, the last thing I want to do is to thread-crap this well-organized forum, so, mods, please feel free to edit and/or hurl my last 2 posts to one of the previously mentioned threads.

Thanks to all!

 

I'm not sure I would call this place "well organized".

You've included the links to the other main discussions of this topic so if anyone comes here first then they know where else to look.

John

 

Yes and No. What I did was load the hotkeys by adding the file to the windows startup folder (I forget what the exe is called). I then made a copy of the easy settings folder and created a link to the easy settings console (sorry I forget the name of that exe as well) on my desktop. Then I uninstall easy settings. When I start windows, the hotkeys are active, along with bluetooth and wifi. If I want to use fast start I open the console for the standalone easy settings and toggle the setting. This also works with IRST. Unfortunately, as soon as I open the console, bam bluetooth is dead. So I could have one or the other, not both. Maybe someone else had a better workaround though. I gave up and went with W8.1, but unfortunately there I lost IRST. You just can't win sometimes.

 

@aamsel: Thank you for sharing that list of links.

As you discovered, member go45cvi has shared extensively about his experience getting a replacement 7260 WiFi card to work, including the challenge of getting [Easy] Settings to either provide control for Bluetooth or (at least) not prevent it from working. I seem to recall a few other discussions of it in the NP700Z5C owners lounge although I don't remember the details.

That hack of sideloading the Easy Settings EasyDisplayMgr task (dmhkcore.exe, for Fn-keys) and opening its control center (SmartSettings.exe) with a Desktop or Start Menu shortcut, is limited to the older Easy Settings versions 1.x and forgoes many other Easy Settings features, such as Samsung Fast Start Mode. It's kind of old school and discussed in the latencies thread.

What I would recommend at this point, is to try Bluetooth drivers from one of the newer models that come with 7260, such as NP940X3G (AB9+), NP900X3G (2014 13" AB9) or NP930/940X5J (2014 15.6" AB9). And try it in combination with Easy Settings from one of those newer models that also support Win7. I see that NP940X3G-S04US has Easy Settings version 2.0.0.78 from March 2014 (under Win7 drivers, of course).

As a sidenote, that Easy Settings 2.0.0.78 also has a Win8 folder (like other recent Easy Settings packages) presumably containing Settings version 2.0.0.78, which is the newest 2.0.x version I have seen -- and should support Samsung Fast Start Mode, ExpressCache and BLE for Win8.0 and 8.1 users.

I am a bit tied up these days, but if anyone gets a chance to test these and report their findings in the Settings/Easy Settings thread it is much appreciated.

 

Ah yes, I forgot to mention I had tried the W7 bluetooth driver from the AB9+, but it still didn't get it to show up in easy settings. However, when I tried the AB9+ W8 bluetooth driver it was a little finicky as to when it would show up and I had to try it a few times (alternating between installing easy settings before or after). I also can't remember whether I was using version 1 or 2 of easy settings in W7 and how much effort I put in (probably not much). If I have the chance I'll try it again as I may reimage the machine this week.

 

I remember you DID mention you had tried the AB9+ BT driver last time we discussed it. The gist of my suggestion here, is that combining a Samsung provided 7260 driver with the new Easy Settings versions released this spring, might be the secret to crack this. After all, new Samsung models with 7260 adapter AND Win7 pre-installed (such as the NP930X5J US models) really must have this working.

 

It is more than just Samsung notebooks experiencing these issues. Quite a few instances of 7260's working when swapped in, but the bluetooth not working.
It would seem that Intel has a lookup table that it references during the install, but who knows? Why would Wifi work, but not bluetooth? What is the reason?
Maybe we can find the method that will work.