2013 Ativ Book 9 Plus owner's lounge (NP940X3G)

You're welcome... and have fun with your new toy . Had exactly the same thoughts and expected it weeks after the Y2P. The i7/8/256 was not even listed on their site 48 hours ago and not in stock at 7:30 this morning. 30 minutes later - to my own surprise - the status changed to "available".
I think the price for "K03CH" is very competitive in comparison with "K04CH" (lowest offer: CHF1893.00 up to 2150.00) whose only difference is Win "Pro".

@John:
Power cord: 1m / ~39.37" (3-core w. ground)
PSU to notebook: 1.8m / ~70.68"

 

OK, just got off a chat with Samsung and they 'say' the K04 and K05 are the same product but that the K04US will only be sold online by Samsung.com and the K05US will be the retail SKU.

 

Thank you.

Your PSU + mains cable are about 50g lighter than those supplied with the UK Book 9 Lite. Part of that may be due to the relatively chunky UK mains plug.

John

 

That is not true. K04 are available to pre order at many non Samsung retailers.

 

I was just relaying what the pre-sales script reader told me. That being said, I've not seen but one or two retailers offering pre-orders for the K04US (I can only find one right now) so if you don't mind sharing, who some are some of these other retailers?

 

Here are a few.

Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus NP940X3G-K04US NP940X3G-K04US B&H Photo

NP940X3G-K04US - Samsung ATIV Book 9 Ash Black Laptop Computer at Abt

Samsung NP940X3G-K04US ATIV Book 9 Plus 13.3" Touchscreen Ultrabook - Black in PC Ultrabooks | JR.com

Mine was pre-ordered from Amazon.

 

The -K05US page is now "page not found" which suggests that Samsung aren't sure of its specs.

Pro version of Windows is a plausible hypothesis - Samsung will be hoping to get some purchases by companies.

John

 

B&H is listing the i7 model now, with the note "Item available for preorder and will ship beginning Wed, Nov 20 "

 

Hey everyone, been watching this forum about the ATIV Book 9 Plus and I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on the 128 GB model. Unfortunately I don't have any stores near me that have the plus model in stock, so I'm hoping people could tell me how the resolution works with windows 8.1 now that 8.1's been out for a bit. Thanks for the help!

 

CostCentral has 1 in stock. They may be rolling in finally.

Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus 940X3G (NP940X3G-K04US) - Laptops / Notebooks

 

That one says i7 + 128GB + 4GB.

John

 

Does anyone have a direct link to download the Intel Experience Center driver 1.8? The original app does not work since I upgraded to 8.1 and it says I need to update it to 1.8 but I can't download it. When the Intel Update manager says to download and install nothing happens. I can't find the original location either to run as an administrator.

 

FWIW.... a got a Amazon rep to check his system and it appears that Amazon is expecting their first shipment Nov. 6.

 

That's good news with the Amazon info, makes sense since people have estimated delivery dates of Nov 8.

 

why Amazon prices are expensive then others? Listing Pre-Order price is 240$ expensive then the others nearly.
Amazon.com: Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus NP940X3G-K04US

Because of that i am able to get computers cheaper in my country unexpectedly

 

That is not Amazon's price. That is a third-party seller on Amazon. Amazon took out their pre-order option probably until they have them in stock.

 

hi,

i have some sort of questions for experienced owners of AB9+

Is it getting too hot when using for example 4-5 hours on your knees?
other question is that it says 3200x1800 pixells of resolution. Is that true. in some web stores in specs its written as it has FHD Res. And also some market places i talked the sellers dont know it should be QHD Res.

it was talked in previous pages but i am not sure what exactly the result is; How is the battery life? Is it 11 hours as it is promised or not?

Lastly i have a question at all in my mind. Shall i wait for K04 i7 model does it worth?
256gigs of ssd is too way better than 128gigs for me but i am not sure does it worth for 400$+Taxes of different between i5 model and i7 model. as i dont believe i5 4200 and i7 4500 has mountains of differences in performance.

 

so still no fix for the brightness control and power profiles for windows 8.1?

 

Everything works fine for me.

 

The laptop doesn't really get hot or anything like that in normal use situations. The only time it can get a little warm is when its connected to the outlet and charging.

The screen resolution is 3200x1800 but windows is set to 1080p out of the box. This is because not all apps scale correctly with those super high resolutions. You can turn this back up to the native resolution, but even at 1080, everything still looks great.

Battery life is awesome and while I never actually timed it, Id say that 10 hours is about the correct battery life. It totally lasts me all day of working on the web, in excel, word, etc...

You don't really need an i7 processor. I don't see any speed issues with this computer, but 128gig SSD is a little bit limiting in its storage capacity so make your decision based on that.

 

A couple of weeks ago I asked you for an advice in choosing AB9 vs AB9+ and ended up buying the former. However, it had 3 dead pixels, so I returned it since they didn't have another one to change it for me, and now I have AB9+ instead.

Everything works fine, keyboard feels maybe even better than one of AB9, but in any case it isn't worse. Not sure yet whether 128GB is going to be enough since I could not find much to remove and had about 68-69GB free. Scaling remains to be the only problem so I'm staying in FHD (which looks as good as QHD+ for me) mode for a while with win8, hoping for a nice update soon. I was a bit worried about processing speed, but during some data analysis computations it was about twice as fast as my laptop with intel core 2 duo t6600, 2.2ghz. I haven't tried holding it on my knees for 4-5 hours, but temperature was one of the main concerns for me when choosing a laptop and I am totally satisfied. I second @lagos that battery lasts about 10 hours.

I have one question though. BIOS says that I bought this AB9+ on 2013-10-30, which is true; some Samsung apps were installed on 2013-07-29, which also seems fine. But it says that my copy of Windows 8 were activated on 2013-09-20, so is this normal, or is this a possibility that my laptop was returned and sold to me?

 

I've also had this issue since updating to Windows 8.1. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a solution. My model is the K01US.

 

I suspect the Samsung apps dates reflect when they started building the disk image but can't explain why the Windows activation date is earlier than the date in the BIOS. The latter reflects the date when the computer was first turned on. Perhaps the windows activation was part of the 8.1 installation done in the factory. You could look at the SSD's SMART data using HWiNFO or similar and see whether the power on hours look reasonable for the time you have been using the computer.

John

 

Can anyone clarify the problem? I have not noticed anything wrong with either of these features since upgrading to 8.1, but perhaps it's just based on my use.

 

AB 9+ 4200U/4GB/128GB, is a really bad choice when it comes to Photoshop with Nik Software. Everything goes slow, even slower than my Asus N43S with I5 2410M/4GB/HD2000. Another really big problem is that Adobe Photshop is not scaling on 13,3, except on Mac 13,3.

If you don't use the AB9+ for editing, I think it's a really good laptop. It's quiet, plays 4k and it's not getting hot at all. Battery life is also very decent.

 

prior to upgrading to the 8.1 or the samsung software those two features were working fine but after upgrading to 8.1 the laptop loses those functions: fn+brightness up and down no longer works so screen is always at max brightness and power schemes are no longer available or allowed to be created.(POWER SAVER,BALANCED,FULL PERFORMACE )

 

What display resolution are you using?

Did you try reinstalling the Windows 8 version of Settings?

John

 

QHD+. I have also tried 1920x1080p, it was just as bad.

 

uninstalled, reinstalled and now the screen is dimmer but still no adjustments.

 

I have no such problems and this seems to be very rare. I am not sure what the problem might be.

 

I dont see 'intelellimemory' anywhere on my machine, and the memory usage is still 40-50% according to task manager.
What can be the cause?

I got the ab9+ from a friend yesterday,fully new, havent done anything on it, just update it to win 8.1.

The memory usage is stupidly high, it was so even with win 8 befor the update.
Should I remove some of the software that came with it?

 

I downloaded Windows 8.1 to my Ativ Book 9 Plus and my touch pad went haywire, particularly on Chrome. Two or three Samsung patches later, it works, but then seems to break when I visit certain pages (like the New York Times). The touch pad then loses sensitivity in the upper 2/3. I'll have lots of mobility right-to-left, which then allows me to momentarily move up and down, but then goes unresponsive again.
Anyone else having this issue? Any ideas?

 

That might be adaptive brightness at work. See this and this.

Look at the Processes tab in Task Manager. Click on the Memory column header to sort by size. What are the five biggest users of RAM?

Only get worried about the pre-installed software using RAM if they are listed there (but IntelliMemory is an exception because it hides in the background).

However, high memory usage is also a problem for some others so there may be some underlying bugs.

John

 

Samsung is using something similar to intellimemory (and sadly they're proud of it). It's darned impossible to find and remove. It caches frequently used stuff to RAM and releases cache contents if memory gets low (ideally).

 

How do we find and remove it completely?

 

HELP REQUEST FROM THE LENOVO YOGA 2 PRO FORUM!
Visitor here from the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro forum. There's a theory (unconfirmed) that the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus with the QHD+ 3200x1800 and our Yoga 2 Pro share a very unusual Pentile-based LCD panel.

The theory also goes that Samsung did a better job of calibrating the colors on their configuration of this display.

There is a 100++ page thread on the Lenovo area of complaints about yellow on our Yoga 2 panel appearing mustard greenish or brownish.

Here's the request...
Could someone with the Samsung Ativ Book 3200x1800 display look as see if Samsung has supplied a CUSTOM .ICC or .WCS color profile file. IF SO, could you upload this .ICC or .WCS file to this forum so us Yoga 2 users can see if it works/helps address our color rendering issues

If you run the "Color Management" tool in the Control Panel, on the devices tab, it should show the File Name of the ICC or WCS profile set as default for the screen

Then look in.
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color

Hopefully that file should be stored here. Otherwise, we're looking for anything with QHD or Pentile or Samsung in the name of the .ICC or .WCS file or anything else that indicates its designed for this special screen.

Many thanks in advance!

Richard (and all the other frustrated Yoga 2 Pro users!)

 

I bit the bullet and did a Windows refresh and reinstalled 8.1. Now everything is working, including power profiles and brightness controls. It took a few hours but that's nothing compared to that time I spent trying to fix it in the past week with all of my driver updates, rollbacks, etc.

Sent from my HTC6500LVW using Tapatalk

 

Another question, how can I use chrome in desktop mode and not in metro-mode, if you know what I mean?

Running chrome now doesn't give me the three buttons up there in the right corner (X-close, maximize/minimize), its very annoying....

I'll try later and see if win 7 goes through this one also.

 

after the refresh, did you jusst update to 8.1 or update samsung software then update to 8.1?

 

In Chrome, click on the Menu button (top right), and select 'Relaunch Chrome in Desktop mode" - doing this will make Desktop mode the default for Chrome

 

Maybe this will help - remove the ".txt" extension and it should be a .icm file (ICC Profile). Let us know how it goes...

 

Ahhh =), thank you. I must have been blind....

 

I cant say for certain this fixed my memory problem, but I updated all programs using SW Update, and then uninstalled some of the Intel software, like the WiDi package, and rebooted. Has been working great for me ever since!

 

After the refresh to 8, I updated all Samsung software and drivers then applied all the windows updates before installing 8.1. That's what I did the first time but it turned out much better this time around. Good luck!

 

The more I look into this, the more I think we have the exact same problem - #FFFF00 on my AB9+ looks way more green than yellow to me. Does anyone else here have any thoughts on this?

 

Yes, yellow looks too dark when the AB9+ isn't plugged into power. But plug it in and the yellows are really yellow. The Yoga 2 Pro has mustard yellows even when plugged in (I'm guessing Lenovo could fix this since the AB9+ works properly plugged in). The Yoga 2 Pro's yellows are more off than the AB9+ when comparing both unplugged.

 

Ugh. Off-color yellows combined with pentile subpixel arrangement are not giving me the warm and fuzzies. Anyone have any experience with notebooks with the 2560x1440 screens?

 

I haven't seen any real evidence (so far) that the AB9+'s yellow is better than the Y2P's in battery mode. As soon as I pull the power plug, an "average yellow" turns to "mustard" within ~1 second. Interestingly, it looks like the yellow standard MS folders on the desktop are not affected, a change is barely visible at least.

 

If the yellow looks fine when plugged in, have you guys look/find the power or display saving mode and turn it off so it doesn't change when plug in or not? There is no reason why the display color changes unless these features are on.

Lancair, you have a Y2P also to compare both?

 

Not now but yesterday - side by side. I met a friend with his brand new Y2P but since he left his power adapter at home I can only judge the battery mode.