2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E)

Have you seen the color profiles in the Settings application?
You can access them pressing Fn+F1 then clicking Display.
The first profile, called "No effect" is really yellowish!

 

I just posted a little tutorial to upgrade the driver to the latest Catalyst 13.3 beta 3 on the other thread.
It worked for me, but it's a little complicated (and long and boring...) and maybe it could cause problems (tough for the moment I found none)

If someone else wants to try, feedback is welcome!

Edit: sorry for this double post, I'm a noob sometimes!

 

Suspect it's behind the little strip of plastic on the lid - as shown...

 

Getting my work bonus next week.... might just go for the Bestbuy version. Was planning to pick up some PC games that I've missed out on since last year. And then finish up Bioshock Infinite/COD-Blops2 later.

Does anyone know if BB will take a return on this (without charging my restocking fees) if the ATI driver issue turns out to be a deal-breaker in terms of gaming? I mean that would be considered a factory defect right?

Coming from console gaming, as long as I can run these games at 1600X900 and above with med settings, I'm a happy camper!!

 

Is it just me or this laptop does not have an HDD/SSD activity LED light?

 

Yep, thus rewarding us with 7 seconds of extra battery life!
HDD activity lights have always seemed totally pointless to me!

 

agree

but what I am much more missing: Is there really no key for shutting of screen? On my Zenbook it was Fn + F7 to turn off Notebook Screen, but there is no such key here

Only way I found up to now is a Strg + Alt + 1 - Shortcut with a 3rd party programm, is there no better solution for this problem?

 

Another thing, no numlock light on/off indicator?


BTW is the display on this IPS or PLS because I do not see the color shifting from diff angle and it retains same color like an IPS panel?

 

I think the general consensus is that its a very good quality PLS panel.

On a different note, can someone please tell me why 10gb of my RAM is being used when I'm not really doing anything?



Is it something to do with the 'intellimemory' program? I remember reading something about it, but keeping up with 3 threads all on the same subject, one with 400+ pages is melting my mind. Fellow owners who have installed SSD's, which programs are safe to remove after using samsungs recovery software?

I dont want to accidentally uninstall something to have my laptops wifi, display etc etc stop functioning.

Thanks!

PS. still totally loving this beast

 

He already said it is still yellow even at standard. When going "No Effect" option it even makes it more yellow.

 

Your RAM problem is intellimemory, which uses RAM as a cache to save read/write to the slow HDD. If you've swaped out the HDD for an SSD, you definately don't need it.

I've uninstalled intellimemory, all the Norton software and office trial, but left everything else on and my machine works flawlessly at the moment.

I think you can also uninstall photoshop essentials, as far as I can tell, it's only a trial - I've tried to find out from the community whether it IS a trial only or whether I should have a key somewhere with the Chronos, but that question got lost in the thousands of others related to this brilliant machine. If its a trial, remove away, if it has a key, it's worth keeping (in my opinion)!

 

We think its a variant of MVA, which is a slightly different technology. The screen is made by AUO - this link might give you an idea. It's very similar to IPS.

 

I think it is probably this technology since the panels are made by AUO. A different technology from IPS/PLS but also giving excellent viewing angles.

John

 

You mean Fn F11, right? Fn F12 is Disable Wifi at my 770z5e

 

edit: solved

 

I read from the manual that NP770Z comes in 2 models, the manual called it Model-A and Model-B.

The one we have is Model-A... I would really prefer Model-B, as the hardisk LED indicator is very useful, esp. for power users.

I've installed the software Free HDD LED so overcome this issue.
Free HDD LED - My Portable Software

 

Neither model A or B (of the 15inch model) have a HDD status indicator - the extra lights on model B are caps lock and Fn lock indicators. On model A, those are embedded into the keys, so don't need to be on the top bezel.

The only way to get a HDD indicator is to go for the 17inch model.

 

I finally managed to install linux beside a fresh Win8 Install. All keys work out of the box except manual keyboard backlight control (auto mode works). Rest is fixed with samsung-tools.
Also CPU usage is high, heat is permanently 10-15°C higher than in Windows giving runtimes around 5 hours.

First install Win8, following this guide http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...es-7-chronos-amd-hd8870m-335.html#post9124209

1. For Linux Install Fast Bios must be off to enable boot from USB, Secure boot off and sub option to CSM + UEFI

1b. Prepare a partition for Linux in Windows. Just cut it off from the end of your drive. You can do that with Windows disk management. winkey+r -> diskmgmt.msc

1c. MAKE SURE your partition table is set to MBR ! Else you will run into trouble when installing. Click on a drive somewhere in disk management -> properties -> hardware tab -> properties button -> volumes tab -> update. Partition type should be MBR

2. Download your Linux Distro, I use Mint 14 with MATE desktop - gave me the least CPU usage of all GUIs

3. Use Wind32 Disk Imager tool to create a bootable USB stick, just load your Linux iso and click write Win32 Disk Imager | Free Development software downloads at SourceForge.net

4. Now use Fixparts tool for Windows to remove GPT bootrecords, Windows does an unclean job which kills live Linux partition detection ! Just type "fixparts 0:" in command line, it should detect and offer an option to remove. http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/

5. Attach your stick, go into bios and set to boot from stick

6. Install normally, boot into linux

7. Open a Linux terminal to install samsung tools, type:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:voria/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get samsung-tools

You can launch it over your GUI, it made a entry somewhere in System menu

8. You may want to install "jupiter" to save power:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/jupiter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jupiter

restart your pc

9. You may want to change GRUB boot records. I deleted all except Win8 and Mint14, set Win8 to default and timer to 2. When you press key buttons it will interupt the timer, WARNING, don't set timer to 1 - you can't interupt that and will need to find other ways to fix ! Will give you big trouble if you set win8 as default boot !

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-customizer
grub-customizer

 

Great! So is it safe to tell that there is no UEFI bug??

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

added 1c

and yes, no brick for me. but it seems dedicated gpu isn't working.
dont except a win8 replacement - linux sucks, has no proper driver support runs games slowly.
if you want to use it seriously, you should make sure it's fully supported.

it's only good if you need it for work / university experiments etc.
but safe you the trouble and don't even consider it for home use

 

Will this ATI/AMD driver work on 8750m, 8770m, 8870m on our new 2013 chronos touch and non touch?

AMD Catalyst AMD Catalyst™ 13.3 Windows® Beta Driver

 

Detects HD8000 MOD but fails to install, gives me an straight error before it does anything.
Uninstalled all AMD related, disabled driver signature - now way.

Shouldn't it be the mobility enduro drivers anyway?

 

Had to remain at work till late today... What kind of error?

 

Stopped by 2 Bestbuy stores today (different cities). None had the 2013 Chronos on display :-(. Though when I asked the supervisor, he confirmed that they actually had the NP780 (ATI 8770) in stock and if I wanted, he could 'ring me up and I'd have the laptop in my hand in 2 mins!!'.

I really had to fight my inner devil NOT to walk out with the laptop :-(. Figured it'd be hard explaining to my wife why our checking (or savings) account shows $1200 less overnight .

Sadly, he couldn't tell me when the 8870 version will hit stores either.

I'm gonna hold out till early April...if still no official announcement for the 8870 version, I'm getting the toned down Bestbuy version.

 

It shows a window saying it found the drivers "HD8000......MOD" but there was an error when installing.
Nothing else :/

 

Same here. Something about not being able to find a file.

Btw black83. Would you mind if I put your ssd install tutorial in the first post since it's a very good one? Under your name off course.

 

Hey everybody,

I'm thinking of buying the Series 7 Chronos but before I have some questions concerning the swap from a HDD to a SSD:

First of all I wanted to ask whether someone of you could recommend a comprehenisve instruction on how to generally swap the HDD and afterwards doing either a clean install of Windows or installing a recovery image (if that's possible). I've never done this before and would really feel much more secure if I had such an instruction.

Then I have question spefically concerning the Chronos: I read somewhere about the 17" version of the Chronos that it is not possible to read out the key of the Windows 8 installed on the HDD and then to simply boot a trial version of Windows 8 and insert the key. Is that also the case for the 15" version or has anyone of you made different experiences? (Sorry, if that question has been answered in the other topic concerning the Chronos but I'm not really able to find something on the somewhat 400 pages there) Bascially the question for me is wether I need to buy another copy of Windows 8 or not.

Finally I would like to know wether it is possible to do a recovery image of the HDD and then transfer it on the SSD and get it working as before. I read black83's instructions on how to swap the HDD and there a clean install is done but I would rather have Windows 8 and all the preinstalled software on the SSD (eventhough it is mostly bloatware but I would rather decide for myself on what to keep on the notebook).
If that should not be possible: Do all of the features like Silent Mode also work on the SSD if I do a clean install and download the drivers via SW-Updater or rather are there any that won't work then?

 

approved

@Reeth:

Tutorial: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...es-7-chronos-amd-hd8870m-335.html#post9124209

Clean Install:
After running SW update everything is like stock windows, just the bloatware is gone. You may have some trouble when you close the lid. If it crashes after, uninstall HD4000 in device manager (and drivers too). You may need to do that 1-2 times, windows has few versions. SW update will detect it then and offer an install - after that it should work.

Serial:
You simply install windows, no key needs to be entered. When you go online, the numbers at bottom right corner vansih and it's activated. no actions needed for that, key is stored in bios and windows 8 knows that - nothing to buy. You can still upgrade windows versions within windows, i upgraded standard version to pro with a key from my university.

OS transfer:
Samsung restore utility (f4 on boot) has an option to export on HDD / USB stick.
Maybe you can leave the HDD untouched and buy an chassis for it (10 bucks), then use it to restore - for me it throwed an error. But USB stick worked.

I installed the Paragon Hard Disk Manager Recovery CD to the HDD I swapped before, it created a bootable device. Then made a USB stick image and stored it on HDD. If I have to recover / backup anything, I just plug in that HDD and boot from it.

You can also unpack win8 ISO and move content to the HDD root + move Paragon stuff to a folder. Then you can install Win8 from it.

 

NP780Z5E Touchscreen w/ ATI 8770m and i7-3635QM Final Thoughts and Review

I just used it for a whole week and i can give my honest review and opinion about it.

Pros:- Great cool metal build quality
- Light, Slim and portable for a 15.6"
- Intel Centrino 6235 is perfect with no disconnects
- 1080p FHD and Viewing Angle is perfect at any angle vertically and horizontally, It's like an IPS Display (the good things about the display ends here and more on 1080p display cons at the bottom)
- Good responsive touchpad and vertical scrolling
- Great keyboard with no flex at all


Cons:
- Display has a yellowish tint even on standard setting and when you change to "No Effect" the yellow tint is even more pronounce. I noticed touchscreens mostly have this issue especially with the ipads and samsung smartphones
- Grainy screen and i don't understand why. The reason you go with glossy is to avoid the grainy surface of a matte screen and glossy should give you cleaner glass look but no, the glossy screen is like the same screen as my Sony Vaio s13p with the matte. I have other laptops here with glossy screen and it is clear and not grainy at all. I think they put something on top of the damn glossy screen to reduce some kind of glare making it grainy.
- Backlit Keyboard can't be turn off and it has a mind of its own turning on and off and sometimes you can't even see the keys themselves since the backlit makes the keys unreadable.


Other things to note, the 8770m is currently being reported my MSI Afterburner and HWinfo32 as 8750m instead of 8770m but after doing 3dmark vantage and 3dmark11, i'm sure this is the 8770m. Some games also does not show 1080 as an available resolution option. A real future 8000m series gpu driver can probably fix those in the future once they become officially available from Samsung or AMD/ATI website.


Right now, this laptop is going back to Best Buy for a full refund. I would've kept it but the yellow tint on the display and that grainy screen on a glossy screen is a major turn off.

 

Bummer dood.

I'm possibly picking this up from my BB tomorrow or Sat. The yellow tint...just how bad it is? It's funny...I have the iPad3 (retina) and also the Samsung Note 2 phone and I've never noticed any tints whatsoever. Maybe cos I'm not actively looking for it??

Did you get a chance to test the 8770 for gaming? I know the newer 8870 will be the bomb for mobile gaming but some say the 8780 is more comparable to the NVidia 650M, which is not really a bad thing as the 650M is a med end card for most recent games.

I guess for ya, even the newer model with the 8870 is probably out of the question too since they all use the same panel.

Well...good luck.

Thanks mate!

 

I had a one for 3 weeks before returning it to wait for the 8870 model, and Colpolite's assessement is pretty spot on. I didn't think the graininess of the screen was a major issue, I figured it was a trade off for having IPS like viewing angles at near TN prices. I didn't notice a yellow tint, but really a a lot of screens have a yellow or blue tint to them due to the backlighting used, even if its a just the colors looking warmer or cooler. Some people notice it more than others, photographers are really picky about their screens for this purpose. I tend to be at times as well as I do color print layout and color matching is difficult for a lot of monitors, although I don't use a notebook for that so never gave it a second thought. Id say, look at it... if it doesn't look bad to you then its fine.

 

I had the very same questions. This video helped a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFp5HpJ51rA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Also, buy an esata to usb bay and stick the ssd in it and connect to the pc. Use Samsung recovery to copy disk and copy that over to the ssd.

Cloning software like acronis dont work as they dont enable the recovrry partition.

Sent from my GT-N7100 using Tapatalk 2

 

Okay...just ordered the Bestbuy model (ATI 8770). Figure most likely, the 8870 version might be hitting US by mid April so worst case, I can always eat up the restocking fee and exchange this one at BestBuy.

Picking it up at my lunch time today (during work). Also picking up Bioshock Infinite tomorrow so it should be a fun weekend . Hopefully, I don't run into that 'yellow tint' issue that a member here reported.

 

There's no restocking fee btw

 

There is a fee if you return after their 14 day return period


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

Didn't know you could return it after fourteen days at all, good to know though, thanks

 

Here it is Camera pics so not the best.




Anyhoo...been using it for couple of hours now. My initial impressions....

- Screen is VERY nice with good viewing angles.I don't see any particular tints (or I'm not trying hard enough)
(At an lower angle):


- It's not that light either....but at the same time, it's not that heavy. I don't have any issues with the weight
- The 5400rpm HDD is really not that slow like some of the reviewers have claimed. Slow..yes..compared to SSD but by it's own right, it's acceptable. I'm coming from a 3 year old Asus laptop for me, the HDD is still faster (more so the OS+hard drive)...I did uninstall the Intellimemory app that's supposedly is what slowing down the HDD even more. I was planning to get a SSD this weekend but I'll wait now.
- Win8 is ......ummm Win8 ;-). But once you master the gestures, it makes sense (believe it or not!!). Closing apps by dragging them to the bottom of the screen is really neat.
- Battery life is very good....2 hours in with surfing, apps, and the battery indicator is telling me 7hrs left !!!!
- Haven't tried any games as I'm still at work
- Touch screen is very fluid and responsive. At first, I was skeptical about the use of a touchscreen on a laptop but now, I can tell it makes the Win8 experience more enjoyable. Note to self...don't let my toddler 'test' the touchscreen!
- Keypad will take a little getting used to but then it's a breeze typing on it. I've been using the touchpad all this while and no complaints with that either.
- Wireless seems to be working excellent (I'm using my work's 'Guest' Wifi and getting good speeds considering my office is 20 feet away from the nearest AP)

Peeves:
- Like others have mentioned, the backlit kb is so and so...in terms of lighting. The ONLY time it's visible is in a darkened room but I guess that's the whole purpose. Coolness factor goes down one notch here.
- I wish the keyboard was actually black with silver painted keys. From an angle, the letters hardly have any contrast. Minor issue but some may not like it.

I think for an average person and casual gamer (like me), the BestBuy model (ATI 8770) is more than decent. I haven't tried any gaming yet but for a everyday laptop, I think this meets my expectations and then some. BB now has reduced the laptop return policy to 14 days from day of purchase (30 days for veteren Reward Zone members). .

I'll still be watching the 8870 US release date/availability. If that one comes out prior to my 14 days return window, I'll consider a exchange BUT presuming that model costs another $100 or so. If that model gets priced above $1400, I'll keep this model.

So far, loving the Chronos!!!!!!!!

 

Happen to be in a Best buy and saw they had two open box models for $1044. I had purchased the BB model and returned it a few weeks back. At $1044 really tempted to pick it up. I only keep laptops 12-18 months so I think the 8770 would hold out that long

 

I hope that the 8870 version of the Chronos addresses this silver key, blue backlight (zero contrast - can't see what is printed on the keys) issue.
If not, there's always the Black version - which has Black keys with "white" lettering on the keys, and white-led backlight.
You can't get better contrast than that !
I hope they correct the issue - as I really like the look of the silver version.

This laptop is a work of art, otherwise.

 

@Fragster
I have to agree that despite the 5400 rpm hdd the system stays very snappy and responsive. Copying and loading files is still reasonably fast.

During my week of intensive usage this laptop (night and day) I never came across a light situation where the keys were not readable. Not even outside.

 

Has anyone upgraded to 12gb memory yet?

There was some discussion about this in the other thread but no real reports back. Is it possible and if so, would any performance be lost?

 

It definitely seems to be possible, since there is only 1 screw to open for this. Why should performance be lost? Also upgraded my Asus UX32VD from 2 x 2 to 2 + 8 GB RAM and got improved performance.

 

Has anyone managed to find any decent laptop cases for this?

It's one of my biggest pet-peeves that all the nice/cool cases are pretty much exclusively designed for macs... and this baby just wont fit into a 15" macbook case...

 

Asymmetric RAM arrangements don't significantly impact on RAM bandwidth while more RAM can help performance (provided it is used). My table here is for Sandy Bridge but Ivy Bridge results would be very similar. I would, however, emphasize that 12GB might leave you no better off than 8GB if you never actually use all 8GB.

John

 

I have a problem replacing HDD with SSD. I boot into Samsung recovery but it does not detect my brand new usb stick (I tried using 2 different sticks with same results, they both work fine on other computers). Any clue what could be wrong?

 

Hi Guys

I'm having a weird issue with the screen dimming. I think something to do with the ambient sensor or something. At time, even when I'm sitting in front of the laptop, the screen will momentarily dim and then go back to brightness again.

Can't find it in the Windows/Samsung options. Unless I'm missing some stupid checkbox.

And more from a user's view, I'm loving this laptop more so than ever . I already have the Samsung Note2 phone so was surprised to find the "S" apps embbed in the Windows apps. My kids had a fun time using the touchscreen for drawing/paint (S-Drawing apps). The Bing Travel app is also very neat (the 3-D real life view of cities is really awesome).

Getting familiar with Win8 now. Like I've said previously, once you master the gestures, u'll find that using them makes it more convenient than clicking typical buttons. I'll be downloading Witcher2 from steam today so that will my first PC game on this laptop.

At this point, I'm more than likely to keep this laptop (8770 version).

 

Goto Control Panel --> Hardware and Sound --> Power Options --> Change Plan Settings --> Change Advanced Power Settings

Click the Display dropdown and toggle Enable Adaptive Brightness off.

 

Anyone try installing Win7 on one of these babies yet? I love what Samsung is producing these days, but I've really no use for Windows 8. Wondering how difficult it would be to swap in an SSD and fresh install of Windows 7 (plus transfer/update all the drivers). Any brave souls out there done this yet?...

Oh, and I thought when Sammy announced this update to the Series 7 it was going to have a 16GB RAM option. Is that still to come?

 

I'm having trouble getting GPU-Z 0.6.9 to work... On first launching of the .exe I chose the standalone execution in the menu, but only the "Techpowerup" popup showed up then and nothing more happened. I had to close the soft through Task Manager. Now everytime I try to launch it, I can't get the installation menu to appear again, the popup still shows up, and nothing more...
I tried to authorize GPU-Z through the firewall and run it with switchable graphics set to high performance in order to use the 8870M instead of the HD4000. Did nothing.

On the other hand, CPU-Z works fine except for the "graphics" tab : it always displays the Intel HD4000 even when I set switchable graphics to high performance.

 

Same here.