New Samsung R580 "touch of red" notebook

I bought my refurb 580 with the i5 cpu, a few weeks ago, and it's terrific. I'm still fiddlin' with the control panel and the battery life...even tho I leave it plugged in most of the time, I am driven a little nutty by the battery drain, esp. when I first accepted the idea to max out at 80% of capacity in order to preserve battery life....don't think I can continue with that...

In any event, I have to make a decision about the software, since I have the limited term Office loaded....and tho I can go a few more weeks on the trial, I see on Ebay offers to buy the Academic version of Office 2010 (aargh, I only need Outlook and Word).......plus, I have a MS OFfice 2010 Beta version loaded on my desktop is soon going to expire......I assume that all of the Outlook emails and settings are just saved once I install the permanent version of Office...any special considerations that have to be made with regard to buying the permanent software?

 

I get over two hours if I use the " balance" feature (click battery icon in system tray) if I'm running on battery. Otherwise I use the " Performance" mode.
I don't fool with the 80% feature...

I still use the old 2007 office. Not much difference in that and the new. Overpriced.

 

Did you ever find what you were looking for?

 

Any new Samsung R580 owners here?

 

So, no more newR580 owners huh?
I don't like the last two new 15" versions as they took out the i5 cpu and replaced it with the i3. Downgraded the 15" model.

 

I suspect that there are new owners, but if they are happy with their purchase then they don't go visiting internet forums. Unless they are already members, people usually come to the forums only when they encounter problems.

John

 

I guess that is good then.

 

Hi folks,
I am the proud new owner of a second hand shiny R580 and I love it. Best decision I ever made buying this, I think. I have a question - and forgive me if it's already been asked but I've had a good look around:
Basically, being a refurb, it has turned up in the post fully functional, but with no discs, documents etc. I have noticed the hard disk is partitioned into two equal halves of around 250GB. My questions are -

a) why is this the case and is it a good thing?
b) should I be sort of wiping the laptop clean and reinstalling / repartitioning
everything

I have this weird urge to start wiping things and tinkering and this worries me...

Thanks!

 

Congrats! I love mine too.
Yep, that is normal for most notebooks anymore. They're going the cheap route and not supplying CD anymore. What I did was backed up everything to another HD, then wiped the HD and installed Win7 Ultimate with no bloatware and then installed my programs I wanted. Has worked flawless since.

However check around this forum to make sure that is what you want to do. You may be fine to leave it as it is. Most folks do.

 

The Samsung recovery solution makes images of C: which it stores on D: If you ever need to restore one of the SRS images then it wipes C:.

Personally, I tend to keep C: smaller so there is room on D: for not only the images but also all my user files.

John

 

So what did you decide to do? Or is that your first & last post?

 

Hello fellow R580 owners! Thought I would chime in and see how your laptop is doing. Mine is swell and no reported issues. So far and knock on wood, it has performed admirably on all accounts except for one: the battery drain keeps me tethered to the wall outlet more than I'd like. A bigger battery will be the next purchase as soon as I find a decent company selling a decent battery at a decent price.

 

Mine has run flawlessly for 7 months now, with the exception of the GPU every once in a while recovering.

However my one BIG complaint is Samsung has very NO accessories for this notebook such as a larger battery. NOT GOOD! Next time I may go with a different maker. There are no batteries out there and the only one I knew of is no longer carried by Amazon:

Amazon.com: Samsung R580 Laptop Battery Replacement: Electronics

 

Looks like Samsung squashed ALL the competition on selling batteries! I don't know what DHGATE is up to. Who is going to buy 1000 at a time of the 12-cell replacements? At this point, who outside Samsung knows if they even SOLD 1000 of these laptops! We will never know!

 

Well, because of the battery issue, or lack of getting one, will be the deal breaker next time a get another notebook. It won't be a Samsung.

What were they thinking when they marketed this notebook???

 

That's right. No one likes to be tethered to the wall outlet every hour. Who gives a hoot about battery saving choices. I should be allowed to use my computer the way I want ALL THE TIME at full power!

This is just crazy nonsense on the part of Samsung.

 

First time posting.
I bought my R580 last Summer, good laptop overall, but I do have huge problem with the location of it touchpad.
The way Samsung locate it touchpad make it extremely difficult for me to type. When I position both of my hands on keyboard properly, the base of my thumb is locate right in the middle of the touchpad, therefore when I typing it accidentally touching the touchpad all the time.
It caused other programs to pop up, place the cursor in random position that messed up all the stuff I type, etc.
I came from many of other brand before Dell, HP, Gateway, Asus, etc. never have any issue like this.

If we draw a vertical line down to bottom, most of other laptops has letter j close to the right end of the touchpad, where as this Samsung has letter j locate right in the middle of the touchpad.

Is there anyone experience similar problem to typing like me?
Other than that, good laptop.

 

Welcome to the forum good9folks!

You bring up a good point as I find this notebook a little frustrating to type on sometimes too. I'll be typing along and suddenly it will be typing somewhere else than where I was typing at. Happens more often than I like. That probably is from the same reason your complaining about, the touch-pad. I never thought of that.

Normally I use the notebook at home with a larger USB keyboard so it is not a real problem. But every time I take it to Starbucks or library, it will happen again. I will experiment with putting a paper over the touch-pad to see if that solves that problem.

 

Yes. It is inherit in the laptop design. I find it easier to just lift my palms so they are not resting on the laptop. That will prevent any accidental touchpad activity. You could also disable the touchpad and use a mouse.

 

Great Idea! I'm lazy to look it up... how do you disable the touchpad, since I use a mini mouse anyways?

 

Does Fn+F10 work? (Does the F10 key have a touchpad icon on it?).

John

 

Yep, that was it! You have another rep to make it 84.
Thanks!

 

I Have the choice of either buying Samsung R580 i5 or an HP Pavilion DV6-3141 .. i'll probably go with the Samsung one.. i'll buy it tonight , i just hope i don't regret it.

 

I think you are making a wise choice. I'd jump on the Samsung too!

 

Well... didja get it?

 

Hey guys!! How re u doing?
Well, I am using my r580 about a year now and I was thinking about open it to clean the vents, anyone ever did that?

My last note (acer 5930g) was VERY easy to take out the rear part to clean, not so sure about this one. Couldnt find any tutorial how to open it... damm my google skills maybe are getting low... :/

Thks!

 

There are no guides or service manuals for the R580 , and Samsung does not make it easy to open it up, to do any cleaning, unless you are feeling brave, it`s best to stick to blowing air with a can of air duster into the fan air intake below the power socket and the dust/dirt should come out the back vent.

 

Thx man! It was a very fast response!
I will se what I can do here... maybe I have something to pump air inside it... it-s just sad cuz I can see that the temps are geting high :/

 

When I return from Scottdale, AR next week, I'll see just how hard it is to open this notebook. If it is hard, it will be another strike against Samsung's notebooks, (the other being lack of being able to buy a 9-12v battery).

I sure like their TV's & Monitors though as I have 4 of them. 60", 50" 32" & 26".
They're second to none with those. That was why I bought this notebook in the first place.

Meanwhile, let us know how the cleaning went when you get to it.

 

My 6-cell battery seems to be losing its charge. I had it at 100% and it was hibernating. About 16 hrs later, it showed 60%. This is a considerable drop from 6 months ago. It would have been showing about 80-85%.

How is yours doing after a year of use?

 

Well, so far good, but I'm not hibernating the battery like you. I'm plugged in most of the time, so it's hard to tell on my battery. I've maybe used the battery 10-15 times at Starbucks the past year and it last about 2 hours every time so far. All batteries lose their charge after a year or so. So it's not just Samsung.

 

It can be worthwhile doing a full discharge every six months or so so that the battery can recalibrate itself. Windows automatically shuts down / hibernates before the battery is empty. Check if there is a battery calibration option in the BIOS. If not, the easiest way to do a full discharge is run Windows on battery until it shuts down and then restart the computer but go straight into the BIOS setup and leave it there until it stops running. Then fully recharge the battery.

John

 

This is now 9 pages long with 81 posts & 8,635 views, so I don't know if I posted this earlier or not, so here it is again. One of the better reviews on this notebook at the time it first came out is the one by PCMAG.com:
Samsung R580 Review & Rating | PCMag.com
I've had this for 9 months now and am still pretty happy with it. No need for an updated new notebook yet.

However due to the fact that I can't get a 9-12 cell battery anywhere in USA, I probably won't go with Samsung next time around. I'm thinking maybe for the first time since I bought my first notebook back in 1986, (I still have the Tandy 600) I may try a MAC.

Here is a pic of my first ever notebook back in 1986, the Tandy 600, sitting with my (at the time) brand new XPS Dell.

 

Right after my post, I ran the Samsung BIOS Calibration process once. It didn't make a difference so two days later I ran it again. Still no change. I really think the battery is at its life-cycle end. I am only getting about 1.5 hrs now - considerably shorter than when it was new. I have determined it has nothing to do with the computer...solely based on the battery.

I've been looking around and I might either go with a 9-cell or the Energizer 18000 external battery. Still determining whether or not these are both fully supported as the Energizer puts out a bit less juice than the Charger does and the 9-cell requires a response from Andy whether or not it is fully supported. I will likely go with either solution.

 

Double-posting...web did not refresh.

 

So what did you end up doing? I wish there was a 9-12 cell battery for this notebook somewhere in the USA.

 

Well the Energizer 18000 is DEFINITELY out! I sent a couple of emails and while the first response was promising the second response was unbelieveable. Basically they won't commit to how long the battery will last because of so many variables but after reading a lot of reviews it may not last any longer than a regular 6-cell battery!

The other one ( 7200mah Samsung R580-JS02 NP-R580-JS02CN battery) was met with a few responses as well. I believe it was Andy who responded to both emails. I will probably go with his $81 9-cell as the R580 sucks the life out of the 6-cell way too fast for normal use. Samsung really should have put a 9 or 12-cell battery in this laptop or made/make one available. There would be NO WAY it could handle a Blu-Ray movie at 80% charge and I wouldn't bet a nickel it could handle a movie even at 100% battery power. The 9-cell looks the most promising and available for individual purchases.

 

I was looking at the Samsung QX410 at Best Buy yesterday (nice notebook) and noticed it's battery is rated to last 7 hours! This is what Samsung should have done the first time, if they're not going to have parts accessible to us to get, they should at the very least make the 12 cell standard with the notebook when you buy it.

If I could fine a 12 cell in the States, I'd get it and keep this R580 for another year as it does everything I need, with the exception of battery life.

 

Yeah. If I wasn't teathered to the wall outlet so much this laptop would be so much better. I mostly surf the web with it. Forget about battery power when I am encoding video! It must be on AC power. The saving grace is that, fortunately, I have always been close to an outlet so it hasn't been too much of a bother or strain. If I could get a clean 2.5 hrs out of this battery (or any battery for that matter) watching a Blu-Ray movie then life would be so much better. Samsung should NOT have delivered such a dinky battery with this powerhouse. It romps on a lot of tasks so it needs the juice at all times!

 

My R580 i5 Turbo is now 6 months young, and I'm using the "Balanced" power default settings....this is the program which uses up to 80% of battery power, before shutting down the computer, but I now get only about 2 hours and small change on the battery life...it's really pathetic, given that I'm using the computer for ordinary office use, internet, email.....does anyone have suggestions about the type of power settings to use to prolong the battery life, to say, 4 hours...

 

Use HWiNFO32 to (i) check the battery wear (under the Battery properties on the main page - Designed Capacity, Fully Charged Capacity and Wear Level); and (ii) show the power drain when running on battery (its shown as Charge with a - prefix). If the battery wear is more than about 15% then you should be planning to ask Samsung for a replacement battery (but you may want to delay the asking until nearer the end of the warranty period). However, first do a full discharge on the battery. If there isn't a battery calibration in the BIOS then (a) leave the computer running on battery until it stops due to low battery then (b) go into the BIOS setup and leave the computer running until it stops (Windows won't let up fully drain the battery which is needed to recalibrate the empty point).

If the battery capacity is 50Whr and you want to run for 4 hours then you need to get the average power drain down below 12.5W. Once you can see the power drain, it's easier to figure out what influences it.

First, the display brightness is several Watts difference between dim and bright. The next factor is the CPU activity. You can look at the processes tab in Task Manager to see what is using the CPU. If you have a web browser open then any animated Flash can guzzled power (I use Firefox with the FlashBlock add-on).

Hope this helps,

John

 

Where you able to get four hours when it was new? If not, there is no way to do it now. But...

The first thing to do is to turn off the battery saver mode (or whatever it's called). This limits the maximum capacity to 80%. That means you don't have 20% of the capacity available. This limit is about making the battery last longer until you need to replace it. But, if you can't get the runtime you want, then it's pointless preserving it's ability.

The other thing to do is set the power scheme to "Balanced" and then go through it and change options to how you want it. I always reduce the times till the screen and drive are turned off and adjust the brightness to suit me.

 

I'm easily getting a tad over two hours of battery time with the balance setting and I've had the notebook a year now.

 

Hey all, i recently brought a brand new R580 i5 (2/3 months ago) and its brilliant apart from it overheats ALL the time.
I am using coretemp to monitor the temperature and normally it sits around 44-46 sometimes it goes to the high 30's, however anytime i run any game it shoots up to 70+ and i have coretemp shut it down at 75.
I was wondering if anyone else has this issue/is this normal for the r580?
Kind Regards,
Tom
P.s. it does it whether its on my lap, a table, a laptop holder thing so i don't think its the location i use it in.
Also are there any programs to control fan speed for the r580?

 

75C is a very conservative setting for shutting down the CPU. 95C would be more realistic limit and I would expect temperatures to stabilise in the 80s. Intel's Tjunction temperature for the Core i CPUs is 105C. I'm not sure whether that value triggers throttling or shutdown but either way it indicates that Intel thinks that its recent CPUs can run safely at 100C.

John

 

I'm at 11 months with my R580. 86.36% wear on the battery, it shows 41% charged no matter how long I let it charge, when I hit the power gauge on the battery three lights light up, the first, middle, and last. If I were to pull the power plug right now, my computer would shut down due to having no power.

Guess it's time to get that replaced. It went downhill starting a week or so ago.

Hoping I don't have to send the whole computer =\

 

If you going to send in the battery to Texas (Samsung's Repair Depot) they will also request the computer guaranteed as I tried already. I decided to pass on this option as I might as well reformat my hard drive as that is what they will do. And scratches are almost guaranteed too. No Thanks! I will let my battery run to nil and buy a new one before I send my computer to Texas. No offense to Texas but it isn't even really Samsung that I could really tell! Ugggghhhhhhh When you don't walk.....RUN!!!!

 

Absolutely right! I've sent several notebooks in for repairs over the years, HP, Sony, Dell etc and they all came back with scratches. My notebooks never have scratches as I take very good care of mine. I fix my own notebooks now and if I can't? I buy a new one.

 

Eh... Guess I'll shell out the money for a new battery after my next paycheck.

Was there ever a source for 12-cells or a reliable source for 9-cells found?

 

None in the USA that I know of. I think China or Hong Kong is the only place to find one.