New Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US Laptop i7 3615QM 650m Review!

I can work on a video tonight on how to open this up and install the drive.

 

It's a PITA to open.

 

Paul,
The video how-to would be wonderful. I am visually impaired but thinking about getting this laptop and your video would be extremely helpful to me and I am sure to others. Also, will be glad to see a detailed review when you and others have time. Did not think about this size laptop or about Samsung until this good thread came along and thanks again.

Gary

 

I have a similar question. I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, but have never operated on a laptop. If windows comes installed on the existing disk drive, how do I install windows on the new SSD after it's been installed - do I need a windows disk?

Also, if I buy this from Newegg, will it have bloatware?

Thanks.

 

i just installed windows on an SSD, whats the best way to get all the drivers up and running

 

When you buy the laptop, it comes with a "recovery disc" which will install the OS onto the SSD for you. As far as bloatware goes, there is a couple useless programs, but nothing to extreme. It can be easily uninstalled, and pretty fast as well with the quad core ivy bridge processor.

 

Samsung's easy software manager

 

problem is, there is no ethernet driver, so no internet connection.....

 

use another computer and download the driver on that > usb stick / burn to dvd ?

 

Use the wifi?

 

Also, anybody upgrade the ram yet? pics or vid of said procedure?

 

Use a thumb drive and download all the drivers to it. Then look in this forums website for windows 7 home premium and download it. I installed it to a usb thumb drive much quicker that way. Also make sure to use your key on the bottom of the laptop.

I've always had better luck doing a fresh install of windows to a ssd vs clone from hdd to ssd

 

I have another question about the computer. It started making the USB connect noise when I close it, and the disconnect noise when I open it. Is it a glitch, or is something really connecting?

Edit: It does this even when i have no usb devices connected to the computer at all.

 

I just did a video on how to take this laptop apart and install the ssd and memory. I have allergies so I sound very stuffed up! Also about 3/4 of the way through the video the sound breaks up but comes back in. Hope it helps!

 

That would be awesome, thank you!!

 

Samsung 7 Intel i7 3615QM Nvidia 650M 17" Laptop SSD & Memory Install by Paul Nelson - YouTube

New Video on how to change the ssd and memory! I'm not responsible for any damage you do to your laptop.

 

Fantastic laptop, but gaming is annoying on the fingers, of all places for the keyboard to get hot its wsd and qwer.....still love this thing tho

and i have a ssd

 

Great video Paul, it was very informative.
I liked the part of taking a SS of serial with your phone
Hope you get better soon!

 

Nice video, you camera sure loses focus a lot. When you open the bottom of the laptop, did you chip or break any of the plastic tabs? I opened my plastic HP laptop a while back, and several of the plastic tabs broke off.

 

Yeah new lifecam 1080p is junk or the software is. No tabs broken

 

this is now going for $1399 on amazon!
you guys think the price will drop more? or should i buy now?

 

At $1400, it is a steal for sure since amazon doesn't charge sales tax. I doubt it would drop anymore, I think amazon lowered the price to match that of best buy.

 

u think it will stay at $1400 or amazon will bump price again? because I also wanted to wait for the amd 7970m to come out on the 'gamer' version to see what that would retail for..

 

How's the battery life looking?

I'm waiting on the 14" or 15.6" but if the battery life on this is 5hr+, I might just go ahead and get one.

 

You never really know since amazon constantly changes their prices on a daily basis. But by the time the 7970m comes out, it will be around $1400 for sure.

 

I haven't really fully tested the battery life yet since my laptop is plugged in on the desk most of the time, but one thing for sure is that it will get over 4 hours of battery life.

 

I can't decide between this or the 7970m 'gamer' , what do you think?

 

I like this laptop, it looks nice and sleek and runs fast as well. I only casually game, so this laptop is perfect for me. If you want to hardcore game and max out all the games for the next 2-3 years or so, then you should go with the gamer, if you want a slim and sexy laptop, go with the NP7007C. Though I should mention, as said above several times by myself and others, that the mid-left side of the keyboard gets pretty warm. Aside from that, pretty much a solid laptop.

 

thanks for your insight.. I was only planning on getting this to play maybe Guild Wars 2 and CS:GO. Does the left side of the keyboard only get warm when playing games or also when you are on idle? Also is the GPU soldered on?

 

Yes, the GPU is soldered on. The keyboard gets warm with normal usage (I usually have youtube videos playing, and browsing the internet), but some have said that the laptop runs warm because of the bloatware. I am going to do a clean install around next week to test it out.

 

are you running with an ssd? or the stock hdd?

 

Stock HDD, but I will swap it out with a SSD in the near future though. Even with the stock hdd, programs still open pretty fast. Boot time from the computer being shut down is around 15 sec-ish. Computer resuming from sleep is pretty much instant.

 

Hi everyone.

Amazon states that this laptop is only 15.9 x 1 x 10.3 inches which is only a bit bigger than the standard 15.6 inch laptop (which would be great for me). Can anyone with the actual laptop confirm this?

 

Yes, that is correct. Though the height according to samsung is actually 0.98 inches.

 

Tracking says i'll get mine tomorrow. I'll be doing a quick impressions video review as well as testing gaming performance.

If you have any games in particular you would like me to try, I will if I have them (Which I have tons of- impulse purchases on Steam are fun!)
I will try running them with both the integrated and dedicated cards.

Anything you would like me to look at just let me know.

 

I see, reason I ask is because I remember hearing some say it runs cooler with ssd

 

That should be the case, logically SSD's produce less heat than HDD's.
And the HDD is on the left side from what I saw in Paul's video.

 

I see you guys have pretty much all updated (or will do so in the near future) the HDD for a SSD. I had 2 questions concerning this operation:
- Will it void the warranty?
- Did you also take out the Optical drive? (a laptop with the 128/256 gb of disk space is rather small, or at least for my needs: I currently have a 7.2k 750gb HDD and it's also between 90/95% full)

 

External storage?
WD Passport / Seagate GoFlex Slim, can use it to transfer files / take it with you.
And in case something goes wrong at least the data on that would be safe.

 

Well yes, but I use my hard drive to store my work, music, pics and these amount to about 500gb space and I don't really want to always have an external disk plugged on to the computer! I would easily prefer to sacrifice the optical drive for the HDD and use the "normal" HDD space to put an SSD.

 

The EU model shouldn't differ from the US one, but someone said it doesn't have a seperate/dedicated input for a microphone.

Yet I'm seeing it on the "Scandinavian" model.

Finnish language

 

I have an SSD in mine and it still run quite warm on the mid left, hopefully its something to get used to since i game a bit

 

If you buy a laptop cooler make sure is blows up! My laptop cooler sucks down and made it get warmer lol. I played WoW last night in a 25 man raid for 4 hours with the settings at Ultra and multisampling set to 4x only got warm never hot.

 

Paul,
Great video and thanks. Can you or anyone confirm if the Amazon images of ports are accurate? I thought there was only a mic/headphone combo instead of separate mic and headphone connections. Prefer the separate ones but need confirmation. And, also, you did mention there is a VGA port, need this for projector and thanks again.

Gary

 

It's a combo mic headphone and yes it has a vga port. Do you have the Amazon link?

 

Paul,
here you go and images down the page.

Amazon.com: Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US 17.3-Inch Laptop (Silver): Computers & Accessories

Gary

 

Same laptop as the Best Buy model. Yes its a combo Jack and its has a VGA port.

 

The laptop doesn't have BluRay so has anyone tried a large (8 GB to 15 GB) 1080P MKV video file to see how well it plays or drops frames? I use VLC Player or Windows Media Player CLASSIC for these big files.

 

This laptop is a monster, you will have no issues playing hd video

played 720p drive today and it looks gorgeous on the screen as well

 

ONLY 10 left on Amazon, down from 11 just an hour ago!! Yikes! What do I do?!?! AHHHHhhhhhh!!! Ive never had a 17 incher (that sounds really bad), would you guys still say this laptop is fairly portable?!?! Carrying around in a bag most days out of the week?