Q310 - Impressions, Review and Pictures!

At full load you could drain the battery at little over one hour but I would estimate 1.5 to 2 hours as being more likely.

The AC voltage is no problem. The PSU can happily swallow any AC power between about 100 and 250V (and probably more). Computer manufacturers recognised many years ago that notebook owners often travel and provide suitable power supplies (and it also simplifies the manufacturing logistics).

I can't comment on this.

The only thing I quickly remove is the trial Norton Anti Virus since versions earlier than the 2009 are resource-hungry. Samsung have not released 64 bit drivers.

Very few people have had temperature problems. The real test is that the computer gets unacceptably hot under heavy gaming.

There is a least a 95% chance that you will get no dead pixels, but you might get one or two. I can't find a clear statement of Samsung's dead pixel policy. Stuck pixels (eg bright red) are worse than dead pixels (black, like a speck of dirt). If you do get something bad then contact Samsung support to get it replaced and if they don't agree then send it back to the retailer under the distance selling regulations. This page at ebuyer lists the ISO standard requirements for dead pixels.

John

 

I see a little bit of gaming is taking the battery to the slaughterhouse.
Nothing a little ebay shopping wont cure.
Maybe even keeping an eye out for a 9cell battery if one ever comes along (I have yet to see those forsale somewhere )

I figured asmuch with the voltage, most bricks are stepped PSUs wich deal with the input on their own accord. You probably wont see many of them anymore with the bright red flip toggle or just 1 set input voltage all together. Im just not sure wich plug ill need to get hold of. Seems theres 3 different lead types it could be using, namely Kettle lead, figure 8, or cloverleaf. Can someone confirm the plugtype the Q310 powerbrick is taking? That way I can look for one before my notebook arrives, saving me the delay.

Norton has got to go. Never liked it, never will. Ill stick with clean and quiet NOD32.

The dead/stuck pixel ISO standards look rather leniant in favor of the manufacturers.. 2 dead pixels and even 4 stuck pixels (wich are worse!) on a notebook screen this size. Ive got 1 dead pixel on my acer 22" 1680x1050 native screen and that little spec is already causing me huge grief. I cant imagine the hole it ll seem on a 13" screen. :') If theres dead ones on mine, im sending it back on the distance selling regulations like youve mentionned.

 

The plug is a figure of 8.

 

*dives in his never ending closet of wires* Check!

Thanks pillowshot.

 

The dedicated GPUs can burn more power than the CPU. The 9300M GS is rated at 13W so power consumption may not be as bad as I have indicated, depending on CPU usage. However, if assuming 10W CPU (ie fairly light CPU load), 13W GPU (full load), 2.5W HDD, 4W display and 2.5W for the rest gives 32W, so 1.5 to 2 hours.

I agree with your here.

The ISO standard is a relic from a previous era when producing good displays was more challenging. However, a few displays with bad pixels still get shipped.

John

 

Hmm, I went to check battery capacity at the shop I just ordered my Q310 from, and I was surprised to find the entire product is now unavailable.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-050-SA

At the time I ordered, the stock status was showing +10 in stock.
What could have happened?

 

All the Q series and R series have disappeared from Overclockers. Perhaps it is a glitch.

I think the battery capacity is around 56WHr. That's fairly standard for a 6 cell battery.

John

 

Ah I see.
Ive sent OC an email just to make sure I didnt order a notebook they didnt have in the first place.
And im not planning on sitting around for a few weeks while they sort out their stock eighter.

I saw a site mentionning a battery of 3400mAh. and that struck me as odd so I wanted to be sure they didnt stick it to me with an inferior battery, like asus did a while back with their I think eee 900. Gloating on the web with a big battery but first shipments having not nearly asmuch capacity.

Ill sit it out untill OC gives me a responce I suppose.
Ive never made a +500 euro purchase outside my country before.
I think nerves are getting me.

 

Wonderfull!
Looks like I got burnt on yet another poorly maintained website stock count..
Ontop of that, they are being vague about when it ll be back in stock..


God knows when that ll be, or if it ll even still be the A$$2 version..

UPDATE
Yesterday their customer support emailed me the Q310 is out of stock with an unknown ETA for new stock,
yet today I get this:

Yes, it is indeed a "shipped" notification mail with tracking number and everything!:confused2:

I mean.. seriously.. Is their website and their warehouse operating from 2 completely different planets?
Yesterday my orderstatus showed "printed at warehouse" and the item out of stock/unavailable (product still isnt available on the website right now).
I guess something got seriously mucked up between webshop and storage?
But I sure do hope they are actually sending me my Q310 though, and not a box of crayons or a fridge or something..
One thing I know for sure, its confusing the hell out of me, and thats not a good thing when theres 700 quid riding on it.

 

Welp, all that mess sorted itself out, Im now using my Q310 for visiting this forum.

And all I can say is what a fantastic little machine! Dispite the resolution that had me a little worried about seeing "pixelgrid", im not seeing any of that. Not a single dead pixel sofar eighter.

Just one question though, how do I turn off bluetooth? Samsungs function buttons seem to handle wifi power, but apparently bluetooth isnt affected. Im looking for the "flight mode" button. Anyone have a clue?

 

It's strange why the OC website still doesn't show most of the Samsung notebooks. Normally their site is quite accurate. There's a small possibility that they decided to stop selling some products but decided to handle your order. In some cases the stock is not actually at a retailer's warehouse but at a central distribution depot who actually despatch the box to you.

See this thread re the Bluetooth.

John

 

Its indeed odd they flinched on the webshop but still proceeded with my order, even after telling me it was out of stock indefinately.
But my Q310 is still running far beyond my expectations, even though the batterylife is a bit short for my taste. (wish I could find a cheap 9cell one on ebay) This machine certainly doesnt lack much in the gamer department, it runs most 3~4 year old games just fine, and even a few brand new games (X3: Terran conflict runs solid).

A shame Samsung didnt include bluetooth into the wireless connectivity keys. I only very rarely use it to synch my PDA. But I assume disabling the device will truely shut it down and conserve energy?

 

I use my bluetooth for the same thing, its always off until I need it, saves all those energies

 

Guys,

I just got myself a Q310 over the weekend and although the specs mention a 320GB hard drive, the "my computer" screen shows me two hard drives.
One (c has a capacity of 144GB(of which11 are used by Vista) and the second one (d has a capacity of 143GB.
Now, me being new to laptops, when I add the two, it gives me a maximum capacity of 287GB and I'm thinking there are 33GB on the loose.
Can all the little programmes that come with it take this space or has Samsung put a lower hard drive in there ?
If it's the first solutions, why is it not showing then as full capacity ?

thank you for putting my mind at ease.

Kito

 

Hi.

You only have 1 harddrive but it is split into 2 partitions by software a drive c: and a drive d:

When a drive is formatted you never get a fill 320gb , maybe 297gb the other 10gb is for your recovery partition, that has a complete copy of your c: drive as it was when you first turned on my Q310 on it`s birthday.

If you have a unrecordable error on your Vista, you can do a system restore from the recovery partition, but everything you had on your c: drive will be lost, so keep and personal data on drive d:

Regards

John.

 

After a bit of poking in the administrator tools I came to the same conclusion, a little undesignated partition sitting in the corner of your disk. But my question is what do you need to have it initiate that "fresh" install. Do I need to haul around the recovery disk that came with my Q310, or is there some kind of trick to it that lets you do it on the fly? Also, is it possible to replace the initial backup on that partition with the backup I made after working vista over a little? (boot tweaks, yanking out what little bloat samsung stuffed in, basic settings)

 

Hard drives and storage media in general is labelled incorrectly. What they advertise as 320GB is actually 320000000 bytes.

For a computer 1024 bytes make up a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes make a megabyte etc.

So 320GB to a computer would be 320*1024^3 which is actually 343597383680 bytes.

The 320000000 bytes divided by 1024^2 will tell us how many gigabytes you should have in theory. 305.175781. 10 of those go towards the recovery partition.

I imagine the rest is lost in formatting.

Don't worry, it's normal for a drive to show that. My 250Gb drive only has 222GB available for my own use.

 

Hi.

When you boot your Q310, you should see a message about pressing F4 to do a system recovery at the bottom of the screen, you can also start it in Vista with the Samsung Recover Solution.

You can make a new backup of your C: drive when you have installed all your favourite software to your d: drive or an external HDD.

You only need the Vista and Driver DVD`s if you decide to do a clean install of Vista or you HDD fails and you have to replace it.

Regards

John.

 

Ah I see, so the absolute last resort is the DVD they included, the step before that would be the clean install backup on your disk, and before that you could just use a backup you made yourself? I noticed samsungs backup tool slices its backup files in conveniant DVDsize chunks, does this mean I could burn them to DVDs and read the backup off of them when I need it, in a way that backup restore simply asks for the next file?

 

That's great. I feel better and even better, learned something.

cheers guys

 

It looks like the Q310-A S S2UK is shortly being discontinued. I see a A S S S3UK on laptopsdirect and there's a A S S S4UK (749GBP) forthcoming in john lewis (was told that in-store).

Have plumped for one of the A S S S2UK tho myself.

 

I wonder why its being discontinued though?

 

Heres the info for the AS04UK model
http://www.saveonsamsung.com/Samsung_Q210_492507.html

The AS02 model is still the most powerful Q210 though, so you made the best choice

 

Hahah awesome.
And with the dynamic speed stepping taking my sammy well over 4 hours of lazy surfing, the extra power is still nice to have under the hood.

 

No, its not that one

There's a Q 310-AS4UK model on its way. I have an instore printout of it here in front of me from john lewis (I'll try upload it tomorrow in work). Apparently it differs in that has a Centrino 2 P7450 processor and 3GB of RAM (1GB less than the Q310-AS2UK) and will retail at 749GBP (69GBP more than the AS2UK).

So very strange :|

 

I really like the Q310 the problem is though im just looking for a small notebook that i can really take with me which gives me flexibility but i like the new samsung NC20 choices...choices...

 

Ive been reading around the web and ive seen some ugly business about overloading USB ports on notebooks wich has me worried about my Q310. To what extent is it safe to use the USB powersupply of the samsung Q310 notebook?

If say id want to charge my nintendo DS/PDA/Cellphone through USB rather then lugging around yet another adapter, would that be safe? And what about those little portable disks that apparently use a dual USB connection to power themselves?

Currently when im taking a little vacation or long trip, my PDA and DS go along for the ride. If charging through the notebook is possible, it would save a great deal of crud in my carrybag.

Who can enlighten me on this whole matter?

 

As long as they dont draw too much current from the laptop, if the adapter is made to charge through USB then it should do it fine. I charge my PDA from my laptop and I'm sure a DS isnt going to pulling much more than that.

 

I can't specifically comment on the Q310 but I haven't had any issues with USB port power on other Samsung notebooks. The USB specification provides for 0.5A at 5V (= 2.5W) per port. Most notebooks provide some excess capacity. I could, for example, power the LG GSA-E50L burner from one USB port on the NC10 although a cable is provided in case extra power is needed from a second port.

I don't expect you will have any problems with charging those devices for which USB charging cables are provided. I charge my phone and/or Creative Zen off my Dell E6400 while powering some external speakers.

John

 

Then I guess those people telling stories of overloaded USB circuits must have been using redicilous things like heating pads and weird USB robot things?

So having my notebook sitting around on mains to charge up while my smaller devices are coupled to its USB ports to also recieve their charge, should pose no threat then. Excellent.

 

I think the USB overload problems tend to be with older notebooks, although I've personally had no overload problems with any notebook, either old or new.

John

 

Now i really need some help..
I have the Q310 now..and I really love every bit of it..the problem is last night I slept with it (lol..well had it with me on my bed when I slept off), with my ipod cable connected to it on the side usb port. It fell from the bed before I woke up this morning, landing on the connected USB side. Now that port is a little bent in and to the side. It wouldnt work until i hold whatever is connected to it a little to the side. every other thing is fine.
Am just wondering if I can get a dismantle guide for the Q310, I wanna open it and reposition that port..anyone have an idea when i can get one..??
will continue googling it too..hope to get a reply soon..thanks alot!

 

I don't know if this will help but it is an exploded view and parts list of the Samsung Q310:

http://www.mk-electronik.de/herstel...ng/Notebooks/NP-Q310 Serie/NP-Q310-AS05DE.pdf

 

Really appreciate your effort..but that wont help me..still on the look out guys..

 

can anyone please help me on this/??

 

I don't think their is one, But if you speak to manic penguin , he got his Q210 smaller than the Q310 partially apart, he removed the keyboard and the top cover so he had access to the top of the motherboard.

But i think you will need access to the bottom as well.

 

Thanks Tinderbox..
Really..i think all I need is access the the bottom as that port is located just before the bottom cover. After unscrewing it, it still holds firm and I dont want to exact too much force so I wont break something..

 

Does anybody have a problem with the Q210/310 going to sleep in High Performance power plan?

My friend's Q210 (T5750, 3 GB RAM) does not go into the sleep mode when it's in High Perfomance power plan. But it works fine when in Samsung optimized or Power Saver plans. I've checked and rechecked all the settings twice and everything is correct. The GPU driver is the version 179.48 from Nvidia's site.

Does anyone have any clues?

Thanks.

 

Mine sleeps after about 30 minutes in high preformance mode. Just turn it off in your powerplan if it bothers you. My movieplayer stops vista from sleeping, so im fine with it.

 

I don't understand what you mean by "turn IT off". Could you clarify?

 

Thinking about purchasing one, constrained to getting it from PC World as I have a voucher. Is the £799 price tag for the Q310 reasonable still, is everyone still happy with it? Just come from an HP Dv2275 which I thought was brilliant though lacked a graphics card.
What is the Intel Centrino 2 Processor T8600 like compared to the Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T6400 which is on the Q210. I seem to remember centrinos being a lower budget processor than the core 2?

Cheers!

 

Centrino 2 is the platform (CPU + chipset + wireless). Are you thinking of Celeron?

The P8600 CPU in that model of the Q310 uses less power than the T series CPUs. So your computer should run a bit cooler and quieter (but that will also depend on the GPU load) and give you a bit more battery time.

John

 

Ah, so the centrino chip in this case is superior to the core 2 duo? Ive noticed that it now has the 4gb ram which looks good. Would you still recommend it in todays market above the rest of the field? Also have you tried the q210, if so was it noticably cramper then the q310 for typing etc.

cheers!

 

The P and T CPUs are both Core 2 Duo. They are actually from the same wafers. The ones with the lower power consumptions go into the P series bin.

I heven't tried the Q210 but I used to own the Q35 which was its predecessor. The weakness with that keyboard was the lack of dedicated Pg Up and Pg Dn keys and I think the Q210 is the same.

I haven't been studying the alternatives to the Q310 to know how it stands compared to others.

John

 

Hi

After reading the forums I had just narrowed my choice of laptop down to the Q210 or Q310 and phoned John Lewis in Kingston to see if they had these available so I could go and have a look before buying. They tell me that both of these models have been deleted from their inventory so effectively are being discontinued. I know their online site is still showing limited availability, but as they are no longer available in store does that mean that they are about to be replaced by new models?

Thanks for any help on this

 

Laptops Direct list two versions of the Q210, one version of the Q310 and also a Q320. The last-mentioned has a 16:9 display and a new nVidia GPU and may be replacing the Q310.

There is also two versions of the P210, which is the Q210 chassis without the shiny bits and, I think, Intel graphics.

John