Samsung NC10

stays at 128mb unless you also install Vista and have upgraded the BIOS to 04CA in which case it goes up to 256mb.


As to why I dont have an answer other than

guess that's the way the different mfrs decided to set their machines up.

 

It looks bigger because you can't see the touchpad button.

That gets the cover consistent with the NC10s sold in Europe.

John

 

Hmm interesting. Thanks for that. BIOS and all apart, there's no way I'm putting Vista onto mine, I absolutely cannot live with Vista. I guess the way Samsung have set it up, should work just fine.

 

@Spur

I would be interested in your views of the NC10 after you get it. I am in Pune, availability is currently only from Croma Retail. Where did you get your NC10 from? What colour? Are you planning on getting a dvd burner? I am thinking of getting a NC10, I don't mind going to Mumbai if I can get a good package.

 

@Raja

I've been waiting for the NC10 since a long time, I kept going to Lamington Road in Mumbai and no one there stocks it, even Croma Mumbai didn't stock it. Still, I'd done extensive research on the netbook market so I made up my mind to buy the NC10 as soon as it was on display in Croma Juhu. Checked it out, loved it. I got a very good package deal because I bought three other laptops alongwith my NC10 so instead of the retail 26,490 they gave it to me for 25,000. They had it in stock but because of my mode of payment, I am waiting for the amount to be realised which will happen by Monday. I've ordered it in black, apparently thats the only colour available in India (I wanted black anyway). I played with the display NC10 they had there, it's phenomenal.

One piece of advice though. The only reason I picked this over the S10 is battery life. If thats not an issue, I suggest you save 3000 bucks and get an S10. Netbooks are really overpriced in India anyway, since I wasn't paying for mine I went the whole hog.

No plans for a DVD burner just yet. If I feel the need, I'll get one of those slim ones from the USA in the summer. They're really limited and expensive here. A 2gb RAM upgrade is pretty easy though, for 1200 bucks you get a Transcend 2GB DDR2 PC36400 667mhz at Lamington (the NC10 takes DDR2 PC35300 533mhz though, you can get it cheaper by a bit I guess).

 

I'm so tempted to put Vista on my NC10!

I have no problems with Vista to be quite honest, it's running on my desktop computer absolutely fine.

How easy is it to put Vista onto the NC10 - can you do it via USB?

I also have 2gb of RAM which I installed at Christmas - so simple!

 

I also wanted to get a black NC10, but couldn't wait because it was a Christmas present. I went with blue instead and am very happy with the choice. It's a metallic blue, maybe a little less conservative looking than black.

 

Did you look at the pictures? It is definitely bigger. Posting direct links from the site.

http://experts.thelink.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/samsung-nc10-netbook-2.jpg

http://experts.thelink.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/samsung-nc10-netbook-3.jpg

http://experts.thelink.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/samsung-nc10-netbook-4.jpg

 

Look in the boot options - there are several choices for booting from USB. A USB optical drive would be the easiest route.

OK, I've looked harder. Did you see the interesting markings on the keyboard? I think it's an early mock-up of the NC10. I agree that it shows a bigger palmrest area. There is less space between the back of the keyboard and the battery. That might have been the original intention but they might have then found that there was insufficient strength and had to move they keyboard forwards.

John

 

From the looks of it, it might even be a 12" NC20.

 

Nice video - talking about netbooks
http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2009/01/netbook-smackdown-sascha-at-scobleizer.html

 

Hi, could anyone please enlighten me on how to change the default 50/50 HDD partition? I intend to have about 25-30gb in primary, thats all. I haven't started the netbook up just yet, wanted to make sure I don't do anything stupid and then come back here weeping

 

It will walk you through it and you will be able to set it to what ever you want.

 

There is a simple slider control within the Samsung Recovery Solution. See the attached.

John

 

There is a slider control within the Samsung Recovery Solution.

John

 

I am pleased to inform everyone that I have finally received my NC10

And thats not all !! Firstly, I did manage the setup and the partition without messing up. And secondly, it's blotch free Putting Office onto it right now, will post some thoughts later. My my, it's beautiful. Sigh.


.....so here I am, typing my first post on the new NC10. Couple of points straight off, firstly this 600 vertical pixels business is going to take some getting used to. Secondly, I'm still not happy with the touchpad accuracy and sensitivity. Suggestions welcome.

 

Some pictures, if anyone's interested

The laptops may seem as if not properly aligned edge to edge, but they are. That's just the lens and my crappy photography with a cellphone !!

Subjects : Our workhorses....Dell Inspiron 1420, Dell XPS M1210, Samsung NC10.

 

My Samsung NC10 came yesterday, blotch free which is great.

I can point out some things to the Acer Aspire One that I had.

Heat: This thing projects almost no heat. It is strange because my Aspire One used to get mildly warm, which I thought was an atom thing. There seems to be a noticeable difference in heat generation. After installing all my programs, the bottom of the NC10 was relatively cold whereas the Aspire One got noticeably warm.

Fan Noise: I don't know if there is no fan or if it's just silent. I can't hear anything at all. On the Aspire One I had to use a fan program which reduced the fan almost completely. Though I can still tell the fan was running it was only relatively silent in comparison. NC10 seems to be dead silent.

Speed: Performance seems to be drastically better on the NC10. I can't understand why, I thought they both used the same processor, which is an Atom. Installing programs on the NC10 is very much noticeable smoother, no hiccups. No lag at all, and I didn't install the 2GB ram at the time. The Aspire One slowed down a few times and the bottom would get pretty hot when installing programs. This I just attributed to it just being a netbook but using the NC10 my opinion differs now. I wonder what is the difference.

Keyboard is obviously bigger which can be even "too big" when using the Aspire One for a while, touchpad size is slightly bigger but the top and bottom is a bit small. Sensitivity remedies it a bit but I can't get halfway across the screen in one swipe. Using momentum brings me the whole way in one swipe, though I had to carefully adjust it.

Battery Life: I had a 6-cell Aspire One. This unit has maybe an hour or more battery, not a big difference, though 7-8 hours on very low brightness is pretty sweet.

Design looks better than the Aspire One. Although when closed the Aspire One looks better but when open, the gap between the screen and the mainboard is a big turn off.

Installing 2 GB ram seems a bit noticeable in things like WinRAR and Itunes. I haven't done any movie comaparisons or anything else yet.

One thing I am curious about is Fn+F8. Is that an overclock mode? I can't really tell any difference and for some reason it has the open program text on it.

One of the things that seems to be different is pressing the power button while on standby to resume instead of pushing any key. On one hand I can see how it is an advantage, no accidental resume. On the other hand, I can see how it can possibly be a nuisance, like accidentally turning off the computer in some way. I haven't tested to see if that's even possible yet, but seems like when you push the power button it doesn't automatically turn off; the shut down/restart/standby button pops up.

The sound seems to be a bit quiet. I'll reserve judgement on this since the Aspire One is even worse or similar. DVD movies I could not hear anything at all on the Aspire One, and I haven't tested the same movie yet on the NC10. I haven't tried any other netbook sounds either so I don't know what is the norm. Earphones are good though, as expected.

I think that's it. Upgrading RAM is obviously straight forward compared to the nightmare of upgrading RAM on the Aspire.

*Oh yes, and I can confirm it comes with a 3 year warranty packet. I may call in or fax it in for verification sometime when I am less lazy.

 

That can be customized. I've set mine to hibernate on pressing the power button.

 

New gear for my NC10. Elecom Zeroshock III 8.9" and Creative EP630 in ear phone.

 

Question about 2GB of memory on NC10 with XP. I was about to purchase the NC10 and the 2gb RAM until I read something in another post on this website that confused me. If someone could elaborate on this, I think it would be helpful to understand.

Phil, if I can quote you, you said, "and in case you did not know, XP does not benefit from more than 1GB unless you run applications that actually can exceed 1GB. I can open up 40 applications on my XP laptop without exceeding 1GB."

If I open 15 internet explorers of which a few are tracking the financial markets constantly, an MS Word 2003 5 page document, Adobe Photoshop 7, itunes, and also have a few other applications running in the background, because each uses less than 1 gb of RAM, I won't see any benefit in having 2gb of RAM?
When all these programs together are trying to use than 1gb total of RAM, does XP just switch to virtual memory on the hard drive, (which I would assume is slower to read from and write to) so I would not get any benefit from having the extra RAM?

Would I not get the benefit of the extra RAM for photoshop until photoshop needed more than 1gb of RAM for itself? What applications would really benefit from the extra RAM, watching video, multiple IE, Norton Internet Security...?

Thanks ahead of time for any responses from anyone who understands this.
Also should I get memory with a CL = 4, and where did people who received the 3 year warranty purchase their NC10s from?
Thanks.

 

What I meant was the memory usage of all programs together. If the combined memory usage does exceed 1GB you would benefit.

Sure you would benefit.

None of those are typical RAM hungry applications, like Photoshop.

On a sidenote, have you ever run "15 internet explorers of which a few are tracking the financial markets constantly, an MS Word 2003 5 page document, Adobe Photoshop 7, itunes, and also have a few other applications running in the background" on an Intel Atom 1.6GHz ?
I think the CPU will be the bottleneck before the memory will be. But I haven't tried it so I could be wrong.

 

Haven't tried running all on an Atom Processor 1.6Ghz, but I had on my Sony TR3A, 1.0 GHz Pentium Centrino, and while CPU usage would max out from time to time, most apps would be idle in the background so I didn't have many problems.
Thanks for the quick response. I think I understand it now.

 

Okay, is there a way for me to listen to music with the lid closed that won't use up much battery life? I know there's a feature that allows me to 'close lide' and 'nothing happens.' But is there a smarter way to save battery and listen to my audio files?

Thanks,

 

Battery life will be pretty low as long as you are in max battery profile and power off Bluetooth and WLAN. When you close the lid the screen will power off automatically.

To further reduce battery life try to minimize running processes, like AV for example and the numerous unnecessary other processes. Also set My computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance, Settings to optimized for best performance.

 

How much battery life do you get sufing the net or playing games on max power? I'm hoping for more then 2 hours?

 

I discussed this in my NC10 review. The effect depends on the current power profile. This facility is a standard Samsung feature and was originally introduced to provide a quiet mode with minimum CPU speed and higher fan trigger temperatures. However, as you have noted, the NC10's fan is quiet.

John

 

Ah yes, but what I was wondering about was the higher performance mode. Is it an overclock? I can't really tell any difference and I can't figure out a way to gauge performance increases.

 

A Samsung employee said on a dutch forum that setting it from normal to speedmode gives priority to the current application on top. Priority is within the OS and it doesn't change anything to the clock.

 

It is not an overclock. It may either keep the CPU running at full speed and override SpeedStep, or allow the CPU to run at full speed when in battery saving mode. Use RMClock to monitor the CPU speed while trying the Fn+F8 options for different power profiles. I did it once but can't remember the results.

John

 

Just tested it. It doesn't seem to do those things.

A Samsung employee said: "It only assigns priority to the application in the active window." I think he is right.

 

I'm completely sold on this device and am looking to buy it when it comes out here in Scandinavia (beginning of February). I have a few questions:

1. The display: How does the display compare to the EEE PC 1000H and the Wind? I read in this thread that they use the same panel (CPT), but haven't been able to confirm this. Also, have many of you received a screen with "blotches"? How common is this problem?

2. The keyboard: I tried an EEE PC 1000H yesterday and it had a completely flat keyboard that was very stiff. I didn't like it, it felt a bit like that "chiclet" style keyboard that Apple uses. From the pictures, the NC10 keyboard looks more beveled, like a traditional keyboard with more travel. Anyone care to comment on this?

3. Heat: Does it get uncomfortably hot while using it for long periods in your lap?

4. Noise: From John's excellent review I took it that the NC10 is virtually inaudible under normal circumstances. But what about browsing Flash sites or running movies for a long time, does the fan spin up after a while? What does the fan sound like on high-speed - a higher-pitched "scream" or a lower-pitched "swoosh"? Would it be audible across a large room?

Thank you for your time and answers!

 

1) They use the same displays, but still the 1000h is measured to have higher contrast according to www.notebookjournal.de. Anyway, the NC10 display is very good.

2) It travels but it is quite stiff. I like it, after getting used to it.

3) No heat.

4) The fan spins up, but even when it's on it's a subtle sound. Like a soft swoosh. You won't be able to hear it from some distance.

 

Excellent, thanks a lot Phil! Now the only thing standing in the way of me owning this little wonder is the actual release of the machine and a decent price! Go, Samsung Sweden, go!

 

Welcome.

Or you could order in a UK. You'd probably save some money too.

Overclockers.co.uk or Laptopsdirect.co.uk ship international.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=333447

 

That's interesting. "Priority" seems a big vague, but I would assume perhaps it would be useful in applications such as WinRAR, where you are trying to extract a file but want to do other things in the background. Other than that I can't seem to find a use for it.

 

I recently purchased my NC10 from Amazon and it arrived promptly - however it seems to have a major fault - soon on starting up a loud and continuous clicking noise emanates from the left speaker, music is virtually unrecognisable from the right and it also seems to get very hot on the front right hand side.

The clicking noise (unresponsive to volume control) is loud, seems about 50Hz, is not positional but does seem to start and stop intermittently - and on starting the clicking begins slowly then accelerates - it seems like fan interence or hard drive interference.

I think it needs to go back - anyone had similar problem or any ideas?

CJP

 

That's exactly it. It's a rule for which application gets the highest priority for using the CPU. Like you say, if you run WinRar which maximizes CPU use and a play heavy flash animations in Internet Explorer, you can use Fn-F8 to give priority to which is most important to you.

 

Nah, I'll pass on that for two reasons:

1. For later warranty service and support, it's probably easier to have purchased it in Sweden.
2. I'd have to change the keyboard, voiding the warranty (which I guess makes 1. a non-issue really )

I just hope we won't get shafted on the price.

 

I just ordered a blue nc10 from amazon. I was thinking of changing the wifi card. Does anyone know whether the intel 5300 should be the Mini Card or the Half Mini Card form factor? Does anyone know what the model number is? I think 533AN_MMW is the Mini Card and the 533AN_HMW is the Half Mini Card. I couldn't find it at amazon, but I will be in Seattle later in the month and I might be able to find something at Fry's.

 

After reading reviews cand comparing specs in relation to price, I decided to order a NC10. I searched the forums and read a couple of pages in this thread, but haven't found answers, here's the question:

from what I read, it is possible to upgrade the ram - how? which kind of ram module exactly will I need?

 

Look at the laptopmag.com website: http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/nc10-ram.aspx?step=1

 

That is definitely abnormal. I haven't previously heard of that problem.

200 pin DDR2 SO-DIMM. The 800MHz modules work OK - they downclock but run with a lower latency.

John

 

Hi just to update you about the external dvd burner.
I purchased this newest model
and even an Illiterate like me managed to install without any glitch.
All is great!!
The burner it self is so light and slim looks really nice.
I also burned few dvd via usb, no problem what so ever.
It came with nero 7 essential installed it without any problem and doesn't seems to slow down it's speed.
Thanks

Just for the people who are interested for external burner.

 

I know I shouldn't be answering my own question, but since someone else might want the answer, I found some pics online about installing the intel card in the NC10 and it was the 533AN_MMW, so that card should work.

 

I was using an app that took 140mb RAM and 10-50% CPU, yet the fan went on. The bottom was relatively cold. What is with that? Does it do that all the time or is that an isolated instance? Do I have to adjust some kind of fan control that I'm not aware of

 

I suggest you use a combination of MobileMeter and RMClock's monitoring page to see the temperatures and CPU activity. A period of higher CPU usage may be enough to cause the fan to come on and, once on, it stays on for a while. There's nothing more annoying than a fan which comes on for a few seconds, goes off for a few seconds, comes on for a few seconds ....

John

 

That's exactly what happened. It came on, then went off, then came on again. The bottom was not even warm and the app was running for maybe 30 minutes (in comparison to my Core2 Desktop, it barely used up 1% CPU).

There was a problem in the Aspire One that needed a fan control to make sure the fan did not come on if temperatures did not reach past a set amount because stock, the fan would start running for no reason at all. I have not heard this problem from anyone with NC10, so I am wondering why this is happening?

 

That short burst of fan activity is unusual. Perhaps this could happen if there is a short burst of CPU activity while the overall notebook temperature is low, so the temperature dropped very quickly.

I presume you are running the latest BIOS ( 04CA).

John

 

Yes, BIOS updated, Samsung updater did everything for me.

So I was wrong about the 50% CPU usage, the apps use just about the same amount of CPU as my Core2 Desktop, 1-2%. The 50% is just a spike when you open the task manager.

It was only 1 app, equivalent to maybe 2 Firefox windows or maybe even less since it only uses 20,892K memory. So far the fan has not turned on again. Maybe it actually was an isolated instance since that is the first time I've acknowledge the fan exists. Still it is strange that it came on at all.