Samsung NP700Z5B-S01UB New User did a Clean Install

Damn Samsung's driver and product support sucks. If I weren't a technical user I would have tossed an otherwise strong hardware laptop. A few questions since I'm done clean installing (drivers, Easy Settings, SW Update, windows 7):
1. I want to increase the sensitivity of the ELAN touchpad. I have it at max yet it is still pretty blunt (with the mouse correction) on it. Is there a way to customize its sensitivity (ie open up a notepad to do it)?

2. Somethign that really irked me coming from the ergonomic, and logical design of an Asus keyboard is the placement of a lot of keys and the inclusion of otherwise useless hotkeys. I don't have a hotkey for sleep. Any quick and easy way or program to keybind a sleep key?I know how to do folders and shortcuts but I don't know how to do power states.

3. Is there a way to shut the LED backlight off on this? pressing FN+F4 just shows that I have one display, my LCD is on a lot during class when I'm not using it. An Asus from 4 years ago allowed me to shut its LED/backlight off without a simple Fn+F4 key.

4. I get 5.5 hours with everything set at minimum and my max processor state at 30%. Yet I've heard of people going to 7 hours. Any tips on this? I heard the Radeon/AMD graphics driver is useless. Should I set it to minimum or simply disable it, and if I were to disable it could I still keep a desktop resolution of 1600x900?

5. I always uncheck auto movie enhancer yet the damn thing is always checked on startup. I don't want it to switch brightness depending on what application I have open. I'm not talking about adaptive brightness either. How do I stop this?

6. I notice the keyboard leaves a dirt imprint on the screen. How to prevent this?

 

Can you clarify what you mean by "sensitivity" in this context? Is is the amount of movement of the cursor when you move your finger or just the general responsiveness to touch? Use the "Advance" button on the touchpad control panel to access a setting for the latter.

In Easy Settings you can set the Power button to be the sleep key (also note that there is a Versions 2 of Easy Settings, with better behaved drivers, hidden inside the Windows 8 Settings package).

You can't control this manually but in the power options there are timers for (i) dimming the display and (ii) turning it off. These can be set from one minute upwards.

The Intel graphics and hand 1600 x 900 (and much higher resolutions). However, you need to figure out whether the dedicated GPU is running when it doesn't need to be. Tweaking to get minimum power consumption takes some experimentation. Disable WiFi and Bluetooth unless in use (there is a hotkey for that) and shut down the web browser. Use HWiNFO to check the battery wear (under battery properties) and see the power drain rate under different usage conditions. Theoretical run time = battery capacity / power drain rate.

What happens if you set the Display Color to No Effect?

Put a sheet of paper in the keyboard before you close the computer. Another option is to put some thin rubber bumpers on the display bezel.

John

 

Lastly what I want my setup to be for my computer is a sleep hotkey (do you know an easy way to set this using a third party program?) but with my power button as my power button so I can force turn my computer off when need be?

I also feel like although SWupdate says all my things are up to date you have some extra features on your Series 7 that I don't.
Thanks a lot John. Appreciate it.

 

I can relate to what you're saying: I came from an HP with a Fn key for sleep and a Lenovo which had one for LCD off.

As John said, you can configure the Power Button to sleep, using Windows Control Panel - Power Options - Choose what the power button does. Then set Choose what closing the lid does = Do Nothing and close the lid to turn off the LCD. That's how I ended up doing it in Win7.

Easy Settings on your model may not have a function to control the power button. But it DOES have Samsung Fast Start Mode which affects whether opening the lid will wake the computer up or not. See this post for description of the various Fast This and Rapid That features.

I get about 6 hours on my NP700Z3A with normal settings (same platform as yours, but smaller CPU and GPU). That's without activating the AMD GPU. It only kicks in if you use 3D software such as games, which obviously reduces battery life.

For me, the Samsung provided AMD driver (VGA_AMD_8.951.9.3000) works fine, including for the games I tested (with the limitations of my AMD 6490M).

It sounds like you may have disabled some of the Easy Settings modules that are loaded by Task Scheduler. Even though I DO recommend this for low latency installations (as described in the infamous latency thread), I recommend recommend that most users fetch and install Easy Settings 2.x as John described -- and leave it's default installation alone.

That sounds familiar

 

Danne any link to easy settings 2? I can't find it?

Also guys I have to do a lot of work for my Masters program this week and just am glad I have a computer up and running after my Asus wouldn't charge last week. If you guys can SUB to this thread and I will come back to it, I would hugely appreciate it. I will update it anyways for people who might be reading this and might attach an Amazon.com HOW TO guide

Also what key combination makes you zoom in and out of pages? I always seem to accidentally zoom out real fast while holding the control key. Lots of mis clicks on this keyboard and mouse- probably the most annoying part on an otherwise great machine

 

To get Easy Settings 2.x, you use the Find Model feature in SW Update to locate Win8 drivers for your model (or any model) and save them locally using the Export feature. It contains a Win7 folder with Easy Settings 2.x. If you look under model NP880Z5E-X01UB you should be able to find the latest Settings 2.0.0.49 (and hence the latest Easy Settings).

You can always just post in this thread again. John and I see all posts coming through.

You are of course very welcome to post a clean install guide here with your experiences. However do note that that there are already many such guides in the Samsung forum, for Win7 and Win8. I recently posted a new Win7 clean install guide in this post which includes details on which drivers to install using SW Update, which to install manually, and which to avoid altogether. That thread also contains additional guides for Series 7 users (and others with ExpressCache) who want to install from USB -- which otherwise fails due to an issue with the iSSD. This is not an issue when you install from DVD.

But any experience and information shared by members is always great

 

You are several versions out of date with the touchpad driver probably because Samsung are bad at issuing updates for non-current products. Use SW Update to get the Touchpad driver for the Z5C.

You can always force the computer to turn off by holding down the power button but I normally turn mine off (actually a rare event) using the Windows start menu. My lid close action is set to Sleep.

Mine's a Series 9 but there's a lot, such as the Elan touchpad, that is similar. You may find that SW Update updates itself and then finds some newer drivers but otherwise (as suggested above) get the Z5C drivers for those parts that are the same and use the Z5C versions of the Samsung software.

You can get something more elegant from here. I bought some (probably the smallest black domed ones) some years ago for my Dell E6400. I needed to slice the top of the domes to get the right thickness and then they were almost invisible on a black bezel.

John

 

Thanks a lot, John. You even found a store close to me - which I'm sure was no coincidence!

And yes, my current bumpers were indeed cut from a larger one which I happened to have. In addition to looking crude, they're also a bit too soft.

 

If the minimum order is a 1000 pieces let me know and I'll paypal you a few bucks for some of the extras!

Nice job guys -- you're like a virtual Geek Squad, except with real answers. I'm still intrigued by the push-one-button-and-dim-LCD and push-one-button-and-sleep questions. I'll post back if I find something.

EDIT: Hmmm, this ( http://www.autohotkey.com/) looks kinda promising. The forum looks pretty useful too, e.g., Autohotkey: a beginner's video guide - Tutorials - AutoHotkey Community

-Matt

 

Hi Matt,

Sorry for the late response. I DID see your post yesterday, then got away from it. I'll let you know if I order some bumpers. I assume you'll want gray or clear as well?

As for the power buttons it's really quite convenient now, the way I have it set up:

1) Closing the lid sleeps (hence the bumpers, since I use that more now )

2) Power Button logs out and shuts down. But thanks to Win8 Fast Startup (which hibernates just the machine state) it's a quick shutdown and a quick power back on.

3) Hold down power button forces power off.

4) Like zetsui, I miss an Fn-key to turn the LCD off. Instead I just hit Fn-F11 (Silent Mode) when I want to save power, which I've set to turn the screen off after 1 min (Power Saver profile).

I didn't dig very deep into the Autohotkey links you posted. But if they can trigger power actions (such as screen off) that would address (4) above. Thanks for sharing that

 

Ah I was teasing but if in fact they don't require you to buy an absurd number, and you do pick up a few extras, let me know! Either gray or clear works.

If you get the chance to view the video in the thread I linked to, I think you'll be amazed. It's a very powerful utility and I'm really impressed. For zetsui's question in a way it's a bit of overkill, but the first and obvious plan of attack would be to simply use Autohotkey as a macro keystroke recorder -- in other words, if he can find the series of actions that achieve his goal, he can easily record them and assign the sequence to a function key (or some other combo). The catch of course is there is no straightforward way (afaik) on our machines to turn off the LED/backlight, as there is on the ASUS. But I love a good mystery and I wonder if there's a way to do it on the Samsung, perhaps as he noted through Registry mods.

-Matt

 

You just proved how old and slow I've become. The decay seems to have accelerated lately

OK, I just watched it. You're right, that is VERY impressive -- both the software and the presentation in that video. A few years ago (certainly 10-15 years ago) I would have been all over this. Of course we had Windows Macro Recorder back then which did the most basic part of this, but AutoHotkey is far more extensive. It even looks to be freeware?!?

Looking through its Command Reference, it doesn't appear to have built-in commands to trigger system events such as screen off (as you indicated). But it DOES have DllCall() so I guess if you can find out how to turn of the screen programmatically, AutoHotkey should be able to invoke it. I suppose once you have something like this installed (even if just to turn the LCD off) you can find a dozen other good uses for it.

Great find, thanks again for sharing!