Samsung R40 PC card slot - help!

Hello - hope someone can help me!!! I've just bought a R40 (yesterday!), I'm not a techie person, byut can find my way round a computer fairly well.

The PC card slot at the side - I pushed the button (at the time I didn't know what it was!), and now it won't stay back in - the card will stay in, but the button still sticks out - surely this can't be normal, as I can see it easily being snapped off. Can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Thanks in advance

 

The release button will not reset until the card is partly out, so pull the card out part way. Then push the button in and finally push the card in.

OK?

John

 

Thanks John you're a star - I can sleep tonight now! Just another quick question - what am I likely to use that slot for - I see it's a dummy card in there?
Thanks Kim

 

These things are usually easy when you know how.

The slot is a PC Card / PCMCIA slot. You may never use it. My X60 has a occasionally useful remote control which lives in the slot. Somewhere around my house I have PC cards for USB 2.0, firewire, modem, network and SCSI left over from the days when these ports were not standard issue (SCSI still is not). In the days before USB 2 was standard, the PC card slot was the fastest interface on the computer.

The PC card slot is being superseded by the Express card slot which is faster. Samsung are being slow to adopt the new slot, possibly because card to fit it are appearing very slowly.

If you have any other questions or comments, post them here.

John

 

Hi John,
Thanks for your help.
I don't know if it's my imagination or not but I find the R40 quite slow compared to my normal PC (which is 3 years old), I've just been loading on the programmes that I need and using them it does seem quite a bit slower, in particular when trying to load my photos on (it was even telling me that the disc is blank - it wasn't!). I don't use games and I haven't yet connected it to the internet. The sales person told me it should be quicker than what I currently have - a pentium 4.
Any suggestions?
Thanks again
Kim

 

1. Notebook hard disks tend to be slower than desktop hard disks because of thier smaller physical size.

2. Is your R40 the version with only 512MB RAM? Windows XP would like this much memory for itself and photos take a lot of memory when they are loaded so what is probably happening is that while you load the photo some of the RAM contents are being dumped onto the hard disk. If you only have 512MB then put buying another 1GB onto your shopping list. Possible RAM sources are discussed here. You will need 200 pin DDR2 SODIMM.

John

 

Thanks again John - at least I now know it's normal!!! I have the model with 1024 RAM - should I still consider adding more?

Kim

 

Go into the processeses tab in Task Manager and watch the memory usage. You may need to use the options to display the Mem Usage and Peak Mem Usage columns. These, plus the commit charge value (at the bottom of the page) should give an idea of how much memory you are using with different applications. You can then decide whether increasing the RAM will speed up your work.

I am using 2GB and hibernate when not using the computer, which avoids the relatively long start-up time and enables me to keep my normal applications open.

John

PS: I always use a fixed size swap file. This avoids the problem of the file getting fragmented with consequent deterioration of access speed to this file. 2GB should be enough. To adjust the swap file properties go to My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Performance Settings > Advanced > Virtual Memory and then set initial size and maximum size to the same value (I suggest 2048). While you are there, you may want to change the visual settings to best performance.