Samsung Series 7 Lovers - Here's The NP700Z5C Ivy Bridge!

yjgfikl, thanks for your comment. Actually it is an "open box" unit but it only has the power adapter (i.e. and open box without the box?) so I consider that as a display unit. Do you think that's actually a display unit? Other than that the unit looks very clean with no visible dent or scratch. The thing is I can drive to pick up the open-box unit any time tomorrow the soonest but it would be challenging to go to the farther store during lunch break. From bad experience I do not trust the store to hold the unit for me and I would hate to spend an hour driving if that new unit got sold.

 

@getgadget: I am glad you were able to verify that the USB issue was indeed the hardware of your original unit. No more time wasted trying to debug that!

But I have to agree with yjgfikl about the display unit: I would want a MUCH bigger discount in order to accept that. And some clear and written assurances that you will still have full warranty -- from Best Buy as well as from Samsung.

Certainly I would think in a situation like this, that Best Buy should be able to request a new unit to be shipped from another store, no? Too bad to let go of a nice machine -- which you otherwise like -- because of snafus like this. I guess if there is no other choice, I would make the drive.

In fact, I drove an hour back and forth for my NP700Z3A last summer, when Walmart online had it on clearance for $600 -- but only available through pickup in stores that still had units in stock. It was $400 below MSRP and $250 below the store's own clearance price -- AND I'd recently gotten a new Mazda 3 GT which I love driving

But that's not all: When my unit had a wobbly touchpad, I drove down next day to swap it -- this time inspecting more closely before leaving the store. In the end, I must have spent $25-30 on gas and toll fees. But it was still a great deal.

I hope it works out. Just get that machine you like!

 

after contacting samsung live chat support to try to resolve some issues i've been having, i was told that open box items are NOT covered by Samsung warranty. I am not sure how they would know it was open box though.. I have not confirmed if that is on the purchase receipt.

 

@iemdan: I bought an open box laptop from CompUSA once (now TigerDirect) and they (the store) claimed it was covered exactly the same with full warranty. But what you describe is exactly why I would want something in writing -- a policy statement or an actual store warranty.

 

So here is a quick update as promised.

@Dannemand: thanks for sharing your laptop hunting experience. I got inspired and drove to that store last night. Though I called ahead during lunch to reserve that laptop, I was told the laptop was sold or disappeared at the store. I was pretty disappointed. On my way home I drove to the original store and picked up that open box and decided to give it a try. I didn't get to play with it. Will check it out tonight and repeat the whole back up and update routine tonight.

@iemdan: I wish I have read your story before picking up that open box. Again, the guy at Besy Buy told me it carries the 1 year warranty from Samsung but now I am not sure after hearing your story. I may return it once I find out more tonight.

 

@getgadget: Thank you for the update. Sorry that I inspired you to take that drive in vain

But let's not worry too much already. If the machine works alright, and if indeed you have full warranty, you will have made a great purchase.

Go to this support page on Samsung.com and register your machine -- that will give you 3 months extra warranty AND a warranty confirmation email from Samsung. If you get that, you'll be in good shape for 15 months

Oh, and use HwInfo to check battery wear. If it's less than 5-10% I think you're doing fine, considering it's a display unit.

 

I love this laptop, and decided to head out and grab one the other day.

I was happy with it, but instantly sensed something off about the screen - and that's when I noticed the backlight fades out on the right edge. Very minor, but personally, it was *very* noticeable/distracting. Even the one depicted in this "review" has the same issue (I say "review" because it seems more like an advertisement...).

I set my DSLR up on a tripod to see how much it dropped, and below is a chart detailing what I found:



Here's a video if you want to see what I'm talking about (sorry but note that the cursor is all the way on the right edge, this was just as I was restoring the unit to return it):



Again, very minor for some, but a deal breaker for others. Personally, I loved the laptop - it worked very fast, ran great with Linux, and the screen resolution was just awesome. I just felt given the price, the screen issue was not worth it, and thus a deal breaker for me (I still have a laptop).

Performance: 10/10 (you get what you pay for)
Form Factor: 9/10 (very light, very slim, well built but a pain to take apart)
Screen: 6/10 (great resolution, poor viewing angles & backlight distribution)
Linux Compatibility: 8/10 (almost everything worked with the samsung-tools package under Xubuntu 12.04, even got backlit keys working)

 

Wow, thanks for the detailed look -- very neat! Have you checked out Best Buy's newer NP780Z5E? I seem to recall notebookcheck compared the screen favorably to the MBPR 15". That's quite an endorsement. Of course it runs $1200, but if my crystal ball is correct and we see Series 7 Chronos with Haswell in Q4, that $1200 will drop to/below $1000 before you know it!

In the meantime, I'm curious how you translated readings on your DSLR into a pixel intensity measure...can you explain?

-Matt

 

Yeah, I have been looking at those, but to be honest I like the style, design, and keyboard of the NP700Z5C much better. Just preference, ho hard feelings :3 Again, I want to stress that I *really* wanted to keep the laptop (Linux is a requirement for me, and I was surprised that it worked to well). I don't know if I'd consider doing a custom screen upgrade, but I'm following that thread too see if it changes my opinion (although I'm more than happy w/ 1600x900, I just like matte screens).

I set the camera up on a tripod, made sure the settings were locked so I would get consistent results between images (and did so), and positioned the camera for the best subjective viewing angle. I took one picture, normalized the edges of the screen, and took equal columns of the entire screen from the left and right edges. I briefly glanced through the histograms of each column on the edges just to see if there would be anything worthy of investigating (although it was pretty apparent, as you can clearly see the brightness drop off on the right side even in the image).

I loaded the left and right side images into MATLAB, and used it to compute the average pixel intensity for all the pixels in the columns of the images (just summing the R, G, and B values). I only normalized the values to be between 0-255, but note that the test image was blue-ish and not pure white (thus why the graph tops out at 0.5). Finally, I scaled all the x-values from the image to correspond to the image's scale (multiply by 1600, divide by the screen's width measured from the original image).

Thus, it only really is noticeable in the right 64 pixels of the screen - and only then does the brightness really pinch off in the final 16 pixels.

 

MATLAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG you rock. That is so awesome. I knew when I saw your plot that you're a maniac -- in the GOOD way. (On a related note: I had a similar idea in mind for my son's science project -- he'd grow bacteria and then digitize overhead shots, which I'd analyze using the Image Processing Toolbox to estimate cell counts. I'm still pretty bitter that his science teacher nixed the project!)

Have you played with the NP780Z5E? There's several things I prefer about it, especially: VGA port, loss of the optical drive, and repositioned lid latch. On the other hand the silver keyboard is almost a certain deal-breaker for me. I'd like to bet that Samsung will "fix" the keyboard and other minor quibbles on the next update.

Either way WELCOME to the forum and thanks again for enlightening us.

OH, almost forgot: watching your video, I'd have to guess that you may have gotten a bad display -- yours looked unusually dim on the right. Of course the right thing for me to do is take the Matlab route like you and see what I get. ...yeah...if only final exams weren't next week!...

-Matt

 

And I'm just sitting here doing a MATLAB project as we speak. I'm trying really hard to like the new Z5E but they got so many things right for me and so many other things wrong.

 

Feel free to post your code! You don't have the Parallel Processing Toolbox, do you? I'm DYING to try some CUDA programming...I'm curious to see how much I could optimize my work by using the GPU. (Here's a related/dumb example: I was doing some basic entropy estimates of grayscale images, and realized there's a built-in entropyfilt function that's like 10x faster than my original code!)

-Matt

 

I would expect that if you put your scientifically derived graph in front of Samsung support then they will agree to replace the display under warranty (or, if the computer is only a few days old, return to seller for a replacement as "dead on arrival"). What you are seeing is not normal.

John

 

Agreed that it's not "normal", but quite honestly, the last thing I wanted to go through with my brand new laptop was a warranty process. I might head over to Best Buy and see if they have any units that don't have this issue, but I recall the demo model also appeared like that too. Also note the unit in the review I linked to earlier (posted by someone else) had the same issue - and theirs looked much worse than mine did.

Quite honestly, I'm also worried that I would go through it, and the laptop might still have the issue...

Ha, funny you should mention CUDA, since that's what's been taking up my time since (I've been working on a parallel motion estimation algorithm in CUDA/C++/OpenCV).

I ended up doing everything right from the MATLAB command line, since I haven't used MATLAB in a while. I was even thinking of making a quick OpenCV program to do it, but then I figured it'd be a lot quicker to just get some numbers using MATLAB.

 

I did all the update and back up (for the second time on this model) on the open-boxed Z5C last night. At first the Fn + F1 "Setting" program didn't show the Bluetooth under the "Network" tab. It probably had something to do with the Bluetooth driver update in the SW Update program. Turned out I needed to reinstall the "Setting" program to recognize it. So far the laptop has been good except for two things (I search this forum but didn't come up with any result):

1) The are 151MB "Windows Update Cleanup" that can't be removed by the Windows Disk Cleanup program. I have also used CCleaner but it's still there. Does anyone know how to clean it up?

2) Every time I turn on the laptop there is a pop-up window saying "Recovery has stopped working". I clicked for detail and it said "Problem Event Name: APPCRASH" and "Application Name: WCScheduler.exe" . I just chose to close this program but there should be a solution for it. Since it said "APPCRASH" so I wonder if it is because of the APP feature of Windows 8? And I thought I just adapted pretty well to Windows 8 from Windows 7.

@Dannemand: I installed HWiNFO as you suggested to check the battery. It reports that the wear level is 0.4% and the cycle count is 21. So it may indeed be an open boxed item than a display.

(I just typed this whole thing on this laptop. I really like the keyboard and LOVE the touchpad.)

 

@getgadget: Thanks for the update. I agree, these Series 7 have great keyboards and touchpads. Along with the matte screen, those are some of my favorite features.

Start with a factory restore (from F4 boot). That's the first thing I'd do on an open box unit. Hopefully it'll solve those error messages. If not, doesn't Best Buy take care of that (Geek Squad) when it's supposedly a display unit?

Otherwise let us know and we'll work it out.

Update: Oh, that's a good battery you got after 21 cycles!

 

Does anyone have a link to the thread/post that showed how to disable dynamic screen brightness/contrast? I turned it off in Windows settings on my SO2UB, but it still increases and decreases on its own...
I thought I remembered there being some other setting somewhere (since on this one, Easy Settings does not have that toggle)...

 

One way to do it is to go into advanced power settings, and I think you'll see the option there:



EDIT: oh wow I just realized you said you "turned it off in Windows." Sorry, I think I need more sleep! LOL

-Matt

 

i replaced the hard drive with an ssd, great upgrade, no issues. now i replaced the optical dvd drive with the factory 1tb drive. at idle, i think the laptop is running the fans faster, so i check task manager and it shows constant 20% cpu usage by system NT kernel process. anybody experience this? is the system looking for the removed optical drive? if so, how do i remove it from win8 since it does not show up in device manager?

 

No, that is what I was looking for. It's there and in the charms-PC settings menu under General. Both are set to off.
When I go to a dark webpage, the screen dims...

 

Try uninstalling Intel Rapid Storage Technology, if it is installed.

Or is this the model that developed background CPU usage after a BIOS update?

That smells like the Adaptive Brightness that is built into the Intel driver package. Is that disabled in the Intel control panel?

John

 

My recollection of the last time this came up here (unfortunately) was that there's no way to alter that behavior in Windows 8. However, Dannemand has a Win8 installation he plays on and can confirm/disconfirm that memory!

-Matt

 

uninstalled intel rapid storage, rebooted, no change in cpu usage. top two hitters are system and system interrupts

 

The Interrupt issue will continue to persist while the Intel RST is uninstalled. I *am* a bit baffled by the the Kernel issue though. Is there a way to dig into the process and see who might be calling the system like that -- my first thought would be Process Explorer?

-Matt

 

When I first installed Win8, I had issues with Adaptive Brightness preventing me from turning brightness to Max. As described in this post disabling it in the Power Profile AND the Charms Settings solved it for me.

I don't have an Adaptive Brightness setting in my Intel driver (HD3000). But others do.

But it seems that every time users find a way to disable this darned thing, manufacturers find another secret way to force it upon us: I see users of new, Win8-delivered models found an option in the UEFI BIOS to disable Adaptive Brightness. Check the discussion starting here and even better here.

That last link is to a thread with lots of discussion about Adaptive Brightness:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...ness-driving-me-nuts-unable-disable-help.html

Finally, there are so many discussions about this issue all over the forum, I recommend Googling site:notebookreview.com/samsung adaptive brightness. That's what I just did because I no longer remember where all these discussions are located.

 

LuckRocks, it's been an interesting week for me. On Sunday, I began to notice that my machine was running 10C higher than normal, and the fan was much louder. I worried that somehow the issue we were discussing had crawled through the internet, and somehow snuck into my laptop.

Anyway, after a week of rather intense trouble-shooting, I think I've pinned down the issue of my heat increase: apparently HWiNFO64 was updated (v4.16) so that it polls the NVIDIA 640m, pretty frequently it seems. This doesn't bother the CPU much but it does drive the GPU crazy and seems to create an extra power draw as well as heat.

HWiNFO64 News
NVidia optimus & newer versions of HWInfo.

I ended up finding the culprit by turning HWiNFO64 off, while running CPUID Hardware Monitor instead to track the temps.

Anyway, I know I've thrown about a dozen wild leads in your direction, but I thought this one might be more helpful than the others! If you've updated to the latest version of HWiNFO64 it may be worth checking out.

-Matt

 

Thanks! That's a great motivator to pull my head out of the proverbial sand and do more browsing outside the Samsung area!

-Matt

 

Is the BIOS version P06AAE? If so, the CPU activity seems to be a BIOS issue. See here for example and here for the BIOS roll-back procedure.

John

 

Thanks for the info. Checked the UEFi... no option there. I'll have to look around in those links.

 

A quick follow-up to my previous post: Martin at REALiX has posted an updated beta (v4.17) of HWiNFO64 that includes a toggle on the initial settings screen, "Wake GPUs disabled by nVidia Optimus." The benefit of turning this feature on is that the GT 640m will then show up each time HWiNFO is started (which was not previously the case) -- but the drawback is that it polls the GPU once a second which really seems to aggravate it on the NP700Z5C! I've turned off the option, and now my CPU sits comfortably again at 50C.

HWiNFO64 Download

-Matt

 

bios is P05ABJ, which is latest per the sw update. this issue did not start with bio upgrade, it is with the installation of a second hdd in the optical bay. i just confirmed by removing the second hdd and booting up. cpu idle was good and temps drop about 10 degrees C. ill try to roll back bios to see

can someone give me the name of the bios previous to p05abj?

update: i get this error when i try to flash p04abj bios:
Error: Driver fail while locating SMM service

 

Also see this thread, which discussed a similar problem which was fixed by installing Intel Rapid Storage.

The BIOS previous to P05ABJ should be P04ABJ (unless Samsung skipped a number).

John

 

well, i uninstalled the second hard drive and reinstalled the optical drive (dvdrw). CPU usage at idle is normal now (0-1%) and CPU temperatures in the low 50's. Intel RST is installed.

If anyone is able to downgrade the bios or have another solution to install a second hard drive without impact to CPU idle, i would love to hear it! model is np700z5c-s02ub

 

I still wonder whether the cause is IRST. How about trying: Remove optical drive; uninstall IRST; install HDD; install IRST?

John

 

you dont think this will have the same result as uninstalling IRST while second hdd is installed, reboot, then reinstall?

 

I assumed you already uninstalled IRST and then reinstalled while the HDD was in the OD caddy, but with the usual result, correct? If so there may be no point to pulling out the HDD, but either way to be on the safe side I would give John's suggestion a try. I'd be willing to bet a few bucks that IRST is the culprit -- it has all the signs (based on my experience installing Win 7).

Actually, I would uninstall the chipset driver, the Intel HD GPU driver, AND the Intel RST, and then reinstall all three, but I'm a bit OCD that way.

-Matt

 

Getting DriverSweeper and using it in safe mode may help getting every last bit of the old drivers uninstalled as well.

 

Hi guys

I did not follow up this thread for some time. I still struggle with wi-fi issues (Intel 5.6.1.6 driver) - disconnecting, packet loss, etc, despite full signal.
Are there any improvements in this field? One of the members ordered Intel 5100 adapter as a replacement, I can't find this post, did he have success with that?

Does Z5E wi-fi work the same?

Nick

 

Nick, there are similar wifi concerns (though somewhat mixed) on the Z5E thread. Someone posted links to an updated driver for the 6235 -- however, buyer beware -- the links were posted on the HP site and I haven't seen that version (15.8.0.5) show up yet on Intel's driver page (maybe beta?). Also, no clear feedback yet on the Z5E thread if there's any improvement. Ah, also just noticed that they're tagged for Win 8.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...p780z5e-np870z5e-np880z5e-75.html#post9196695

-Matt

 

John and a few other 6235 users have reported success with the new 15.8.0 drivers. Oddly, they DO install under Win7, even thought the package is for Win8 (which I believe is a bug). As we discuss here, it looks as if Intel just pulled that 15.8.0 update package from their Download Center (though the link is still live). I bet there is a 15.8.1 coming in a few days for both Win7 and Win8.

 

So, my S20B has a weird spot on the screen... it's brighter than other areas, about the size of a dime.
I'm going to go into Best Buy this weekend and see if I can get it exchanged or something (or repaired, I guess).

If they offer an exchange, are the newer Series 7s a step up or down with the ATi gpu?

 

I bought my NP700Z5C a couple of days ago and overall its great. I realise the wifi is a massive problem and at first I just ignored it but right now it seems to be dropping out at least once every hour or so, more if I'm downloading a file or watching a video. I tried looking through the thread for a concrete way of fixing it but failed to find anything.

I have an Intel 6235 adapter and was wandering if there are any thing I can do to improve the constant drops in connection.

 

Oh wow that sucks. The morbid part of me is curious to see it -- any chance you can post a picture?

I was in Best Buy yesterday and spotted the Z5E. It really does have a gorgeous screen -- though I think some new owners are complaining about "graininess"...? Really, I must need my eyes checked. It looked fine to me. Anyway, you should check out this thread to get a feel for what the Z5E owners think. I'd guess they're mostly happy with the GPU, though I have the sense the ultra-gamer-types are not totally pleased (can you ever please them? LOL).

Yikes, more 6235 issues. Sounds pretty bad. You have a few options -- one is to dial back this thread a few posts, and give the new Intel driver (15.8.0.5) a try -- Dannemand confirmed it should work on Win 7 systems.

My sense from checking in on the Intel forum every so often is that the issue seems to really interact with radio environment and router. I don't have any cures to offer, but in my case I benefited a lot by setting aside an afternoon where I systematically tuned through settings on both the router and 6235 adapter, until I found a sweet-spot (e..g, channel 9, 40MHz width, etc.). I ended up with ~40Mbps over wifi LAN, which won't earn me any medals but works well enough for file transfer and streaming HD.

-Matt

 

Yea, I don't need to play BF4 or BS:I. I just need to be able to play some games here and there, plus some photoshop/lightroom.
But I tried to get a picture of the white spot, but it doesn't show up well on my phone's camera. Here's my best shots...

The white spot glows pretty brightly. It kind of looks like there is a reflection behind me, but it's just the weird overbright pixels.

 

No kidding, that *is* awful. Please post back with what Best Buy offers. If you're thinking about trading up, I HATE to pull the "there's something good around the corner" logic but I'm anticipating with Haswell's release next month that Samsung may have some updates in store for their new Ativ line. Of course, it may be early next year before those devices hit the shelves. If you can afford to wait, it might be a win-win situation: either the price on the Z5E comes down, or something even more tempting (but also more $$$) is released.

On the other hand, if you know exactly what you want/need and are not distracted by shiny metal objects, you could also walk out this weekend with a great deal on something else.

-Matt

 

Yea, that's the tough thing.
I mean, I like the machine, and I bought it for $850 open box (was flawless and had clearly never actually been opened, but the seal was broken, so, win), but the spot is getting old and getting worse. It's kind of annoying. As for Haswell, I'm not sure I do photoshop/lightroom enough to actually notice the bump, not to mention the hamstringing this slow HDD provides for larger loads.
I was going to drop a big SSD in there when a good deal came on the 500gb Samsung 840s, but I don't want to upgrade a system with a bum screen.

That said, Best Buy RARELY does an immediate exchange. You USUALLY have to do a run through the geek squad.

 

I suspect it is the result of excess pressure on the screen. I've got something similar near the bottom of my X4C display - the result of one day trying to shut the computer with something (I forget what) on the flat surface behind the keyboard). I've also got a much larger bright area on my T420s display. In that case I believe it is the result of the T420s display back putting pressure on the back of the panel.

Anyway, see what BB have to say / propose to do on the assumption that the bright patch was there, but not noticed, at the time of purchase.

John

 

Another Series 7 owner with more Intel 6235 problems! Here's a picture/graph of the wifi problems I'm encountering with my laptop. On the left side of the wifi graph, there are lag spikes where for whatever reason, packets are lost or there's some sort of latency. However, once I disconnect and reconnect, everything returns to normal (the right side). Is this what people are encountering with their 6235 wifi card? Or is this more likely a router problem? This seems to happen randomly, sometimes taking hours to occur. I can't seem to be able to find a trigger, other than the fact that it seems to only happen on wireless n?

 

First run InSSIDer to check for other networks on the same channel. If there is congestion then is there an emptier channel to which you can move your router? Also, someone found that turning n mode off fixed their WiFi problems but that's an extreme measure. First try the settings recommended in this thread.

Last week there was a new 15.8 WiFi driver which seemed to improve things (better signal strength in my case) but it seems that Intel didn't like us having the benefit of better WiFi and have removed it.

John

 

Same problem over here on my screen, except I have two of those spots. I'm going to try Samsung service request on their website soon, any tips?