Series 3 11.6" with i3 - np300u1a - anyone else have one?

also could someone with a precise scale weigh the stock battery so we can estimate a weight difference?
thanks

 

The stock battery weight is 204 grams, or 7.195 Ounces. Accurate enough??

 

Thanks. How much is the total weight? (including the standard battery)

 

Excerrent, thank you very much.

 

1.231Kg or 2lb and 11 3/8oz.

 

so the two batteries shown only add 100g. I think it's a very good compromise. I might buy one when mine dies.

 

Agreed, the 100 gram isn't much. They will make the notebook a lot thicker though I expect.

 

tbh it's a bit flat. I prefer my keyboards to have a bit more slant to them. I have my GX640 on a tilted cooling pad for that and GPU overclocking reasons.

 

So basically all Samsung N310 batteries fit?

There are lots of them on ebay.

 

Not really, see here:

http://a.slickdeals.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=721932&d=1319254068

 

Can't see that link. I guess it's members only.

 

Nope. I'm signed in and I can't see it. "Forbidden."

 

Just remove the last parameter:
http://a.slickdeals.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=721932

 

This is weird... I can access the link I posted and I am not a member. On the other hand, I get the "Forbidden" error message if I try to access the link as posted in the quote. Go figure.

 

manually add "http://" in front of the address when you get the forbidden.

 

That's PRO!

It worked for me.

 

So you guys think every NP310 battery will work?

Please tell me before I order one

 

the bulge seems acceptable. now with a decent battery and an SSD this little monster is really a killer. a better screen would make it perfect. the materials though are OK. it will not resist many falls like metal case latitude

 

Your description fits the Series 9 If you start from the $550 the NP300U1A cost now and add the cost of the larger capacity battery and a SSD, you would not get too far from what a Series 9 cost, and you still do not get the metal casing and probably a better screen.

On the other hand, if you got the Princeton and the insanely low price of $350 that Staples had for a couple of days not long ago, spending a few hundreds bucks on a battery and SSD may still turn out to be less expensive than getting a Series 9.

 

Build quality of the series 9 is far from impressive though. I noticed this myself and several reviewers have said the same. Then there are also the wifi problems.

Between series 9 and Macbook Air I'd definitely go fo the Air.

I haven't sold my series 3 yet. I like it a lot. I especially like the fact that it has better connectivity than the Air (card reader, ethernet, one extra USB port, VGA, replaceable battery and SSD).

 

Can some of you guys here post your idling temps? Mine seem particularly high compared to my old UL30a. I'm idling around 45-50C most of the time and the fan is running at seemingly full speed. Thanks.

 

I have "philosophical" differences with Apple on their design choices, thus I would not buy a MBA, but I see what you mean. When you approach the $1,000 mark for a 3lb portable you really have to be good on all fronts to compete with Apple. I would agree that the Series 9 is not there yet.

If I were you I would keep the 3 AND get a Macbook Air or one of the upcoming Ultrabooks Unless of course you need the money to finance the new purchase.

I do not know how much you paid for the Series 3, I was among the lucky ones to get it at $350 during the 2-day crazy sale Staples had. At that price it is a keeper no matter what, probably the best value today for a light notebook.

 

I left mine sitting for 25 minutes after turning it on, battery powered, with the "Samsung Optimized" power plan (processor running at 800MHz), preventing it from going into sleep mode, and HWiNFO32 showed the lowest CPU Package temperature at 38 °C and the highest at 55 °C. The fan never turned on, though. I have read of others having either noisy fans or fans staying on for long periods of time. I'd say that excessive noise is not normal, but if the temperature is high and/or the fan stays on for too long, it might just be that a background process is making the CPU work.

For comparison, the notebook on which I am typing this now shows 63 °C with the fan on at slow speed. This is one of the family computer we keep on basically all day and now is 8:35pm. It has a 2GHz Dual Core AMD Turion X2 RM-70 processor.

I hope this helps.

 

golinux, i have to agree with you that for $550 I would not have bought the S3. I bought one with the $100 rebate making it $450 and that was at the limit. Then the new deal came out and I bought a second one for $350. Now at that price if you add an SSD and battery you are still saving a lot of money compared to a S9.

Phil, I think when comparing the air with the S series you are disregarding an important factor which is the OS. Price aside I would have gone with the Air because it offers higher quality but I just can't stand OSx so for me it is a no go. And I don't like bootcamp and all that.

I also do not like to call my laptop Princeton as I associate that name with stuck-up and snob. I prefer series 3 or something else. How does possibly Princeton relate to samsung or this laptop? And I feel this was probably a stupid staples idea.

 

It's $473 now at Amazon. Not a bad price either.

 

If that was the model with an su7300, no wonder you're concerned. Arrandales and Sandy Bridge CPUs, even the ULV versions, run a lot hotter than the C2D processors. Idle temps of 40C+ are not uncommon.

You can probably drop the temps by a few degrees with a new thermal paste job. Factory thermal paste applications sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Your temps are a bit high for idle, but only by a few degrees. Stll, your temps are within the acceptable operating range and you might just want to leave it alone and just monitor it.

 

That's how I'm feeling too. I ended up going for a Vostro V131 deal as well ($599 for loaded Core i5 model) but I may keep both.

 

That's good to know. Thanks guys.

 

I would never worry about idle temperatures of 50C or lower unless the outside of the machine is uncomfortably hot. As the CPU temperature approaches room temperature it requires an increasing amount of airflow (ie fan activity) to remove the remaining heat. More fan activity = more noise and higher battery consumption. For what it's worth I have the fan in my Lenovo T420s set to stop once the CPU temperature drops to 55C.

John

 

Got two questions and a request.
@ zap next to the monitor connector is that small one the usb for the webcam?
(cause that could be a solderless point to add a usb hub)
@. @ ( all folks) who has a high res cam with macro and a steady hand there is an unused connector right next to the memory card under the memory card cover I dunno but I know of nothing these days that uses 10 pins could someone get a closeup of this
terramir

 

I've answered your PM, but in any case I don't know the answer for you.

 

For those of you who installed SSD, are you getting SATA III speed? I just installed Crucial M4, and the avg reading I get per Crystal Disk Mark is around 266mb/s. Which is clearly not close to the avg SATA III reading speed. Can anybody confirm?

 

I will be unable to answer that because I'm using an old Intel G2 in mine. Your results would indicate that the SATA controller is the slower SATA II (3Gbps). Have you installed the Intel chipset drivers?

 

Yes, installed chipset driver and rapid storage as well.

 

nowhere I read that the sata controller supports sata III. the laptop comes with a HDD and only one RAM slot. it looks like to me not really meant for upgrades.

 

How quick is your boot time/programs opening? I have an older Vertex 2 in mine but it feels slower than my old UL30a with C2D ULV, less RAM, etc... I'm thinking I should maybe reinstall and see what happens.

 

It's still quick. 7.8 on WEI. It's just not getting SATA III like marks from Crystal Disk Bench. Crucial M4 is suppose to reach around 455 mb/s read speed. I'm only getting around 266mb/s.

 

Does anyone know how to make the touchpad work better under Windows 7? I installed Linux Mint alongside the default W7HP install, and after finding the appropriate modules and patching the Linux kernel, the touchpad works amazingly well in Linux... but not so well in Windows.

It's very smooth and responsive under Linux, and generally is a joy to use. But it moves sluggishly and oddly in Windows, with x-axis movement faster than y-axis movement, and the two-finger scrolling is dodgy at best.

Are there newer Elantech drivers for Windows I can install?

 

Same boat! I downloaded the latest Elantech drivers, they still suck bigtime. Shame.

I installed Fedora alongside Win 7 on this laptop too, and I cannot for the life of me get the touchpad working. Can you point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance.

 

I just got the new Samsung 830 SSD (128Gb), which is 7mm. I tried installing using the Windows 7 DVD that came with the computer. Upon reboot, the computer froze. After restarting, it showed "A disk error has occurred. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart." When I press CTRL-ALT-DEL, it then can startup in Windows 7.

I have since tried System Recovery, as well as reinstalling twice (once with a different Windows 7 installation DVD). Same problem.

Anyone have any thoughts? Do I need to configure the BIOS in any way, or should I get a RMA replacement for this SSD? Thanks in advance.

 

I installed Crucial M4 and it works fine. I did not have to change anything in the BIOS. I think you should send it back.

 

Thanks for your note. Oddly enough, the Samsung 830 SSD works on my Lenovo X201T (fresh Windows 7 installation works). So it may be a compatibility issue.

Did you get any screws for the Crucial M4? If so, which ones?

 

Has anyone noticed that holding the 'fn' key down slows the fan?

 

when using battery - no matter what power management settings - I'm only getting a clock speed of 793mhz. Doesn't matter what the load is.

any ideas?

 

If anybody in the UK wants to but my one off me I have listed it on ebay(imported from the US) , I'm not happy with the battery life.

HERE

Thanks

 

Anyone aware of a Cyber Monday 'deal' on this model??

 

I finally snagged a Samsung 830 series (64GB) and here are the results:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 485.003 MB/s
Sequential Write : 164.586 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 338.250 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 161.267 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 20.979 MB/s [ 5121.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 47.465 MB/s [ 11588.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 173.381 MB/s [ 42329.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 66.646 MB/s [ 16271.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 35.6% (21.2/59.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/12/01 3:12:40
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)
--------------------------

I also tried Passmark and got the following:

----------------------------------------------
PassMark(TM) PerformanceTest 7.0 Evaluation Version ( PassMark Software - PC Benchmark and Test Software)
Results generated on: Thursday, December 01, 2011


Benchmark Results

Test Name: This Computer
Disk - Sequential Read: 469.2
Disk - Sequential Write: 157.9
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 220.4
Disk Mark: 3065.0
PassMark Rating: 7110.8

System information: This Computer
CPU Manufacturer: GenuineIntel
Number of CPU: 1
Cores per CPU: 2
CPU Type: Intel Core i3-2357M @ 1.30GHz
CPU Speed: 1297.3 MHz
Cache size: 256KB
O/S: Windows 7 (64-bit)
Total RAM: 4008.4 MB.
Available RAM: 2750.9 MB.
Video settings: 1366x768x32
Video driver:
DESCRIPTION: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family
MANUFACTURER: Intel Corporation
BIOS: Intel Video BIOS
DATE: 8-31-2011
Drive Letter: C
Total Disk Space: 59.6 GBytes
Cluster Size: 4.0 KBytes
File system: NTFS
--------------------------------

I'd say those are SATA III speeds.

See above.

I didn't have to change any settings on Bios.. try and re-seat the hard drive? Thats all I can think of.. other than that, RMA.

Good Luck.

 

Hey guys I am intrested in buying one of those batteries
Discount SAMSUNG NP305U Battery, SAMSUNG NP305U Battery <--
New Laptop Battery For Samsung 300u Aa-Pb0Tc4L AA-PL0TC6A AA-PB0TC4A NP300U1A NP300U1A-A01US 7800Mah <---

You are sure that it will fit my Np300U01a ? If yes, which one is better ?

@Phil have u bought any of those biger batteries than stock ones?

 

As I´ve written earlier in this thread, I bought mine in Russia where a 6-Cell original battery was included. Mine got 8800 mAh. So this one has a slightly smaller capacity. On the other hand I think it´s cheap! But who knows how good the cells are...
From judging the picture, I´d say it looks like mine...

 

Hello everyone,

Iv got a 300U, I'm getting nothing close to the 9.5hrs battery life advertised by Amazon. More like 2hr! I've got the 4-cell battery. How long is the battery life using the 6-celll battery?

Thanks,