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

That surprises me slightly as IME Lithiums haven't been that way - the battery shipped with my Samsung lists designed capacity 29Wh and current like 32Wh and I don't think it's even had 5 cycles on it.

I'll kick off another BIOS calibration and see what happens - but I'd honestly expect it to go down I'd be tickled to be wrong though!

I don't totally disagree on the color, but for the premium price paid, I expect to get exactly what I ordered... not likely eBay and the seller will agree, but I'll give it the old college try

Richard

 

DemonBG, did you use the BIOS Battery Calibration or just normal discharge/recharge?

I've never seen the capacity go up or down from a normal discharge/charge cycle, but it seems like every time I run the BIOS Battery Calibration, the capacity goes down a bit

Richard

 

normal use for me bud - i ran the calibrator once or twice but a few times i just ran the lappy till about 5% at which point i set it to sleep - Then just charge till full and read the capacity!

Either way, i get about 5 - 6 hours of GOOD use out of the system nowadays which is about perfect for me... if i took tuned the settings right down i could probably churn 7 - 8 hours out of it... but i like how fast it is on high performance

Take care,
Demon

 

Makes sense - and good to hear the BIOS calibrator is likely NOT the problem. I'll run a few more cycles and see what it does then take up my gripes with the seller and ebay if it comes to that. I did get about 6hrs of DVD playback from a VCD-mounted .ISO today before it finally went to sleep, so life is decent - but comparable to your ~$35 battery, so this one is a bad deal!

Thanks,
Richard

 

It would seem so... Although i have just looked back at the listing i bought it from and the battery i bought should have been 6600mAh... So maybe they sent me the wrong pack? (The one i received is labelled as 7200mAh). Not complaining... Just saying you all might not be as lucky


Take care,
Demon

 

Yes, and their listing for a black battery was closed last I looked - they seemed to have red ones, but no black ones. Those also were billed as 6600mAh as you said. Sigh. This really *SHOULDN'T* be this hard, but I'm now reminded why I'd avoided buying laptop batteries for years and years, except for work where we pony up for the genuine ones direct from mfgs

Richard

 

Hello all!! This is my first review ever. Normally, I’m one of those people who creep around on forums for reviews but this time I decided to write a review of my own.

First of all, I bought this laptop when it was onsale for $350 and I couldn’t resist the urge to get an 11.6” WITH an core i3 processor laptop for so cheap. This laptop replaced a netbook with an atom n450 processor. (Remember back in the days when netbooks cost upwards of 400ish?)

Anyway, I’m not going to go in-depth about most of the things other than the modifications I made to the laptop so far. I’ve replaced the original hard drive with a Corsair Force 3 180GB version, updated the ram to 8GB, and also replaced the original wifi card with an Intel 5300. I’ll talk about the SSD upgrade and wifi replacement more.

I can confirm that you SHOULD update the hard drive with another 7mm alternative or take the SSD out of the metal/plastic shell. I left mine inside the shell for warranty reasons. There is a slightly unnoticeable bulge at the bottom right side of the laptop. The arrow keys will feel a bit more recessed than usual, but other than that, you really can’t notice the difference unless you examine the laptop really closely. I’d strongly recommend all users out there who are thinking of an hard drive update to find a 7mm hard drive.


Left side no bulge.


Right side bulge.


One thing I find a bit annoying after installing the Corsair Force 3 is that sometimes the ssd isn’t detected, and I’ll have to turn off the laptop by pressing the power button and turn it on again. Usually, this happens after a cold start (ie. Haven’t used the laptop for a couple hours). After a couple turn on/offs, the system boots into Windows 7 and everything is snappy. I believe this to be Corsair related and not Samsung related.

Now, for the more interesting part of my upgrades: the wifi card swap. Because the stock wifi card (Intel wireless-n 130) is a wifi and bluetooth combo card, it contained only 1 single antenna for the wifi transmit/receive. I wondered if swapping the wifi card would offer any improvements. The other antenna is wired to the case near the very bottom right hand side of the case next to the Windows 7 sticker. This antenna is used for the Bluetooth.

I have another laptop, Asus G51JX, that I have also updated to an Intel 5300. (Luckily, Asus included 3 wifi antennas and I didn’t have to do any mods to add antennas). After side by side comparison tests of the wifi signal strengths of various networks, I can conclude that it isn’t worth swaping the wifi card and adding an additional antenna in the Samsung due to a marginal increase of wifi strength over the stock wifi card. I can confirm that all 3 antennas are connected to my AP and I'm receiving upwards to ~9.5MB/s for file transfers.



Third antenna placement.

Finished product.



Samsung w/Intel 5300


G51JX w/Intel 5300

Correct me if I’m wrong, but adding an additional antenna only grants more streams to the wifi card, but doesn’t necessarily give the laptop better signal strength.

Thanks for reading my review!! If you have any questions feel free to drop a reply.

PS. Does anyone know what 80 Port is? I circled it in one of my pictures.

 

I'm curious why you say this antenna is for BT? I've seen a number of folks making the same statement, but I've never seen technical docs for the Intel WiFi/BT cards which supports it. Numerous other BT-only cards have an integrated antenna, and *I* always believed that the WiFi/BT cards did as well - and thus the two antennas are *BOTH* WiFi. N130 is single-stream, but I thought it was two WiFi antennas (once referred to as "diversity").

The Intel 6230 is 2-stream, 2-band N plus BT, and AFAIK it only has the same two antenna connectors - both for WiFi I believe.

I believe that's the old Port 80 diagnostics connection from BIOS - used to buy AT-bus cards which had LEDs on them to display the BIOS boot diagnostics as PCs came up. Just my guess though.

Richard

 

This week I finally upgraded my old Wireless-G access points to new dual-simultaneous-band, 2 stream APs (using Cisco E3000s from the recent Newegg sale). Large file copies with the stock Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 130 wireless card ran between 2-3 MB/sec, but I was getting 7-8MB/sec on another machine running an Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300, so I wanted to see if I could bump the WiFi performance of the Samsung up a bit. I also didn't want to lose the integrated bluetooth, so the Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 seemed perfect.

I found these available for $20 at MacMall of all places... (Free shipping on $25 or more, so I ordered two ) Installation was a breeze - usual gyrations to get the back off the Samsung then a flat-blade screwdriver to gently pop the antenna connectors free of the N-130. One screw and the half-mini-PCIe card is loose. Remove at an angle, angle in the new card, replace the screw and carefully snap the antenna connectors back on.

Performance on 2.4GHz is excellent - 5-7MB/sec - so easily 2x what the N-130 was giving me! I'm guessing the stock antennas aren't really optimized for 5GHz because I was only getting about 3-4MB/sec on 5GHz. Since 2-stream was my goal and my setup runs on both bands, I'm not too concerned - but if you're 5GHz-only then you might need to do a little more work.

Anyway, if you have 2-3 stream capable N router on 2.4GHz I definitely recommend this $20 upgrade! If you need 5GHz to get multiple streams from your router then consider this, but expect that you *may* need to replace the factory antennas to get full performance.

Richard

 

I got the UK version of the 300u last week , it has dual core Intel pentium 967 1.3 Ghz Sandy bridge chip. It seems to be practically the same as the i3 offered in the US.

I have replaced the hard drive with an 2 year old SSD a crucial c300 256 GB. I also replaced the RAM with 8GB.
I got a battery by post from Hong Kong this morning (marked samsung but who really knows). The battery capacity in Battery Mon says design capacity 66000 mWH (7636 maH) , the battey was advertised as 8850 maH but 7636 is good enough for me.

The firmware and the software used by the I3 300U are the same.

I noticed when I updated the bios to version 05PY ( was 03PY) that there was an option in the BIOS to select SATA3 . This is unexpected good news and it allowed me to run SSD with the SATA at 6GB/s this allows the crucial to run at its design speed and not be limited by SATA2 at 3GB/s.

I find the screen good enough for me , (I hate glossy screens). I really like the key board. Fan noise control seems to be effective . The stock wireless intel 130 seems to be connect reliably but I may upgrade that to an intel 6230 as it is cheap mod and I like to tweak

The only difficuly so far has been getting the bios to recognise flash usb , I wanted to boot from the USB and use GParted. I can some times get the USB to be seen by Bios but not always (unresolved). When the machine is booted into windows I have no problems seeing the USB devices.

Overall I very pleased with this machine and glad I did not go down the series 9 route as I could not alter its battery . This machine now is as fast as I will every need any PC . The wireless on the series 9 machines sounds a bit flakey due to possible unintended shielding by the duraluminum casing, this may be already resolved by using the intel 6300 3 antennae system. The Series 9 are supposed to heve the very best 11.6 screens, altough the screen in the 300U is pretty good for me ,I wonder will it be possible to replace the screen with a series 9 replacement when they become more available to 3rd party screen distributers in a few months (can i resist the urge to tweak).


I am also cetainly glad I went for the 300U rather than the lenovo X121E as this samsung has SATA3 and I believe better screen, effective fan noise control, I also wanted a track pad with bottom buttons that the 300U has. The one thing the X121E had was an option for an internal 3g sim for UK work travel , this is not on the Samsung , but I have a usb dongle for that (not ideal but effective).

 

Interesting, yes, loses a couple of threads, virtualization support, 1MB of cache, but perhaps more concerning drops from HD3000 to HD graphics:
Compare i3-2357M and Pentium 967

Probably fine for most "normal" use of this size machine

Thanks for posting this - it appears the Samsung Control Center update checker does NOT check for BIOS updates - I had to run the update utility manually. It's a shame Samsung doesn't list the actual BIOS updates on their download page - but at least their updater lets you download and keep the update file itself. My SSD is only SATA-300 so I can't take advantage of 6Gb mode - though I thought someone earlier in the thread was doing so even on the 03PY BIOS? Interesting that 05PY defaults that to Disabled....

Richard

 

Exactly the reason I wanted a US model as opposed to a UK one... Not sure what the difference is in terms of real world performance but... At least i will never ask "What if"

Take care,
Demon

 

I totally agree - seems like HD3000 benches out about 2x the performance of plain HD versions. 2 extra threads and a little cache maybe not huge, but I intend to load VirtualPC at some point soon. Most office/productivity apps probably fine w/o it, but I never claimed to be normal

Richard

 

It seems the actual graphics chip is called HD2000 for the intel 967 , is that called plain HD. From my observations , photos and video files open instantly and play smoothly. With regards to the rest of performance evey thing opens instantly. My boot time to windows screen is 16 seconds and an additional 2-4 seconds for wireless connection to be made.

My Autodesk cad drawings all open instantly and are fast to manipulate.

Of course it would seem to make sense to go for the i3 where this is available.

I have now also added the Intel 6230 wireless, no problems.

 

It looks like the Bigfoot’s Killer-N 1102 Wireless Card is almost twice faster than Intel 6230:

AnandTech - Bigfoot?s Killer-N 1102 Wireless Networking vs. the World



Did anyone try this card on the NP300U1A? It does not have a bluetooth, but I do not need it as I am using a Logitech mouse with the dongle.

 

I purchased this laptop in October 2011 and I powered it on this morning and it is not even loading the bios. I think the HD or the motherboard has died. On the SAMSUNG splash screen, it does not even give me the option to recover or go into setup.

Has anyone else had this laptop fail on them? I haven't even used this laptop extensively. The difficult part is that I am overseas so I can't get warranty done on it until I get back to the US.

Thank goodness I still have my receipt.

 

If you are getting the BIOS spash screen then the mainboard is probably OK and the problem is most likely with the HDD (or connector). What do you get if you press Esc at the BIOS screen (you should get a list of boot devices and a link to the BIOS setup)?

John

 

Once I press the power button and the Samsung splash screen comes up, the bottom bar just says "Please Wait..."

I press ESC, F2, F4, nothing at all.

 

That looks as if the BIOS isn't detecting the hardware properly. Normally, i would recommend to disconnect the mains power, remove the battery and then hold down the power button for 30s (which can sometimes clear temporary boot problems), but this one has an internal battery.

So it's either get the bottom off (see here) or back to Samsung. Personally, I would be wanting to get the HDD out and backed up (unless it is dead) before parting company with the machine.

John

 

It looks like it's back to Samsung when I get back to the US. I removed the HD and booted with just memory.

I could get into BIOS, move around, change configurations, etc.

Once I plug the HD back in, I get back to square 1. It seems something from the drive is causing the system to just hang and not even get into the BIOS. Good thing I don't have much important data on it.

Sucks... can't believe this thing crapped out in 4 months and I don't even use it much

 

Sounds like a dead HDD...perfect excuse for an SSD though....

 

HDDs are impressive pieces of miniaturised engineering and, as such, are one of the least robust parts of a computer. In your case it seems that the HDD electronics have died, which is less common then the mechanical parts. What brand of HDD?

John

 

Hitachi was the maker of the one in my system

 

can someone please point me out to the most stable and reliable touch pad driver. I installed the latest driver from the samsung website 2 months ago and it really drove me crazy so I uninstalled. The only thing I really need is the two finger swipe to scroll up/down pages.
thanks guys.

 

They used to be one of the better brands.

John

 

has anyone tried to play back a x264 Blu-ray 1080p file?I just tried last night and it's super choppy, skips frames and when the camera moves it does not keep up. I had all other apps close and I am using VLC. any suggestions?

 

There's not a lot of selection as far as 7mm thick hard drives, so I'd be reluctant to label one brand as being "better."

Besides, Hitachi is now part of Western Digital, except for the 3.5" production capacity that's been sold to Toshiba due to concerns over a lack of competition. (Golly, we'd hate to have price fixing in the HDD sector. Somebody could use flooding in Thailand as an excuse to jack up prices?)

 

Just buy a new hitachi 320 gb 7200 rpm HD if you do not want to shell out the bucks for an SSD. I did the upgrade and it works great Cost me 70 bucks.

Amazon.com: Hitachi Travelstar 2.5-Inch 7mm 320 GB 7200RPM SATA II 16 MB Cache Internal Hard Drive 0A78743: Computers & Accessories

Faster than the original 5400 rpm drive.

 

New owner checking in but with the AMD Fusion E-450 CPU.

 

has anyone tried to install OS X lion on this? before I waste hours doing it? The S3 is not listed in the compatibility list

 

Hi,

I need help. I'm also a proud owner of a e-450 model, and i'm looking for putting an SSD on it, but i've read the HDD is 7mm thick and my SSD is 9.5mm... Do you guys know/recommend any particular model to use in it?

Thanks.

 

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let everyone know how helpful I've found this thread. I bought my Samsung when it was on 1saleaday.com for $400 and it's been great. Much better to haul around than my big MacBook Pro.

I'm also using it to replace an old Acer tablet PC that's served me VERY well working for a couple of sports teams for about 7 years. That lil' guy's been through rain, snow, 100-degree+ heat and it's been a trooper. Unfortunately, at this point, it's too slow to do anything but run a single program at a time.

So I upgraded to the Series 3 and so far it's been through the snow part with no trouble. Runs both programs that I need (Sports Sounds Pro and Adobe Audition) with no prob.

Oh, I will mention that I had to buy a ground lift for it (one of those 3-prong-to-2-prong adapters) for when I work at one place; the ground loop was causing a bad hum. But, $3 later, all fixed.

I got a fairly inexpensive case for it on eBags ( rooCASE Super Bubble Neoprene Sleeve for up to 11.6" Netbook - eBags.com) that's nice and snug, and I can just carry it in a backpack. Been great on one trip so far, and looking forward to having it with me on two more coming up.

I read with interest the posts by people who bought new batteries and almost pulled the trigger on one, but did not. Maybe another time - thanks, though, to everyone who posted their experiences with it.

Guess there hasn't been a fix for the sluggish trackpad yet, huh? I think that's the Samsung's weakest point.

Anyway, loving my Series 3.

Cheers,
bW

 

This thread is about 7mm SSDs. I use an Intel 320 and had to remove the plastic spacer and refit the cover with 2m x 3 screws (I think there is now a 7mm version avaailable without the spacer).

John

 

When shopping for an SSD you just have to find one that is 7mm thick. As mentioned the Intel 320 series (and older G2 which I used) have a removable spacer that allows them to fit. I think Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 are available in both thicknesses too.

I recycled a bag that I was using for an 11.6" Acer.

Microsoft 11" sleeve

I may have bought it at Buy.com or somewhere else, but couldn't find the link right away. It offers more protection than most sleeves because of the "cushion cell lining" which are padded bumps inside.

 

I bought a Port sleeve, model Miami Skin, for 5€ (~6-7 bucks?) on a sale @ Exabyte Portugal.
http://www.exabyte.pt/catalogo/detalhes_produto.php?id=2859

Thanks for all the useful info about my SSD doubts.
Cheerio.

 

Hi,

I'm still a little uncertain of a mod I have in mind, mainly because i don't know how will it handle temperature variations..

So, here it goes. I'm thinking in dismantling my Vertex2 SSD and use only the stripped board. You can check pictures here.
Problems are 305U doesn't have any fixing points for the HD (check video), which means i have to fix it with double sided tape, and, that i don't know how will it handle temperatures, both, stripped from it's casing and taped to laptop casing.. According to his data sheet his operating temps. are 0º~70ºC, but i don't know if casing does any cooling effect in the process. I'm also afraid to wrap it around in a anti-static bag because of temperature issues.

What do you think?

Thanks.

P.S. - I'm double posting this both in np300 and in 7mm SSD threads.

 

First of all this forum has been a great help and resource and thanks to everyone who posted detailed instructions: I got an Agility 3 60GB drive today but it completely refused to boot on my Samsung Princeton 11.6" laptop (another great slickdeal :look : ended up using it as a second SSD on my desktop (boot drive is a 120 GB Vertex 2 and there is little real world difference between this and the Vertex 2).

I updated the laptop's BIOS as well to 05PY, set SATA to SATA3 and played with everyone option possible in BIOS and the SSD had the latest firmware pre-installed but still no-go. It would get detected in the BIOS and allow Windows to install but when Windows restarted after the install, it would just hang on a black screen or give a disk read error. Did this a couple of times with a couple of different install sources (Win 7 Ultimate w/o SP1, Win 7 Home Premium) but no dice. The SSD itself is working fine both with a USB enclosure and connected to my desktop now through a SATA 3 port (chipset is P67 , a close cousin of the mobile chipset found on this laptop).

I did not have any bulge issues as the drive height was about the same as the hdd w/ rubber spacing: any one else get a SF-22XX based drive to work with this machine?

Any insights would be helpful.

 

Hi sid, totally unrelated to your question, but related to mine...

Is your Agility 3 the same size that your Vertex 2? On site they both state 99.8 x 69.63 x 9.3mm.
If that's true, there's no need to strip mine? How did you got it fixed to the laptop btw? Or did you just let it loose?

Thanks.

 

I think so, both are 9.3mm. My Vertex 2 is actually a G.SKill Phoenix Pro (another SF-1200 drive with SF-1500 firmware, identical to the Vertex 2). Getting the hardware to fit was not my main problem but the damn SSD to boot! I noticed no bulges after the install.

Has anyone else tried installing Win7 clean on this from a USB stick: this is the first time I used a USB stick for an install so wonder if something is amiss there (I tried two different sticks with two different install sources). Will cloning the existing HDD possibly solve the problem?

I removed and reinstalled the HDD four times yesterday so I prolly won't try it again anytime soon though, have had it

 

Thanks for your answer, just a couple of more doubts before I dismantle mine, sorry.

Was the SSD tight in place or was it loose? And, do we really need to remove the rubber bases like in the video, because of hidden screws, to open the laptop, or is that just an unnecessary step?

Thanks.

 

The SSD is a bit loose and needs to be stuck on with a bit of 3M double sided tape on the side to prevent it from moving ^

 

what is your idle cpu temp? mine is around 60/62 degrees C. Isn't a bit high?
Also any news on good drivers for the trackpad?

 

Seems a allot high for a i3.. But u'r lucky, you can control your CPU temp... I can't! Usual temperature apps still have no AMD APU's support.
Tried my usual, batterycare, even talked with the developer, but nothing. Also tried Realtemp among others, with no luck.

 

Sorry about not reading all 30 pages but have you guy's figured out why it hangs when you do certain things like I talked about in my thread? Also I emailed setFSB and they said they dont have time to get the Series 3 to work. I even asked how much would i have to donate to make him get it to work....he never responded.

EDIT: about temps....I am half way tempted to put IC Diamond on it since I just got it in the mail. Also taking the case apart and see if it is modifiable.

 

Update: Got a 64 GB Samsung 830 which fit perfectly with the rubber sleeve, also used the install files from the recovery disc (basically made an install usb drive from the reovery cd) and everything is up and running.Though the 830 is expensive (cost me around $100 for the 64 GB), but given the performance and perfect fit I would recommend this drive for this particular laptop. It helps that both are Samsung I guess, and I am willing to pay a $50 premium over the Agility 3 because unlike my desktop if something goes wrong, opening and tinkering with this laptop is far more annoying esp since the HDD removal requires the entire bottom cover removal - a tricky and delicate affair.

Ordered a $30 6600 mAH battery from eBay as well, since I got this laptop for around $300 all incl, I am quite pleased with my ~ $440 ultrabook.

 

you can't really control the temps, you can undervolt, you can throttle, and that's more or less what you can do to lower the temps.

HopelesslyFaithful, my S3 doesn't really hang that much but for example IE9 is one of the worst, it hangs frequently for a 5/10 seconds, unfortunately I have to use it with dragon naturallyspeaking. Also I was forced to turn on paging/virtual memory because 4GB just don't cut it for me, I can't spend $65 on a 8GB stick. I am getting frustrated with this little guy but I really love the weight/shape combo, three USB, vga/hdmi, and card reader. The trackpad sucks, and as someone said it's a pain to open and change components, only ram is readily accessible. OH and I wish we had the different colors they sell in korea.

I still need good drivers for the trackpad.

 

A few more observations: WiFi connection was quite poor after the install, turns out this is because I had Bluetooth enabled causing interference (had this disabled earlier). Also, the trackpad behaves much better with the default windows driver than the ELAN one so planning to keep it that way.

 

I am talking about lets say you hit(or hold) the arrow pad to scroll down and if you try to move the mouse right after that it is stuck. So annoying. kills productivity. This think has to be miles faster than ym old P4 or AMD athlon from years and years ago but i never had that problem then...what gives.

 

Sorry for my poor English, i translated directly from a slang Portuguese expression, which only made it worst. What i meant to say apps to frequently check the temperature. Not control it.
I always had an app to check how my laptop is handling the performance i request from it. It's exactly when we push them too hard and they overheat that CPU overheating problems start occurring.
If you're under warranty, my advice is, burn it with performance apps until it starts to shut down itself, that's how i got my older 1201N board replaced..
After this, take it a notch down.. It's a book made for portability, not serious performance..
One more thing, i read somewhere the laptop does not support 8Gb sticks. I'm using a 4Gb Turbo MMC (max. turbo boost allowed) instead of turning on paging file. Shape is similar to old nokias MMC's, it's half the size of a SD stick, so, there's no need to remove it because it's only half way in.. Or buy an SSD!

P.S.- I never really had any mouse issues, i use both windows and ELAN options, and it's working out for me. But i also use a wireless mouse with it, it's 10$ well spend for your "productivity" to boost considerably.

 

I'm using a Vertex 2 in mine. I just took the casing off and taped it to the board. However, you loose a bit of structural integrity by doing this because the plastic of the bottom cover is basically hollow where you put the SSD. I ended up super gluing the metal plate that came off my Vertex 2 onto the bottom cover to stiffen it up a bit. No problems so far.