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    Series 7 Ultra NP730U3E / NP740U3E with AMD HD 8570M and optional 4G LTE

    Discussion in 'Samsung' started by yknyong1, Jan 11, 2013.

  1. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Thanks for the update. It therefore appears that there's a 3rd major variation in board design for the 13" Series 7 / Book 7. Twin fans, leaving not much room for RAM, is also the arrangement used in most 13" Series 9. However, you have the advantage of the RAM slot so you can put 8GB (or more if you can afford a 16GB module).

    WEI increased your RAM score because of more than 4GB. Perhaps it doesn't worry about single or dual channel (which should affect the graphics score). BTW, I did a lot of tests of different RAM combinations on the T420s a couple of years ago and the results are here. You might find them interesting.

    John
     
  2. CPhoenix

    CPhoenix Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi guys,

    Whilst I really like this Samsung Ultrabook, its not without its flaws.
    When I first got the Samsung NP740 laptop 3 months ago, I noticed a bit of back-light bleed in certain parts but wasn't bothered with it too much as it was only noticeable when the screen was totally black.

    Unfortunately, now the screen issue seems to be getting worse, a small white blemish on the screen seems to have appeared which is distracting when dark / deep coloured backgrounds.
    There's also a very light bunch of red patches developing in the screen next to the white spot which I'll admit is even harder to see but still seems to be getting worse.

    Imagebin - A place to slap up your images.
    Imagebin - A place to slap up your images.
    Imagebin - A place to slap up your images.

    Has anyone come across this? I'm assuming its a factory fault with the screen....
    I'm also undecided if the back light bleed (seen in the 3rd picture) is also getting progressively worse. :(


    Your thoughts guys?
    CP.
     
  3. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    White blobs can be caused by too much pressure on the screen. However, the red patterns are abnormal and I would be asking Samsung to replace the display. Are the red patterns always visible when the display is on? (It's then easy for the service people to see the problem). A replacement screen should fix the other issues.

    John
     
  4. fugunaga

    fugunaga Notebook Enthusiast

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    i have that back bleeding, but only when i booting my laptop with the SAMSUNG logo..... i don't care about this actually, as long as it doesn't trouble me when i watch movies
     
  5. CPhoenix

    CPhoenix Notebook Enthusiast

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    Its difficult to see at a distance - I think the camera has emphasised the red issue a bit but its definitely noticeable up close on a dark / black background. I'll post an update when its back from repair.

    The backlight bleed definitely seems to be getting worse its now starting to distract me when I'm watching stuff that has lots of dark scenes.
     
  6. tekjunke

    tekjunke Notebook Guru

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    I looked at this machine in Best Buy today and really liked it, however its been discontinued and nobody (other than maybe Samsung) has it in stock.

    My question is, what replaces it? and what would be a comparable 15" model?

    I like the fact that it can hold 16GB or RAM and I can replace the mSATA SSD with a larger one.

    Thanks in advance.
     
  7. Fat Dragon

    Fat Dragon Just this guy, you know?

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    A lot of us are crossing our fingers for a Haswell refresh that doesn't change any of the unique or excellent qualities of this machine. For now, there is no direct replacement.

    A comparable 15" model from Samsung would probably be the Series 7 Chronos/ATIV Book 8, but it's far from being completely analogous.
     
  8. tekjunke

    tekjunke Notebook Guru

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    Thank you.

    Would you still recommend this machine even though its long in the tooth?

    Sent from my Galaxy S4
     
  9. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Long in the tooth meaning it was introduced in the first half of 2013? :eek:

    You have the dilemma of choosing between buying the current (Ivy Bridge) version while you have the chance of finding it or waiting to see if, as we hope, a Haswell version is released (which would, undoubtedly, arrived at a higher price than the model it is replacing). And a future model may not have the two SODIMM slots.

    Haswell brings little improvement in performance but provides some improvement to power efficiency.

    John
     
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  10. ComradeNF

    ComradeNF Notebook Evangelist

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    Anyone have any experience dual booting a linux distro with Windows 8 on this laptop? I am taking a few programming classes next quarter and one of them requires that I be in a linux environment.

    Also, if I run Linux in a VM in Windows 8, am I going to get horrible battery life in a setting like the library, where I am just coding?
     
  11. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    FWIW, I've just run a quick test on my X4C with XP running in VM Player. The impact on power drain was surprisingly small. This makes sense if the various extra background processes are inactive. Just make sure you have enough RAM so that running the virtual machine does not cause increased swap file activity.

    I would therefore recommend you give the VM approach a try. It will be less stressful than setting up dual boot (although Linux, UEFI and SecureBoot seem to be better debugged now than a year ago) and a lot more convenient to use. Use BatteryBar or HWiNFO to make some power drain observations without / with the VM + Linux running.

    John
     
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  12. CodyTempleton

    CodyTempleton Newbie

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    I grabbed one of these from Best Buy yesterday... I think it is a best buy special. core i5-3337u, 8gb of RAM, 256gb SSD, but no graphics card at all which is fine by me. It was the best combination of form factor, build, keyboard, screen and hardware I could find and the price was right since it was an open box item...

    but I know why the guy returned it. It is equipped with the apparently highly faulty Intel 6235 wireless adapter and will not hold a wireless signal no matter where I set it in the house. It will fluctuate between 3-5 bars and then consistently drop for extended periods of time. While its working, it is very fast but it spends most of its time not working so I could call it non-functional for all practical intents and purposes.

    The WiFi remedies thread did not help me but since I got the laptop for a good price, I was wondering if it would be possible to fix it myself. Is the wireless card user serviceable, so I could replace it with a higher quality module? I am not overly concerned with losing warranty support in case there are stickers, etc. I have to break.

    I still may return the laptop and get something else but there is hardly anything else on the market right now that I find interesting except possibly a retina macbook pro.

    edit: noticed a lot of people with 6235s have replaced it with this http://www.amazon.com/Bigfoot-Networks-KillerN-1202-Notebook-Wireless/dp/B008H5V9ZU some people mention they have Series 7 Samsungs. I think I will buy this and try it out.

    tl;dr is wireless card user serviceable? could it be replaced by a Killer half PCI express size card?
     
  13. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    The internal photo in this review shows the WiFi card - it is replaceable.

    John
     
  14. ComradeNF

    ComradeNF Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks! In that case I will just run Linux Mint in a VM. I do have 8GB of RAM installed so I don't think memory will be an issue.
     
  15. ebec

    ebec Notebook Enthusiast

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    Power Savings

    In the last few days, I have been fiddling around with a few things and had some significant findings. I started with running the Energy report Powercfg Energy (elevated command line) Copy the ‪C:\Windows\System32\energy-report.html to desktop (won’t open otherwise) and look for errors I had 9…on my NP740U3E-X02SE running windows 8. Eight of the errors was “USB Suspend:USB Device not Entering Selective Suspend”. ‬And the last one was “Platform Power Management Capabilities :pCI Express Active-State Power Management (ASPM) Disabled”

    I started to disable USB devices in Device Manager to see if it made a difference. Nothing helped so I started to look at drivers. All of them were Microsoft except two that had the name (Intel® Series/C216 Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller 1ED2D). Du to Intel’s terrible drivers and bloatware lately I decided too uninstall both of them. To my big surprise Idle Power consumption dropped with about 800 mW and all USB selective suspend messages disappeared when I re-run the energy report. I did a quick test after a reboot and both USB 2/3 works at full speed and the power consumption remained lower than before.
    The bad thing is that after Sleep, hibernate or fastboot, three of the USB devicees goes back to the status “USB Suspend:USB Device not Entering Selective Suspend” The only time all USB devices go to “sleep” are after restart or booting with fastboot disabled

    When I test the power consumption, I boot to desktop set the screen brightness to minimum, let the machine idle for about two minutes than open Settings, and look at “Current Power Consumption. WiFi are On, keyboard backlight off. When there are no error messages on USB, Idle is down to about 4,5W. After sleep with 3 USB errors bout 4,9W and with intel drivers and 8 USB errors it idles at about 5,3W. This is with the Samsung Power plan active.

    I would be very interested to hear what others see in the in idle power Consumption in the Settings app and if you have the same errors when running the energy report
     
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  16. decon

    decon Notebook Guru

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    Hey everyone! I just got my hands on a NP740U3E-A02SE. Great little machine, except for all the preloaded software. I'm in the middle of removing a butch of stuff, but I'm unsure as to whether I should keep these three programs:
    Intel Processor Graphics
    Intel SDK for OPENGL - CPU only runtime package
    IntelliMemory

    I've read the How to thread on reducing latencies, but these program aren't mentioned. I've just uninstalled the Intel WiFi stuff, and so far the machine seems to work fine with just the Windows 8 drivers.

    I'm also wondering if it's a bad idea to somehow remove the recovery partition to free up some space?
     
  17. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    Omg , just bought the np740 and i make some stupid partition changes :(
    Now my laptop dont come in windows , i check the internet an read about press f4 and then auto recover, but That doesnt work .
    Some tips plz iam realy in trouble i supose :(
    ( soz for my poor english)
     
  18. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    I would be cautions about removing the Intel drivers. IntelliMemory is a caching program which probably creates more trouble than it avoids, particularly when used in conjunction with an SSD. So you can kick it out.

    If you have used Samsung Recovery Solution to make a backup onto a bootable flash drive (preferably two backups and check the computer will boot from them) then you can delete the biggest of the recovery partitions in the knowledge you can reinstall the factory image from the flash drive.

    If you have touched the recovery partitions (moving, never mind deleting them) then F4 recovery won't know where to look to find the recovery files on the drive. Unless you used Samsung Recovery Solution to make a backup onto a bootable flash drive then you will have to ask Samsung to re-image the drive. They may charge for this service.

    John
     
  19. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    Thanks John

    But how does it work then if i want to upgrade my ssd ?
    And i dont have acces to my old ssd?
    I wanna upgrade to à 256 gb ssd drive and dont want to invest in my 128gb ssd


    Wim
     
  20. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Samsung's Recovery Solution 6 provides the options to either make a bootable flash drive from which you can install the Factory image, etc., on a new drive or to directly clone the existing system (for which you would need an mSATA - USB adapter or mSATA - 2.5" adapter + 2.5" to USB adapter). What did you do with the 128GB SSD?

    John
     
  21. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    I make 2 partitions C and D , but i make à mistake and the C partition was to small.
    So i make the D partition smaller ,and then i merge the C with the new partition.
    And then i get the message That there is à error :(
     
  22. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    If you didn't intentionally touch the recovery partitions then they should still exist. I've found the Minitools Partition Wizard to be quite good (and it's free). One of its facilities is to let you explore the contents of all the partitions. If your big recovery still has its contents then a way to make it usable is in one of these threads (but don't ask me which).

    John
     
  23. decon

    decon Notebook Guru

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    Thanks John!

    I've deleted all the extra intel stuff, but my laptop seems slooow, even when just browsing the web. Firefox stutters badly when opening tabs, closing etc., switch between notes in Evernotes lags with 2-3 secs. I've check with LatencyMon and it gives me some weird information that I don't quite understand.
    [​IMG]

    What I don't understand is the measured CPU speed. I've encouter this with all the different power settings available, and I've even disabled the CPU regulator in the BIOS. I don't know what to do here, so any help is greatly apreciated!

    I'm thinking about doing a clean windows 8 installation, without all the samsung software bundled. Does anyone have experience with this?
     
  24. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    Okee Windows 7 installed :)
    I must only installl amd radeon 8570m.
    But wich driver do i need , can some one place à link for the right driver win7 :)

    And i need win 7 drivers for
    SM-buscontroller
    USB2.0-CRW
    USB-controller

    Links plz
     
  25. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Use HWiNFO's CPU speed display on its System Summary window. if the CPU speed is not varying over the whole range 800 MHz to maximum turbo speed then check that you have not enabled either Silent mode or Eco mode in Setting (Fn+F1).

    If the CPU speed is varying over its whole range then use Task Manager to see what is loading the system.

    Your notebook has a lot in common with the 2013 Series 7 Chronos / Ativ Book 8. You should find useful info in this thread.

    John
     
  26. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    John my friend :hi2:

    AMD working , USB 3 working
    Nog working on the sm bus controller , usb 2.0-crw
    Can u give me hint.
     
  27. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Have you installed the full set of Windows 7 drivers for the NP740?

    If not, use SW Update's find model function to find Germany > Series 7 > NP740U3E-S01DE > Windows 7.

    Don't forget the chipset driver. Did you install Easy Settings? If not, do so.

    John
     
  28. JBR48

    JBR48 Newbie

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    CPU runs at half speed!

    I am new to this forum, but it seems quite interesting. Last week I bought a Samsung NP740U3E-X01NL, which explains my interest.

    In general, I am quite pleased with this laptop, nice look and ergonomics and not too large or too heavy. Except for one problem, everything seems to be working good with the usual headaches of finding out how to do something in Windows 8. I loaded my set of working programs and even the older ones still seem to work.

    Now coming to my actual problem, the CPU only runs at half speed and nothing I do seems to make a difference. I noticed it first by looking at the WEI page. Everything there is exactly the same as in the NP740U3 review in MobileTechReview except the Processor score which is 3.6, which is almost half as much in the review (6.9). I investigated a little further and ran some benchmarks. To make a long story short, in all CPU benchmarks, the result was half of what it should be.

    Then I ran the prime95 program to load the CPU and looked at the result in the Resource Monitor. Running 4 threads of the torture test ,the CPU Usage peaked at 44% and the Maximum Frequency peaked at 43%. Again only half speed. Also the case remains stone cold.

    The Intel Processor Identification Utility gives CPU Speed as 0.79GHz while 1.80GHz was expected. The System Bus speed was 100MHz as expected.

    It is clear that the CPU is stuck in some low power mode. I have played around with the Power Options, setting everything to High Performance, but that did not make a difference, Also I have read up on Speedstep and TurboBoost and tried to switch these on and off in the BIOS, but to no avail.

    I have not been able to read everything on this forum, so there might be a solution available somewhere, but I could not find it using search terms as "half speed", so I hope somebody on this thread might have some good ideas.

    Kind regards,
    Jan
     
  29. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Go into Settings (press Fn+F1) and make sure that neither Eco Mode nor Silent Mode are enabled. Both of these reduce heat / save power by restricting the CPU speed (but Samsung don't mention this side-effect).

    If that is not the cause then run SW Update and see if there is a newer version of the Setting program. if there is then install it. If there is nothing newer then lind the current version and reinstall it (the Settings installation process includes loading the Samsung optimized power plan, which is the one I recommend).

    Another place to check is the Maximum Processor State in the CPU power management in the advanced options for the power plan. 90% or above should let the processor run at full speed, when needed.

    John
     
  30. decon

    decon Notebook Guru

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    Thanks for your reply.

    I researched the issue with CPU-Z and the Process Manager. Both told the same story, so I decided to do a fresh recovery install. Every thing's fine now, but I'll come back and post more update on my quest to low latency when I have more time.
     
  31. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    Hahah u realy are good John

    Only The usb2-crw is not installed yet so the quest go on :)

    EDIT

    John Superman

    Thans for all replys :)
    I now have everything working on Windows 7 ultimate :)

    Very happy Thanks again :)
     
  32. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    So what fixed the USB2 problem?

    John
     
  33. WimSeen

    WimSeen Newbie

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    Memorycard driver fixed it :thumbsup:
     
  34. JBR48

    JBR48 Newbie

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    Thank you for your quick response. I did look at the power settings before, but I did look at them again very closely. I tested again by looking at Resource Monitor/CPU while running prime95.

    • Eco Mode or Silent Mode are not enabled. I tried enabling, but that did not have any effect apart from switching the WiFi off.
    • De-installed and re-installed the Settings program. Also no discernible effect.
    • Maximum Processor State, again no difference whether I put in 100% or 1%.
    • One other thing that is remarkable is that the current power plan is not remembered after a reboot.
    • I did already mention that I switched SpeedStep on and off in the BIOS, again no discernible effect.

    It seems to me that the power settings for the CPU are entirely ignored. What do you recommend, a refresh or complete re-install?
     
  35. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    I'm out of other suggestions for debugging the cause of the problem and would recommend that you restore the Factory Image using either Samsung Recovery Solution in Windows or by pressing F4 a few times immediately after starting the computer. If you still get slow running after restoring the Factory Image then it looks like a hardware problem which will need to be fixed by Samsung.

    John
     
  36. heissenberg

    heissenberg Notebook Enthusiast

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    installed the last version of touchpad ( 11.7.19.9 )

    all wotking good, except 2 fingers scrolling, now we dont have inverse options...
     
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  37. alserio

    alserio Notebook Enthusiast

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    hi, i've installed the same driver version from windows update

    to change the inverse scrolling, i've resetted the key EGS_REVERSE_ENABLE to 0
    in the system register (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Elantech\SmartPad)

    but i still have to find all the other options that were lost
    like the release-after-finger-lift when grabbing objects

    Edit:

    before editing directly your system settings checkout
    http://forum.notebookreview.com/sam...msung-has-updated-drivers-38.html#post9453023

    Edit 2:

    Works like a charm
    [NP730U3E-S03IT - Windows 8.1]
     
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  38. Livven

    Livven Notebook Enthusiast

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    Can you check to see if scrolling and zooming in IE behaves like in this video? Apparently the driver update enabled Precision Touchpad support, which is a great improvement in Windows 8.1. Since the Series 7 Ultra uses an Elan touchpad I'm hoping to see the same update for my Vaio Flip :)
     
  39. Livven

    Livven Notebook Enthusiast

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    So assuming that Precision Touchpad support has indeed been enabled with the latest driver update (could you check this with the linked video in my previous post as well?) you don't get the Elan settings utility anymore that allows you to define custom actions for clicks and gestures, is that correct?
     
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  40. alserio

    alserio Notebook Enthusiast

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    I've tried the same website with Firefox and IE but scrolling and zooming aren't nearly as smooth as in the video
    Truth be said, i've messed around a bit with the settings so maybe it's my fault

    Since the upgrade to win 8.1 some options were removed from ETDSimpleTouch but you could edit them with the older settings manager still in the program folder
    With the last driver update i have to use the ETDAniConf application from the installer package
     
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  41. Livven

    Livven Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hmm that's weird, do you have the same 11.7.19.9 version? Firefox won't be smooth like that since it's not optimized, but IE should be. Have you tried any Metro apps or even the Start screen or apps list?
     
  42. alserio

    alserio Notebook Enthusiast

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    the metro apps were generally smooth even before, but IE (nor the desktop version neither the metro one) is not so smooth with heavy webpages like the verge (as shown in the video)
    it doesn't particularly bother me since i rarely use the zoom and slower scrolling is just fine
     
  43. Livven

    Livven Notebook Enthusiast

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    Okay thanks. I'm not talking about the smoothness per se though, more the "feeling", i.e. the kinetic acceleration. If you've ever used Windows 8 with a touchscreen (or any touchscreen smartphone or tablet) you'll know what I mean.

    Concretely, if you go to the Start screen, any Metro app, or IE, can you scroll up even when you're already at the top and thus push the page down more than would be possible with the scroll bar or the previous touchpad drivers? Or if you quickly scroll up or down and hit the end, does the page bounce slightly?
     
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  44. alserio

    alserio Notebook Enthusiast

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    I've just found an option that i hadn't seen in ETDAniConf called ZoomPerfect
    Now IE has the behaviour that you have described: smooth zooming, fast scrolling, bouncing and so on
    It's really nice! thanks :)
     
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  45. ebec

    ebec Notebook Enthusiast

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    Finally!!! We actually have a working touchpad in a Windows machine. This is nothing short of fantastic. With the new driver, I believe this machine has the best touchpad experience on any windows machine. At least I have never tried anything remotely close to this. Now I feel “connected” to the machine, it is so much more precise and smooth

    I cannot understand how a transformation like this is possible only with a driver update, They definitely have to use a new API.

    The only downside I have found is that idle power consumption has increased a little (2- 300 mw) but it is totally worth it.

    Thank you for posting this
     
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  46. Livven

    Livven Notebook Enthusiast

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    Great, I'm really happy for you (and jealous :D), but do other apps exhibit the same scrolling behavior now? Start screen, Metro apps (like the Store)?

    Yes it's (probably) the new Precision Touchpad in Windows 8.1.
     
  47. alserio

    alserio Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yes, all of the Metro apps and even the desktop version of IE
     
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  48. ebec

    ebec Notebook Enthusiast

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    The touchpad experience is currently a mix of old and new ways to do scrolling. In metro, most apps seems to use the “precision acceleration” but in desktop mode, there are probably just IE 11. I did a comparison with my Lenovo 420s that also runs 8.1 (without Precision touchpad) and it seems that e.g. Photos App in metro are just the same. It is ”accelerated” on both machines but it seems to behave a little different from apps that use the “Precision acceleration” there are no “bounce” at the end.

    Anyway, this is a great initiative from Microsoft and I guess (hope) it will be implemented in more apps gradually
     
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  49. Livven

    Livven Notebook Enthusiast

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    You mention there being no "bounce" on the Photos app with the new touchpad drivers. Can you try the Store, Weather or Bing News/Finance/Sports? Reason being that these, along with the Photos app, are HTML-based – there are actually two different UI toolkits for Metro apps: one based on HTML, the other on XAML. Usually you won't notice the difference since they're supposed to be identical to the end user, they're only there so developers can use whatever they're more comfortable with; however scrolling is apparently implemented differently across the two toolkits. With my non-Precision Elan drivers I get the bouncy scrolling in all XAML apps (for example PC Settings and SkyDrive), and did so even on Windows 8 which doesn't support Precision Touchpad, so the question really is whether HTML-based apps now get it too.

    As for desktop apps, they simply don't support this kind of smooth scrolling yet apart from IE. What you should notice in, say File Explorer, however, is that if you continue scrolling up/down when you've already reached the top/bottom that the whole window shifts up/down. It doesn't feel as natural as the bounce in Metro apps and IE but it's a kinda weird effect. Do you get this?
     
  50. ebec

    ebec Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yep I think I get it.
    Bouncing: Windows Store, Bing News, Bing Weather, “Storm weather”, Bing Sports, Bing Food & Drinks, local News app, Xbox Music, Mail, IE 11 Metro, IE 11 Desktop, pdf reader and more

    No Bouncing: Metro Photos, Metro Sky Drive,
     
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