The 2012 Samsung Series 9 13.3" (NP900X3B)

Well here's a picture of the HDD with nothing on it, because at first I thought that's what you were asking for (time to go to bed...). Tomorrow I will try to get some pictures of the actual computer up-- it's a blue-ish, green-ish, dark gray, which will be hard to communicate, but I find very easy on the eyes. There is that tiny strip of chrome around the touchpad, which is a design bummer in my opinion, but a very very tiny one.

 

Hmmm. I was afraid you might say that you're running 125% DPI. Since I very often go back and forth between laptop screen and external monitor, I'd really rather keep things at 100% (and I unfortunately won't be able to handle 100% at this res). Tough call.

About the Dell: one of the reasons why I like it is because of the small footprint. I know it's a bit thicker and it absolutely feels heavier, but I love that smaller footprint. How much difference do you notice in real life usage (after one day ) between the footprint of the Samsung and the footprint of the Dell?

Thanks again.

 

None. Seriously. And part of the reason I got rid of the MBA was it was too big for me (the 13.3 inch one), as was the 2011 version of the Series 9.

 

Really? Interesting. Very good to know, that's a big plus in my book.

Thank you!

 

I use 100% scaling on 14" 1600 x 900 and my eyes are well past their best before date. I suspect that my eyes could handle the 13.3" S9 display at 100% if the quality is as good as people say. Decent brightness and contrast is a key ingredient for legibility (what size print can you read?). A few years back I had problems using 1680 x 1050 @ 15.1" on the Samsung X60+ and had to increase the display scaling, but the display was dim by current standards. I've also got a 7" Samsung tablet which has an excellent 1280 x 800 display and small text is very legible (but one tends to hold a tablet a bit closer).

John

 

Yes, I am interested in the finish color. Is this thing a Chameleon or what?

 

oh shelley why did you have to give it such a raving review, its got me wanting one again now despite my misgivings about the lack of ram and SSD space :-( lol!

 

Yeah the colour is a bit confusing, I still dont have one but from what I've seen there is Black (Mineral Ash?).

Dark Grey-Blueish (Titan Silver?)


And Silver, I don't know if its due to lightning but it does look like another colour choice

Samsung Series 9 hands-on | Videos | CNET UK

BTW does the S9 include software such as Microsoft Office?

 

mineral ash black thingie looks by far and away the best colour

 

the bluish tint looks like an Acer lappy

 

What happened to the one that is silver with black keys??

This one:

 

Thanks John. Mine are past the "best before" date as well.

I'll have to examine a 13"er with 1600x900 to be sure, but I have pretty good a feeling I won't love it. Also, I just tried 125% DPI on my external monitor. Yuck. That's not gonna work for me.

 

Then you need the 15" S9. The pixels are almost the same size as 1366 x 768 @ 13.3" so you should be able to get the 100% and the etra real estate it provides.

John

 

Yeah, I know. I've had my eye on that one for quite some time now. I just WANT a smaller footprint, so I'm trying to make it work somehow.

 

I promised pictures-- here they are. A few more in the next post.

PS the pix on the end show computer next to the Asus ul20A, a 12.1 in computer that I currently use. One from the side, one from the top. And one of the Asus sitting on top of the xps 13, so you can see the difference.

 

I think you can see that for all practical purposes, the Dell and Samsung are more or less the same size-- both in line with a 12.1" laptop that I currently have. I think you can also see the weird black that I'm talking about-- sometimes looks black, sometimes looks blueish, sometimes looks greenish or gray.

I am wondering-- will we be using this as the owner's thread, or should I start a new one? I'm starting to tinker, and I want to share my results and get suggestions from people much smarter about this stuff than I am.

 

Wow, either your Canon Powershot SD600 is way off or that Series 9 is blueish green. Almost teal. Now I'm really wondering if this is a Chameleon.

 

I just got my S9 from tigerdirect.com

Guess what. I have the same booting problem. I updated my bios and same thing. None of my USB Cd rom or usb stick works. I guess another lemon? Time to get a replacement.

 

What exactly are you trying to boot? Have you tried the stick on another machine and know for a fact it works?

 

Tried booting Windows 7, Samsung's system recovery disk, Windows PE, Acronis True Image Booting CD. They work all in my current e6520.

I've been tinkering with computer for like 15 years and I work in this industry, and I hate dealing with CS for a replacement or refund. So I've tried everything that I know, and none of them works. It goes straight to Windows 7 bootloader. Pretty interesting, b/c it recognizes all my USB CD Roms, DVD Rom (all 3 totals) in the BIOS, but it refuses to boot.

 

Ok, thanks. You disabled the Fast Boot option in the BIOS, correct? You are using the USB 2.0 port, correct?

 

Okay, I realize this isn't perfectly to scale but it should be darn close:

 

The truth is, anybody would call it "black", but it has other qualities, depending on the light.

I have a question for the non-booters-- I haven't yet applied the firmware upgrade for the bios, and now I'm wondering if I should avoid it. Did people who can't boot from usb drive have problems before bios upgrade, after, or both?

And: could one of you guys with a thousand posts advise about whether I should just treat this as an "owner's thread?" I don't want to bog it down with all my investigations if people are mostly coming here for eye-candy and benchmark data.

 

Whoah. That was fun. I thought you ran out and bought them both.

 

Are you kidding? My wife already thinks I'm nuts.

Hope you don't mind my "borrowing" your pics!

 

Anything for the cause.

 

I did not update the BIOS yet as somebody else mentioned this did not fix the problem.
I have a replacement coming tomorrow, so hopefully that one works out of the box.

 

Both, at least in my case. In fact, I applied the BIOS update only after I got the link from CS. Still didn't fix it. The replacement booted from USB instantly, though.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk

 

Well, my report is, I updated to the latest touchpad drivers, and everything still works, and updated the bios and can still boot from usb. Checking memory now, because, having booted from usb, wasn't sure what to do.

My conclusion about the touchpad drivers is that for some reason the clean install of the latest drivers doesn't work, they need to be installed on top of the previous version, which (possibly) needs to be installed by Samsung's software manager. So for folks who are planning to rely on the OS disk for emergency re-install, I recommend backing up the installed drivers using easy software manager, and keeping it on hand.

 

Hm... this is interesting...

I think there's some compatibility issue.

I just tried out with a very old generic usb dvd-rom and interestingly, my S9 booted Acronis True Image. Then, I tried my Windows 7 DVD which booted without a problem in my e6520 and in my HP d4t, but it wouldn't boot. I think there's some sort of magic combination that I have to figure out that could make this work. I'll update once I succeed.

 

They will be putting these out on display as well as the spectre on Sunday.

You can also buy it at microsoft store online now.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...goryID.44066900/categoryID.50787200/list.true

As to the whole it looks green/blue/gray discussion, you are all right depending on the light and angle it can look like all of the above.

That being said, its a very nice looking machine and to my eyes is an improvement over last years version.

Just playing with one for a few minutes today has me wanting one bad.....

 

Why would anyone buy from the Microsoft store? Have you read their return policy?

 

not promoting buying as much as the ability to physically see it....

That being said, can't speak for online, but the retail stores are much more "relaxed " on the return policy

plus they still have the $200 gift card with purchase promo going. If you are sure this is what you want, not a bad deal

 

There is no Microsoft store near me and I take written return policies literally. If the policy was different, I would certainly consider a purchase.

And the $200 promo gift card is time bombed.

 

Oh, there probably is. The USB MicroSD card reader wouldn't boot even in my replacement S9, but it booted fine in the NC10.

That said, the replacement S9 boots from everything that failed before, sans the MicroSD reader. I ran a Memtest86+ on it just in case, and even though it passed, it drained roughly 45% of the battery in about an hour. That's pretty abysmal. I think most of that is because you can't dim the screen in console-based utilities, but holy cow!

It's also interesting looking at the SKU for the version at the Microsoft store. All the specs for the NP900X3B-A02US are exactly the same.

 

There seems to be a lot of discussion about the color. I don't really see much of a blue or green tint to it in real life, pictures may give it that look, but it is just dark grey.

I just took off the plastic from the back of mine and I noticed there is a very noticeable shift in color between the area that was covered and the uncovered edges, any one else had this?

 

Ok so I'll put you in the "glass is half empty" side of things.
Like I said, some of us like to touch before we buy, but peace to you...

 

Disappointing report: it seems that updating the bios changes something about the display-- I can't confirm this, because there are no notes on the bios itself, but here's what happened to me-- before the update, my font sizes were fine at 125%, and afterwards, 125% suddenly seemed small. This perceived change in resolution was also reflected by the fact that some of my desktop gadgets had changed size, and were, therefore, in slightly different spots on the desktop. Not the worst thing to have happen, except that, when I went to 150%, all of a sudden the display in Chrome was crap. I mean that in the strongest sense of the word-- great blurry fields of text and soft images. Some quick searches on the Internet led me to discover that some applications don't support font scaling properly, so if you go over 96 dpi, and use Aero, they get wonky. The solution seems to be to go to the control panel, choose Appearance & Personalization/Personalization/Adjust font size. Choose "Custom DPI and select the Windows XP style DPI scaling check box. It's now working okay for me, I think, but the workaround makes me a little uncomfortable. Why did 125% work before the bios? Why is it now to small? It's not a problem with the computer, it's a problem with Windows. I'm telling you, if I could go over to Mac, I would.

 

Relax!

This is a DPI bug in Windows 7, not the machine, BIOS, or browser. To reset properly, all you need to do is to go into Desktop | Personalize and pick a theme. Any theme. You'll notice the fonts, especially context sensitive menu fonts are reset properly.

I have to do this all the time on my ThinkPad because I am routinely switching from 100, to 125 or 150% DPI.

At least it sure sounds like what I see nearly every day.

 

I was pointing out the policy because it's there and I looked. I felt it important to point out.

If I had a store I would probably feel different but we don't, so I compare online sellers objectively against each other.

 

Perfect! And perfectly beautiful, I might add, now that it's fixed. THANK you. I knew there was a reason I come to these boards. I still don't understand what happened, but whew.

 

Welcome. So the love affair is back on?

 

I am wondering if this machine really does have Chameleon like qualities. I mean seriously, does the color change if put in the sun by a window?

As for your new machine, have you tried wiping it with a warm soft damp cloth or anything else like 70% alcohol?

 

No no no. It really is a case of people (like me) thinking too hard about something quite trivial. Call it gray. Or gunmetal. It's not strange, or shimmery, or shifting. It's just that sometimes a dark gray, or a black, will look slightly different depending on the light. I find it pleasing, and not strong at all.

As for my earlier font problem, it turns out the solution really is to enable the xp compatible scaling tick box-- after applying my new theme, I discovered that tick box was still enabled. When I disabled it, chrome went back to being blurry. So I ticked it again, and will use that as my setting. This works well enough for me.

My love affair with this computer was never off. I knew it was a Windows bug, but I was very queasy about not knowing how to make it go away. I have no love affair with Windows, for sure, although I appear to be in it for life.

 

Ahh, that reminds me... How long do you guys think it might take on this Series 9 to change the DPI and reboot the computer for the new DPI settings to take effect?

On my current lappy it's like a 2 or 3 minute process (literally) which is why I'd never think of doing it. But maybe it wouldn't be so bad on the S9 ???

 

Nvm. I didn't read your first sentence carefully. Hm... I don't know what to do. Not being able to boot with usb stick is very frustrating

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Is your replacement laptop booting from your USB Stick as well?

Mine doesn't boot from my USB stick at all. It boots well in my other two laptops, but not this one. I disabled fast boot, disabled my SSD, and nothing...

This is getting annoying, and I probably need a replacement.

 

Try a couple different ones. The easiest way to tell if a device should boot, is to go to the BIOS boot menu while the device is plugged in. If the computer recognizes it, it'll name the device and might even list the size. Out of my three sticks, it booted from the two that it recognized in that menu.

The defective one didn't do that. It didn't boot at all, from any device but the internal SSD.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk

 

I am seriously considering this laptop. I was going to buy the first model Series 9 last year, but then too many wifi issues cropped up. Can any owner of this new model confirm what wifi card is in the new model? Any issues with weak wifi? Also can someone post their WEI so I can compare to to the first model. Thank you very much in advance.

 

Got mine. Need some help with drives. I took 40gb away from primary C to create a new partition for Windows 8. Partition Master won't let me format and use the space of the new drive. Says I need to create a primary to logical because I can only have 4 primary at a time. I did this. Changed the recovery to logical but it still won't work... any thoughts? Is it because of the total number of partitions or something else?

 

I believe you can have only 4 partitions... looks like you currently have 4 already (system, windows, "hibernate," recovery). Remove either the hibernate partition (made by intel rapid start) or the recovery partition.