The Samsung NC20 (12.1" netbook) thread

I'm not sure if there are any dos and donts as it's your machine and you can do what you like with it

What I do first is a reinstall of the OS. I don't like a lot of the Samsung software so I keep it to the minimum required to get hotkeys and power management working. I'd also usually get chipset and graphics drives directly from the manufacturer's site as sometimes they can be quite out of date on the Samsung site.

I also replaced the memory module with a 2GB one and after I had all my favourite apps installed I went through the startup programs and services and turned off what I didn't want to maximise my memory usage. My windows XP partition is just a backup though, I use Ubuntu primarily but I found both OSs to be fast and responsive.

You may also want to update your BIOS as version 08MQ was released recently. Good luck and enjoy!

 

I've not had significant problems with the Samsung factory OS installation. The first thing I do is to remove the pre-installed anti-virus software since it is time-bombed. NOD32 is my favourite package at the moment since it uses few system resources. Install Open Office to give you an office suite and Firefox for your web browsing.

2GB RAM is a worthwhile upgrade if you are going to have several applications open at the same time. That is my usual method of working and I use hibernation between sessions.

John

 

Installed OS is fine and have replaced McAfee with Avast and Comodo.

Used Firefox for the first time on my home machine last week and so it went straight onto the NC20. Will get the RAM installed in BKK on Tuesday.

I am absolutely delighted with the NC20 and would recommend it to anyone with similar requirements to mine. In my view the advantahe of the 12.1 screen over 10 inch screens easlily outweighs the small loss in battery longevity and the increased weight. It slips into my messenger bag a treat.

Cheers.

 

I love mine too and I'd be of the same opinion about the screen. The lack of vertical resolution on many of the 9 and 10 inch netbooks was a deal breaker for me.

 

My NC10 has been sold and the NC20 kept for the same reason. However, a matte screen on the NC20 would be much appreciated.

John

 

John do you find the gloss screen overly reflective? On my N120, I don't find the Samsung glossy to be nearly as bad as Acer or HP. In fact I've had little problems with it at all and have to some degree grown to appreciate the little better color improvements with it. Though like you would have preferred matte.

 

I found the NC20's screen to be very reflective. See the photo in my review (link below). However, I've got my Dell E6400 and a Toshiba R500 for working outside. The NC20 is for family use.

I'll also take this opportunity to note that there is now an in-house NBR review of the NC20.

John

 

It is always hard to tell much with a photo honestly, but it is so strange because I just don't find my N120 to be that overly reflective. Then again maybe it is because of where I use it, office, home, motel rooms like tonight and of course various office locations. The only time I even notice that it is reflective is if the background is very dark. I've taken an Acer Aspire One on these same trips and I could hardly stand to use it, so clearly there is a different in glossy screens out there.

I am curious now if the two (NC20/N120) have different glossy screens or maybe it is just so much less glossy than others I've used that I am finding it more tolerable.

Thanks for the review! Very Nice!

 

After a days use of the Samsung Nc10 I LOVE its matte screen. Its very nice, even better than the aluminum macbook's screen!

 

for people who have it: how is it at running multiple programs?

for instance would i feel it substantially slow down if i ran

gaim
avg antivirus
firefox + 4-5 plugins
word
itunes

could it handle all that with 2gb ram?

 

I don't think that combination of programs is likely to cause problems unless one of them does something to fully load the CPU, in which case anything else will become unresponsive and it's time to go and look for a drink, or whatever.

As an example, I have a load of programs open on my Dell E6400 and the CPU usage is showing as around 10%. 10% of a dual core 2.4GHz GPU is equivalent to about 35% of a single core 1.4GHz CPU.

John

 

thanks!

also, has anybody used a 9-cell on one of these yet? if so, what kind of battery life are we talking? 8 hrs? and does it interfere with the opening and closing of the screen?

 

I'm not sure if this has been addressed already but could anyone advise me on where I can get my hands on a NC0 in the US? I've been waiting it out on newegg to no avail for the past week. Is there a new shipment due or is there another supplier I should be seeking out? I'm moving overseas on May 10th and would really like one before taking off.

 

Portable One list the NC20. And i think someone mentioned Best Buy.

John

 

Note: Portable One mentions that it won't begin shipping until mid-May.

 

once again the Newegg ETA dates moves back. Is this thing ever coming to the U.S.?!

 

Could you guys already get NC20 please try this tool to see if U2250 could pass the Virtualization test?

Here is the tool site: http://www.grc.com/securable.htm

Click "Download Now"

Thanks all!!

 

Newegg has these in stock now!

 

Thx enozten, ordered!

 

I posted a version of this over on SammyNetbook.com (seems to be the place with the most NC20 traffic -- anyone found any other good sources besides there and here?). Thought that the NC20 owners here would be interested as well.

HAO Battery 7800 mAH battery for NC20/NC10 Review

The battery was purchased on eBay for $99.99 from haobattery.9953 on eBay. The auction included free shipping, which took eight business days from China. (Final delivery by USPS as Express Mail.)
Note that there are some cheaper NC10/20 9-cell batteries on eBay, but those are rated at 7200 mAH; the Haobattery model has a 7800 mAH rating.

The extra cells sit on the bottom of the laptop, above the footpad. This elevates the keyboard a bit more than stock, but it didn’t bother met all. The battery adds exactly 5 oz. of weight. The NC20’s weight is 3 lbs 4.8 oz with the stock battery; it’s 3 lbs 9.8 oz with the extended battery.



The battery life extension is much better than I’d expect jumping from 5900 mAH to 7800. Running streaming video over WiFi, the battery life jumped from 4H 50M to 7H 49M. (Test conditions: CPU speed set to auto, auto-dim off, hard drive set to spin down at 30 seconds, volume and brightness both set to half. WiFi on (802.11G) and Bluetooth off.)

Overall, I’m extremely happy with the purchase. This battery basically lets you use the NC20 throughout an entire work day. The extra weight/size isn’t a problem for my usage. (I'm seeing about 9 hours using it mostly for Outlook and web browsing.)



Highly recommended!

 

Thanks dennya, that certainly looks worthwhile for those long, long trips I sometimes take.

Seems that this battery would work on the NC10, NC10 SE, N110, N120 and NC20 since they all use the same battery.

I wonder what kind of toll this would take on your power adapter with it having to charge that big sucker!

The specs you are reporting looks sweet. Imagine going from a 5200 mAh battery to this 7800 mAh battery. LOL

 

Yep, I popped it into a borrowed N120 and it worked fine. Should offer even better battery life on the smaller screen Atom Samsungs.

 

Thanks for the info. That looks to be a different battery to the one discussed in this thread, but the result is the same: better battery run time in return for a lump sticking out on the bottom of the netbook.

John

 

I just received my NC20 today (ordered Saturday morning from NewEgg, it only took 2 business days via standard shipping, yay!). I am really impressed with this laptop, so far it's everything I was hoping for and more. Great, bright LCD screen (though with somewhat poor vertical viewing angles, being a smaller screen, it's not hard to stay in the "sweet spot"). Very nice, responsive keyboard with a Synaptics touchpad. Wifi performance is great, it immediately connected to my WAP without any lengthy delays. For being a low-power machine, it's got quite a sufficiently snappy feel to it, applications load quickly, and I haven't noticed any slowdowns yet. A+, Samsung!

PS - My only complaint: the lack of haptic seperation between the two touchpad buttons, and for making the button surface flush with the hand rest/front of the chassis (though flush is certainly preferred to inset). I've sometimes had to hunt for the button I want to use, since I can't find it by touch alone.

 

Congrats Fignuts! Sounds like your picked a Winner!

 

I am a bit confused about video playback on NC20. The specifications mention that video playback of certain formats is hardware accelerated, however, the reviews show that there are no significant benefits from hardware acceleration. e.g. http://techreport.com/articles.x/16773/6

The table here shows that x264 is not supported. http://www.chrome-center.net/index.php/en/integratedgpus/85-chrome9

For the NC20 owners out there - does NC20 have a chance of handling about 5000kbps x264 encoded mkv file? What about a similar file encoded in vc1? This could be a typical movie of 4,4 GB as often distributed through p2p.

 

Can you find and link to a sample video that resembles what you're talking about, I'd be happy to try it out. I've heard that the NC20 starts showing its limits at 720p HD video, but naturally I'm sure YMMV depending on what codecs are being used. I haven't tried it with anything significant yet, since I bought it for my gf, who doesn't use it for playing HD media or other resource intensive tasks.

 

The first place I found some movie trailers is on apple web page: http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/terminatorsalvation/

There you can select different clips and if my calculations are correct the 720p clip fits the description.

Alternatively you can try this xmen trailer which has video bitrate of about 4400 kbit/s.
http://pdl.stream.aol.com/aol/us/mo...0722/xmenoriginswolverine_trlr_01_720p_dl.mov

 

Microsoft also has a selection of HD video trailers.

John

 

I played the third trailer at 720p. The Quicktime movie inspector showed it has a data rate of 6.35 Mbps, encoded at just under 24 fps. Playback remained between 10 and 14 fps, averaging around 12 fps. This was certainly noticeable (though not a "slide show") and shows the NC20's limitations. One wouldn't want to use it as an HTPC, obviously. I'll try playing some of the others later, including the alternative link you posted. My gf needed it back.

 

PCMag's Cisco Cheng is very impressed with the NC20
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347271,00.asp

 

Has anyone tried Photoshop on this laptop? what version?
Whats the performance like? I expect to do draft work with 10MP photos, eg. photo stitching of panoramas.

I am currently considering the nc20 / n310 / nc110 to take with me for 12 months back packing across South America, so I would like to know this model runs with Photoshop. I dont expect to perform any final quality work on these machines, but would like to preview, sort and stitch panorama photos.

Thanks in advance!

 

Photoshop should work fine on the NC20 but may benefit from a 2GB RAM upgrade. In the past I have edited complex graphics (using PaintShopPro) on notebooks much less powerful than the NC20.

The NC20's extra screen real estate will make graphics editing much more feasible than on a normal netbook. You would need to check if Photoshop will actually install on a machine with a 1024 x 600 display.

John

 

I was thinking the same, the higher resolution of the NC20 will be a big bonus for photo work.

 

Hi.

I've just ordered an NC20.

Can someone confirm the specification of the best memory for an upgrade to 2Gb please?

Amazon suggested ordering a Kingston 2GB 667MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL5 SODIMM with it although that appeared to be basde on the NC10. However I saw elsewhere that an 800MHz model was recommended. Is there any benefit in a 800 MHz memory or is the CL4 / Cl4 or CL6 rating more important?

Cheers.

 

I very much doubt you would see any real world performance difference between the different speeds. You would need a faster processor and have to be running more highly intensive applications than a netbook is designed for in order to see an improvement.

In short, just go for the cheapest one with a decent warranty (most seem to be lifetime anyway).

 

The supplied module in the NC20 is 800MHz but I can't remember the speed at which it is running. Some of the 667MHz modules are only CL5. I would get an 800MHz memory module which also has CL4 timings at 667MHz. OCZ would fit this requirement.

John

 

Thank you.

It's arrived now, so I could be ordering the extra memory soon.

Cheers.

 

Hello everyone,

I just got an NC20 yesterday. I'm a student, and my parents bought it for me as a replacement for the £900 Sony VAIO that just croaked on me after 18 months... great, no?

Having a cute new netbook bought for me has eased the pain, somewhat. And it's inspired a new technology project for me - "Operation: Pimp My NC20".

I want to get this little chap as powerful as possible, of course being aware that it's never going to be a true powerhouse on account of having a meek CPU... but anything I can replace and tart-up, I'd like to.

Do we have a definitive view on 4GB of RAM, yet? Will it make any difference to performance? Even if the NC20 can't make particularly meaningful use out of any more than 2GB, can it at least apporption 512MB to the video subsystem when 4GB is installed? (I'm assuming this would happen, on account of the machine automatically doubling-up its share when 2GB is installed...).

And what about the hard drive? Now that the 500GB 2.5" drives are becoming affordable, could I fit one to my NC20?

Answers to these questions, and any other suggestions, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,



DH.

 

There's no point in installing more than 2GB with XP. If you're running Vista or 7 then it would make sense.

500GB hard drive would certainly fit. I recommend Hitachi 5K500.b, good performance and very low power consumption.

Other than that you could look for a 9 cell 7800mAh battery on Ebay or elsewhere online.

 

Thanks.

Any word on whether or not 4GB of RAM would increase the video share to 512MB?

 

Max ram is 2gb isn't it on this model?

 

I think so, yeah.

 

Hey guys,

This is exactly what I want to resolve. You see, from what I understand, the socket can take a 4GB DIMM. But I'm trying to ascertain whether or not the NC20 can actually use it.

 

If Samsung says the max ram is 2gb, I think that is your answer!

 

Well, that's another question. I'm not quoting Samsung, and if you can point me to an official source that will answer the question, then I'd like to see it.

 

Here's some what-looks-like-official VIA bumf that I found:

"The first 64-bit, superscalar processors in VIA’s x86 platform portfolio, VIA Nano processors have been specifically designed to revitalize traditional desktop and notebook PC markets, delivering truly optimized performance and security for the most demanding computing, entertainment and connectivity applications. The VIA Nano processor is coupled with the VIA VX800 system media processor with support for full Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 3D graphics, high definition video and audio playback, and up to 4GB of DDR2 system memory."


But is that for one, or two-socket motherboards? I don't know...

 

I share your curiosity regarding the 4GB module. However, I haven't any 4GB modules in UK at a price which tempts me to buy one for research purposes.

John

 

Interesting! If I was a betting man, I'd bet on that applying only to the double socket MB. I say this because everything you read indicates that the nc20 has a 2gb limit with one socket. But like John said unless it is tested no one will know for sure.

 

Thanks, fellas.

I wonder whether someone in Tech Support at Samsung could answer it? I don't have their number to hand, but I'm sure there'll be one somewhere...