upgraded my R835-P56x

I installed a Intel 6230 network card' replaced the hard drive with Samsung 128gb ssd and increased the ram to 8gb. I have 90gb empty space on the ssd which is plenty for me. Boy do I have a fast light machine now with bluetooth and good wifi range. Awakes from sleep in 5 secs. Full start up in 15 secs. All for $1100 which is a lot less than the Samsung series 9 or even the MBA. Now I am trying to find a lighter power brick as the one that came with the notebook is much too heavy. I am a happy camper though jim_joh

 

That is great, samsung has a nice ssd drive. Thanks for sharing. Let me know if you found a new smaller charger.

Could you do me a favor, write down your battery remaining percentage, shutdown the laptop at night. Turn it on in the morning and see if the battery is losing any power. My laptop battery appears to lose its charge 1% per hour when it was completely shutdown. Thanks, TT

 

tishatossie so far my unit does not use any power when shut down completely. I will check again tomorrow. I had it shut down for 4 hours. It showed 77% when I shut it down & 4 hours later when I started it up it showed 77% jim_joh

 

Jimjoh, thanks for checking. That's what I would expect. My laptop is strange, and is definitely losing power for some reason when it was completely shut down.

 

I also upgraded my hdd (but my dev is a S-L650) to a ssd from samsung when i got my device back after a bad flash . But i dont see any improvements according battery life. However Samsung 470 SSD series are a really good choice and have amazing transfer rates (240/170) and are cheap. Windows 7 was installed in 10 Minutes (with a eSATA Stick). Programms are loading faster etc.

 

tishatossieone final report. I checked my unit this morning & the battery meter showed 76% which was 1% loss over the night. jim_joh

 

jimjoh, 1% drain is very good and is what I would expect. Mine is 1% loss of power per hour. Sending it in for repair is my last resort if I have no other options.

Thanks again for checking.

 

here is my performance figures after upgrading. jimjoh

 

When I installed my 6230, for some reason, my connection seems to be off and on.. it's not consistant. It would download at a fast sleep and taper off and then back up again. Antenna issues? But when I put back the original card, it works fine again.

 

NormisR, I wouldn't think that would be antenna issue. more like driver issue. Is it possible to disable the bluetooth, so you can try wifi alone?

 

I downloaded the software for the 6230 from the Intel site & it works great both the wireless & bluetooth. jimjoh

 

Hi, JimJoh, would you please tell me the specification of bluetooth about R835-P56x? I didn't found it in my laptop and prepare to buy a one to upgrade it.

 

After installing your 6230 Did you have to install separate driver/software for the bluetooth?

 

samsy, yes after changing the wireless card I downloaded the software from Intel on my desktop & used a flashdrive to install it on my R835 but now as I remember it my bluetooth did not work yet so I also downloaded the bluetooth software from the R835 support site & now bluetooth works fine. I have not yet dropped connection one time. I conduct a computer group meeting at our Senior Center last Tues. and for 2 hours I had a steady wireless connection. I used a bluetooth mouse. Hope this helps you jimjoh

 

jimjoh very interesting upgrade. I was thinking of going the same route. Do you have any PCMArKVantage results? It would be interesting to compare against the pricier alternatives MBA/Sammy9.

 

no now really but the proof of the pudding is that it is really fast & that satisfies me. I am not a gamer jimjoh