The 2012 Samsung Series 9 13.3" (NP900X3B)

[Oldghost]

Here are some pics of the screen ( which is GREAT )
and the backlit keyboard ( which I find to be a bit too faint for my tastes.
Also the Chrome trackpad bezel. Which isn't horrible, but it is distracting and I believe
unnecessary

Note that the Keyboard backlighting is on "High" for both notebooks.

And maybe I have extra oily fingers, but the Samsung Trackpad is a fingerprint magnet

[aras87]

Looks like they reduced the battery capacity from 47whr (original S9) to 40whr in order make the laptop lighter and smaller footprint. That is like 15% reduction in battery capacity

Thats probably why Samsung is quoting 6hrs of battery life for the new S9 as opposed to 7hrs of the older S9

I will have to stick with my 50whr 2011 macbook air

[narcemea]

Well, at least we know full restore works.

Yeah hopefully I wont have to use it too often. Can't remember the last time I had to do a restore to get my computer to work. Some driver file got screwed after the windows update because the trackpad worked at the login screen and stopped registering clicks immediately after log in.

My thoughts after using the new 13" 9 series for a day. (coming from a 2010 Vaio Z)
Things I like:
-Screen is everything I hoped for. Bright, excellent colors, great viewing angels. No complaints here at all.
-Touchpad is pretty much perfect on mine. No crashing when trying to adjust settings. 2-finger scrolling works great as does right-edge scrolling. The very slim chrome boarder looks fine and does not bother me at all.
-Backlight keyboard is greenish/blue tint and not very bright, but gets the job done. The brightness can be adjusted or turned off.
-Windows takes about 10 seconds to load from a cold boot. This blows me away.
-Sound quality is great. The speakers get really loud...something I was not expecting.
Concerns for me: (some things I knew before I purchased)
-Lack of USB ports
-Processor and memory. I hate that I cannot upgrade the ram. I'm often running at 35-40% after booting. Processor seems to get pegged at 100% relatively easy. I'm not sure if this is due to power settings or what, but I will have to explore. I don't see this as a huge concern as I do not do anything that intensive on my laptop. 1080p videos and everything play fine.
-SSD. As mentioned, a lot of hard drive space is used. I think out of the box I had 69gb remaining. This does not bother me much personally, but I can see it being an issue for others.
-SD card slot. When there is a card in the slot, it sticks out from the edge by about 1/16 of an inch. Not a big deal to me, but just noting it.

Overall, it seems to be a great laptop. Seems less powered and more limited then my Vaio Z which I should have expected. I will probably end up keeping this though.

Glad you got a good one, mate. Want to trade?

Do you have the ELAN trackpad? I'm hesitant to try updates again since I dont know which one exactly screwed me.

[isosunrise]

With the ELAN trackpad, I did a full windows update without any issues. If you did have driver issues with the trackpad, you would always reinstall just the trackpad driver via the Samsung software manager program. In the software manager program, there are also some windows critical updates that may need to be installed (not sure what they do though).

[bman22]

Yes, I have the ELAN trackpad
Driver Version: ETDWare PS/2-X64 10.7.5.5_WHQL if thats any help.

[narcemea]

With the ELAN trackpad, I did a full windows update without any issues. If you did have driver issues with the trackpad, you would always reinstall just the trackpad driver via the Samsung software manager program. In the software manager program, there are also some windows critical updates that may need to be installed (not sure what they do though).

Problem with re-installing just the driver when the trackpad doesn't work is that the software for the driver is not keyboard friendly. I acutally tried that first, but couldn't select the trackpad driver. Then I went back to my first restore point - no joy there. That's when I figured I'd just do restore.

[isosunrise]

You may need to uninstall the trackpad driver first before you can install it again... anyhow, glad the restore worked.

[narcemea]

Yeah, but without ability to click, I couldn't actually execute the install. Anyway, I'm going through my installs one by one now and rebooting each time. Hopefully if it happens again I'll know what caused it.

[isosunrise]

A mouse

[narcemea]

Yeah, but mine is all packed away in a suitcase, since the restore only took 10 minutes, figured it'd be faster. Good news, just installed updates again, skipping the unnecessary ones. Trackpad still works. Scrolling though isn't enabled ... I'm afraid to try.