Samsung Series 7 Chronos and Intel Wifi Card

I hope you guys can shed some insight on this. My US version NP700Z5A-S04US came with a Broadcom Wifi + Bluetooth card. It was my understanding that before the notebook was released that it would ship with the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 card which is a dual band, a/b/g/n, WIDI, and bluetooth capable. So for 25 bucks online I bought this card and installed it. I went to the Intel website and found separate drivers for wifi (version 14.2.0.10) and bluetooth version (Intel® PROSet/Wireless Bluetooth High Speed Software 1.1), both available from:

Intel® WiFi Products — How to install Intel® PROSet/Wireless Software for Bluetooth® technology

With these drivers, the wifi works fine. I was even able to download separate drivers for WIDI and get that working, but windows would not recognize the bluetooth radio. So I went to the Samsung US website:

Samsung

and found bluetooth drivers for Intel Centrino under their Bluetooth (Driver) (ver.2.0.0.0) package. With this, windows was able to recognize the Bluetooth under device manager and reports that the device is working properly. The problem is that I can't access the settings to turn bluetooth on and off. As far as I can tell, all the wireless on/off settings are controlled via the Samsung Easy Settings software. With the Broadcom card, bluetooth controls were under "Wireless Network" settings in that software. With the Intel card, those settings are missing, even though windows recognizes the bluetooth hardware and driver.

So the question is...how can I turn bluetooth on and off? Is there a way to bypass Easy Settings?

Interestingly, I also found Intel wireless drivers (version 14.2.1.1) on the same Samsung downloads page, which would seem to be a later version of Intel's drivers than from their own site. I tried those and they again work for wifi and widi, but not for bluetooth. I had to re-install the samsung bluetooth drivers for windows to recognize bluetooth again. Still no way to turn it on/off.

BTW, the response from Samsung support was "We don't support third party hardware"... which begs the question, why are intel drivers then posted on their site?

Can anyone help? I would love to have dual band, a/b/g/n, WIDI, and bluetooth all working without a separate bluetooth dongle.

 

Samsung posted Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 card's driver on their website because this card comes with the Canadian series 7 specification.
Samsung Notebook Series 7 CHRONOS - NP700Z5A-S03CA - Performance - mobile computing | SAMSUNG
Different countries different specifications!

 

I bought this card yesterday, and had a plan to upgrade it today. My problem is that after removing 10 screws from the back of the laptop, the back lid is not coming off.

 

Thanks for sharing the experience. Do you notice a improved range and/or sustained wireless speed after the replacement of the Broadcom card by the Intel's one?

 

The seam you want to work on is where the palm rest meets the edge. I cut a small piece of stiff plastic from packaging that the wifi card came in. You can use any thin piece of plastic and insert it into the seam and carefully pull away the tabs from the edge.

 

It's interesting that this card is standard hardware for Canadian models, but I can't get it to work with the drivers from Samsung. Can someone with a Canadian model confirm that bluetooth works with the Intel card?

 

It's not out in canada yet.

 

How's the signal after installation? I'd like to replace the crappy Broadcom adapter as well. I could care less about bluetooth if this gives bandwidth a substantial boost.

 

I don't have a dual band network, so I can't comment on 5ghz. I don't have a measured comparison, but the seat of the pants feeling is that it seems better. I'm getting slightly below if not as fast a connection as my gigabit ethernet connection, just not as consistent. The strength of signal seems better too. You need to go into advanced properties in device manager and make sure that you select auto for both bands to get the maximum bandwidth.

 

Did you do anything to disconnect the battery while replacing the wifi card? This machine does not have a removable battery,but it is recommended to remove / disconnect the battery or else the motherboard could be accidentally damaged. Thanks!