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Thread: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

  1. #1
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    Dec 2006
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    Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Thought I would put this here in case it helps anyone searching for answers who like me has been looking for a great ultrabook for Ubuntu.

    I agonized over the choice between:

    - Samsung Series 9
    - Zenbook
    - Vizio ultrabooks
    - hp envy spectre

    Here's what I ended up with:

    - Samsung Series 9
    That's what I bought.. specifically the NP900X4C-A1.. or in other words the 2nd series, 128gig SSD drive 15" model.

    Why?
    - 1600x screen resolution on a 15" screen is perfect.
    - the new NP900X4D is actually not as good. The 4C is still available
    - people have successfully upgraded to 16gb ram
    - the main complaint is a slow SSD drive, so I bought the small one and know I'll upgrade it in a year for a new zest.

    Installation took 6 minutes (after taking 90 minutes to get Windowz to recognize an external drive and make a mirror of the 70GIGS of junk.. yes.. only 56gig free upon arrival.

    CHECK FOR FIRMWARE UPDATES BEFORE WIPING WINDOWS.. because there is one and it fixes the suspend on lid close issue.

    There's a Ubuntu community page for the series 9 and the only thing I have had to do is 2 cut and pastes of 4 lines to add some function key mapping for keyboard backlight..

    DONE.

    Why not the Zenbook?
    - expensive
    - I don't want a machine with 1377x resolution
    - I think that 1920x resolution is TOO MUCH on a 13.3 inch screen
    - When you look at Ubuntu install success there are all kinds of horror stories. I just didn't want to go there.

    If I HAD gone for the zenbook I would have bought the NON SSD x32 version or whatever it is because people have found that you can up the ram on that to 8gig and install an SSD drive, and the big thing is that one of the versions has an nVidia card with 1gig of ram which seems pretty hot for an ultrabook.


    Why not the HP?
    - It's interesting, but do I really want a laptop with a big sheet of glass on it?
    - Not getting great performance reviews

    Why not the Vizio?
    VERY TEMPTING but not much information out there about Ubuntu install success. The main concern is that even after driver updates the non synaptec touchpad still has issues in Windows and that seems like a bad idea.

    There you go. Hope this helps anyone else out there going through the same process.

    K

  2. #2
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    Jan 2013
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Quote Originally Posted by thewump View Post
    - the new NP900X4D is actually not as good.
    K
    It is great that it worked for you. What made you say NP900X4D is not as good as NP900X4C. Because I am planning to buy NP900X4D.

  3. #3
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    On the B vs C vs D, I saw a youtube video by someone going in to detail about it in relation to the 13" version, but I did a fair amount of sniffing around for the 15. I didn't like that the entry level D only having 4gb ram. I know there are higher spec Ds with Gen 3 i7 processors, and maybe they are better, but all in all, I feel the C is better. I know that sounds subjective so don't take my word for it!

    Also I don't buy anything unless it's Amazon Prime, so rather than the entire gamut of Series 9s available I was choosing from that selection. I paid $1190 for mine.. and price dropped next day by $175 and Amazon credited me that amount (Amazon rocks).. so this is a $1000 machine which is down to the price of the entry level D

    Note - it just went up again I got a deal.

    K

  4. #4
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Quote Originally Posted by thewump View Post
    On the B vs C vs D, I saw a youtube video by someone going in to detail about it in relation to the 13" version, but I did a fair amount of sniffing around for the 15. I didn't like that the entry level D only having 4gb ram. I know there are higher spec Ds with Gen 3 i7 processors, and maybe they are better, but all in all, I feel the C is better. I know that sounds subjective so don't take my word for it!

    Also I don't buy anything unless it's Amazon Prime, so rather than the entire gamut of Series 9s available I was choosing from that selection. I paid $1190 for mine.. and price dropped next day by $175 and Amazon credited me that amount (Amazon rocks).. so this is a $1000 machine which is down to the price of the entry level D

    Note - it just went up again I got a deal.

    K
    I got you. The reason why I am going for Ds is because they are the latest and I hope there will be some kind of bug fixes and improvements. In addition, 4 GB RAM is good in my view as it enables the price to drop by 100$ and I can get another 4 GB for just 20$. On Amazon, the cheapest D is being sold for just 1048$

    My main worry about bug is weak Wifi. How is your experience on that?
    Did your C had Windows 7 or 8? I heard it is more difficult to install Linux on Win 8 machines.

  5. #5
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Yup. Looks like price of the C has gone up again. It was $1200 when I bought it, and then $1025 the next day, and Amazon gave me a credit. Now back up to $1200.

    Mine has Windows 7. The challenge with 8 is that it boots really quickly through the stage where the bios will accept you hitting F2. It's actually the same now that I have Ubuntu installed.

    Weak Wifi? Nope. Not even a sniff of it.

    K

  6. #6
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Quote Originally Posted by thewump View Post
    Yup. Looks like price of the C has gone up again. It was $1200 when I bought it, and then $1025 the next day, and Amazon gave me a credit. Now back up to $1200.

    Mine has Windows 7. The challenge with 8 is that it boots really quickly through the stage where the bios will accept you hitting F2. It's actually the same now that I have Ubuntu installed.

    Weak Wifi? Nope. Not even a sniff of it.

    K
    Yea, C has very variable price on Amazon.

    Did you compare wifi of C with other laptops?

  7. #7
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    No, I think I was blessed by not realizing there could be an issue with Wifi at all! I envy so much Apple Fanboys that their choice is simply, "Which of the x Macbook products am I going to bend over and take it up the *** for". PC people, and Linux guys even worse have a very hard decision to make indeed.

    In terms of wifi, the C has been better than any linux box I've had. I'm coming off a 15" 2010 Macbook pro which has horrible issues with reconnect after hibernate (but then it is a Broadcomm nightmare). Before that I had an HP which also suffered. I'm so utterly astonished by the Samsung that I it can be set to Hibernate on close lid, and it comes back up in less than 10 seconds and wifi kick straight in.

    Could not be happier. Is there a difference in the wireless hardware between C and D?

    K

  8. #8
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    Dec 2006
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    As a followup, just got my hands on a micro dvi to HDMI adapter. Using that to connect to an old DVI 1600x1200 monitor instantly finds / adjusts / works.

    K

  9. #9
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    Nov 2007
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    Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus

    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Hello, all. I just got the NP900X4C, the i7/256 GB version. Installed Oneiric on it via PXE before thinking there might be Windows-only firmware updates. *headdesk*

    Now trying to find out if I should do the upgrades to Precise and beyond. I'm reading https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SamsungSeries9. Any other experiences with supported or broken features in a specific version of Ubuntu?

  10. #10
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    Re: Samsung Series 9 Success / Ultrabooks

    Not sure why you wouldn't. Why did you start with 11.10 just out of interest? The windows only firmware update is bad news though. Based on what I read before I did mine, that's the only way to deal with lid close / suspend or hibernate issues, and on mine that works flawlessly. I'm kicking myself a little bit for not buying a better SSD up front and keeping the old 128gb one (Sandisk and aweful) for future Windows update needs.

    What issues are you having? The ONLY thing I had to do with 12.10 was modify the key mappings so the keyboard brightness etc. function keys worked. Everything else was good out of the box.

    K

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