The Samsung QX410 Thread

saw a press release a couple weeks ago saying this was going to come out end of the month, anyone know any updates?

 

They seem to be keeping us in the dark. Perhaps they're preoccupied with a certain tablet . . .

 

There's no trace, so far, of the QX410 on Samsung's global download site. However, there is an entry for the QX310 but, so far, it only has the BIOS and software. My past experience indicates that there will be a full set of entries on that site before a model goes into production.

John

 

I've been having problems with my HP dm4 and am about to get a refund. I was looking at replacing it with either the Samsung QX410 or QX310. I've been hearing it's coming out this month but am not seeing anything on it.

The US site shows the QX410 but not much information on it. Are these laptops usually primarily sold at Best Buy in the states?

 

apparently they have been at best buy for a couple days. just picked one up today. dont know much about computers but seems real nice. 850 before tax i think.

 

Yep! I picked one up now actually too...Best Buy too. I love it! My only complaint is while it's thin, it's a little wider/taller than the HP 14" I had. The screen seems like it has too much bezel at the bottom for no reason.

At the same time, the build quality feels awesome, speakers sound great, design's sexy, performance rocks too.

I already popped in an Intel G2 160GB SSD too and it just flys.

Anyone know if I can upgrade the latest Nvidia drivers over time through Nvidia or do I have to get it from Samsung?

 

i bought one as well last night... i havnt bought a laptop in 2 years and this thing is extremely quiet. the screen looks a lil weird cause the actual space used for display seems a lil small.

a back lit keyboard would be great as well

 

awesome cpu

 

urbanglowcam,
Maybe you can comment on the samsung screen vs hp dm4t, since you had it too.

 

The screen has a nicer design than the dm4 since its all one sheet of glass vs glass with a surrounding, slightly protruding bezel. The resolution and brightness looks about the same. The resolution isn't as good as say the HP Envy 14 or Sony Vaio Z but it doesn't bother me one bit until actually looking at those models. As far as the HP Dm4, I'd have to put them side by side but they both have the glossy/reflective look.

I'd say they are both pretty good displays. Viewing angles from the side are a little hindered as most screens are. It's still a great display. The only way I could appreciate it more is if it were matte/non-glossy but that is rare these days.

I DEFINITELY prefer this laptop over the HP though. Build quality feels much better and the performance is slightly better when comparing it to the lowest processor on the HP. Battery life is great too. After putting a SSD into mine I can't hear it at all and everything loads very fast. I output it to my external LCD display with no issue. I video chat with my girlfriend on the laptop screen and do my Photoshop/Illustrator work on the LCD through HDMI, while watching youtube videos in the background. It really handles everything I do with ease.

I just have a few VERY minor complaints. One, like I said before, is the top lid/screen being too tall for the size of the display. If they could lower it slightly and show less of the black border it'd be perfect. It makes the size of the laptop look larger compared to say the HP DM4. However, the laptop is very thin and sexy when it's closed/open. Very professional high quality look.

My other complaint is simply that the touchpad is finicky at times. I hope further driver support can fix this. I still don't know why most Windows 7 based computers I've played with don't have the response/fluidity of MacBooks on OSX.

Lastly, the battery can't be removed. But then again the battery life is great and Samsung claims it will still hold a charge after 3 years. They rate it at 7 hours and I get close to that. My battery meter once said I had 9:30 left! :-o But I average about 5-7 hours with my use. Pretty good for the power in here!

There are too many positives to list about this over my small issues. This thing's awesome. I highly recommend it!

 

ive only been getting about 4 hours doing web browsing with screen at 30%

 

I'd say I'm getting a little more than that. I don't know why. Maybe it's the SSD I put in it? Once you start watching youtube videos the life expectancy goes down a lot too. Also, playing music brings it down. I'm just browsing the net now and I took it off the charger 15 min ago. The brightness is on 45% and it says 6 hours and 05 minutes (96%) at this moment.

 

Do you think they'll have a version of this model with a 1gb graphics card? If they do that this will be the laptop I've been looking for.

 

Has anyone used the WIMAX feature built into the QX410 to connect to Clear or TWC 4G service? I would appreciate any comments pro and con regarding the capability of the built in hardware. I think I understand the pros and cons of the services themselves. Thanks.

Chuck

 

Hi, how were you able to purchase and install a 160GB SSD? I'm strongly considering this Samsung QX410, but also looking at the Sony Z series, which just has an SSD HD. I didn't realize one could add an SSD to a laptop with a regular HD (beyond USB sticks of course).

 

I'm planning on purchasing this laptop on Thanksgiving Day, Best Buy will be offering $150 off all Samsung notebooks.

 

The majority of SSDs use the same 2.5" form factor as most notebook HDDs and are interchangeable. There as also some even thinner SSDs. I'm not sure where the HDD is on the QX410. Hopefully, it is under the removable cover on the bottom.

An SSD makes a bigger improvement to everyday performance than a CPU upgrade. See some of the benchmark results in my Dell E6410 review.

John

 

Thinking about buying this at Black Friday too.

What you guys think? Should i go with an HP dm4 or the Samsung qx410? I tested the keyboard, and just as someone said above, I kept hitting the trackpad accidentally too. I wish it was smaller or with a simpler way to activate it and deactivate it (the dm4 allows you to do that with a double-click on the upper left corner, while qx410 you need to do Fn+F10).

Oh god...I was so sure about the Samsung...

 

id go with the samsung. i like both the keyboard and touchpad a lot better. keyboard just feels a lot nicer and the touchpad is a lot bigger and feels almost like a mac. im typing this right now with part of my left palm on the touchpad and its not causing a problem. dont know if it is the settings that i changed but there was a new driver that i installed. i think the samsungs looks nicer also. HP is a little lighter and i think the battery life is better too so if youre on the move a lot thats definitely an advantage. i thought this was a good deal at 850, with 150 off its a no brainer for me. cnet just put up their review btw

 

Hello everyone I'm a newbie here. I went to Best Buy and I bought this for 699.99 with CA recycle $8.00 and sales tax was $63.00. Total came out to $770.99. Used my penfed visa platinum cc to get 1% cash back.
Anyways I haven't opened the item yet its still here, i'm going to eat first and open it. before I start it up I plan to fully charge the battery before turning it on (ex. when you purchase a new cell phone they recommend that).
I don't know any techs but what kind of upgrades can i do with this computer? I plan to maybe buy a better ram (again i dont know what specs it can use) if anyone knows that would be great, i'm thinking about a g.skill ram but dont know what is compatible.
Also I'm interested in purchasing a OCZ vertex 2 drive 2.5" about 120gb. Will it be compatible with this laptop? cheers!

 

Any 2.5" SSD is interchangeable with a standard 2.5" HDD. However, I know some people who have bad experiences with some of the OCZ products, but they have a big range with different price - performance ratings.

John

 

i bought this laptop today but the screen is off. the colors and especially the white is bad when i try to see videos in 1080p. i put everything back to standard and high performance (higher brightness) and it still looks blurred and just bad especially compared to my desktop monitor... i tried to change the hues,settings, etc and its still not clear, it gives me,my friend, mom a headache. I'm so sad that I have to return this back to best buy tomorrow morning. I really love the specs on the laptop except the graphics...its very mediocre but still very good! im so sad but man this laptop has such a bad display !! =(

 

Windows 7 has the 'calibrate' command to help sort out the colour and contrast. However, this won't help with the resampling required to display 1080p video on a 768 pixel high display.

John

 

my brother bought this thing yesterday as well through the bb sale.

wont get his til wednesday though so we're now looking for a better deal. will see what cyber monday brings.

and uh, could anyone tell me the difference between the qx410 and the q430?
does the x stand for mobility?

 

The X series used to be the thin and light models which came with a substantial price premium. I assume, but haven't studied the specs, that the QX is a bit thinner and lighter than the equivalent Q.

John

 

hello, i took it to bestbuy and the tech changed the nvidia setting to make set my videocard to always use the nvidia card. (higher usage of battery) but it made everything look better. i ended up keeping this laptop. haha thanks for the info again

 

I'm tempted to get this but knowing me, I need to do bunch of research and make sure I am spending my $ wisely.

I found Asus K42JC - B1 to have similar specs and similar price range. Any reason to choose one over the other??

 

the samsung is lighter, thinner, and likely has a better battery life. oh, and a faster cpu.

 

is anybody using a neoprene sleeve? Interested to know which one you went with and why.

 

I got this computer a couple days ago as part of the Black Friday sale for $700 and overall really like it - it has a lovely build a bit like a MacBook Pro. It is currently priced at $800, which is still a good deal - a MacBook Pro-like build with a much larger hard-drive and that runs super fast and smooth.

I do have two relatively minor nitpicks. One is that the screen is a bit awkwardly shaped - it is one of those newer widescreens and has about an inch on the bottom in black with "Samsung" lettering...I'm not sure why they didn't just do a full-sized screen. The dimensions are about 12.25" x 6.75"...with the black part the screen is 7.5" tall, which would have been a bit better.

Secondly, I haven't been that impressed with the graphics - I'm not sure if it is the NVIDIA thing someone mentioned, but it doesn't handle darks all that well, especially on Netflix on demand (although this is probably mainly Netflix itself). But I also noticed that the video quality isn't super crisp with a DVD, with some "sparkling" in certain tones. You barely notice it unless you're looking for it. I'm not sure if the NVIDIA adjustment would fix it or not, though.

Anyhow, again, very nice computer overall. I thought I'd miss my HP keyboard but this is much better.

 

Unfortunately, you have to blame the display manufacturers (Samsung included) for shifting almost all their production to 16:9 panels which might be better for watching movies but is worse for everything else. One advantage, from the manufacturer's viewpoint, is that a nominal same sized screen is cheaper to make (because the area is actually smaller).

You could try the advice in davidleex84's post a bit further up this thread.

John

 

New firmware up!

Update Software (Firmware) (ver.1.0.0.1) - 03MX
Samsung

 

Hi

I just bought this today and the first thing I did was reformat it. I'vo e been installing drivers and all of them seem to work fine except for the wireless one.

I've tried the 64 bit version and the 32 bit version (which won't install at all) and the 64 bit version just doesn't work. It installs and does nothing. Can't detect any wireless network at all. I've tried a wired connection and that seems to work fine. The dedicated wireless button is on, but it cannot be turned off. If I press it, the blue light remains on. It seems the intel wireless adapter isn't detected by the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate) at all, as it isn't listed in the device manager with the LAN and bluetooth.

All help is greatly appreciated. This seems to be the only place that I can ask this, since it's still a relatively new product and has very little online support.

Thanks.

 

try downloading the drivers from the Intel website. i bought this on black Friday from BB, i like it a lot better than my dm3. however, i think the touch pad is kinda funky compared to the dm3 and the right and left click on the touch pad is very stiff and its hard to press a lot of times. Also, anybody have a ssd on this laptop yet? i reformatted with a ssd and on a cold boot i have problems booting and i have to do ctrl+alt+del to get windows to boot. my came with that 03mx bios, was hoping it was a bios issue but the options in the bios is very limited.

 

Okay, so now the network controller is being detected and is shown in the device manager. However, it has the yellow exclamation mark which normally indicates that the drivers aren't working. The dedicated wireless switch is also working, after installing some software from Samsung's support page. Basically, the wireless drivers are just not working. I've downloaded them from intel's site, Samsung's site, through windows update.

Can someone with this laptop confirm to me if the wireless adapter is the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6250 AGN adapter? It's said that it is on the new laptopmag review.

 

has anyone installed this....what are the changes?

 

in my device manager under network adapters is a Intel(r) Centrino(r) advanced-N 6250 AGN but there is a ! on the Intel(r) Centrino(r) advanced-N + WiMax 6250

 

I'm getting a ! on Intel(r) Centrino(r) advanced-N 6250 AGN. I don't have a wimax driver installed, but I shouldn't need that to use wifi.

 

I am having the same problem, I upgraded to Windows 7 Enterprise. For a day or 2 everything was fine, then the Wi-Fi started randomly not being able to detect any networks. If I disabled and then re-enabled through Control Panel it would work for a little while, then not be able to detect anything again. I tried re-installing the software from Samsung's website, which didn't make any difference, then tried deleting the Wi-Fi from Device Manager.

When I told Device Manager to Scan for Hardware Changes it found the device, but can't find any driver for it. And I'm not sure where to get the driver, since Samsung seems to only provide an installer for the software (and then another installer that claims that it's installing the driver, but it isn't possible to just point the "Update Driver" wizard to where the driver is, and whatever driver is supposedly installed isn't detected).

Will keep my eye on this forum to see if there are any breakthroughs. I still have the restore partition since I only did the upgrade, but I would prefer not to have to go back to that.

As far as the WIMAX issue, I think you might need a driver that supports 3 things (the normal Wi-Fi, WIMAX, and something called My Wi-Fi which works like a Wireless Access Point), since when I deleted the Wi-Fi adapter, it also removed the other 2 things.

 

Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I also cannot install the touchpad drivers (for multitouch).

 

I bought this laptop for 849 $ CAD +txs + 3 years service plan. The service plan should cover the battery since it is BUILT-IN. The deal is warm compared to the US but still.

This laptop has a lot of custom settings. You could do everything you want to suit your needs. First thing, you should use the Nvidia settings instead of the preset ones. I use mainly that laptop mainly on AC adaptor, so make sure you activate just like I did the battery extender which charges only up to 80% therefore it won't use a full charging cycle. If you use it on the go, keep it as it is. The battery usage is very optimized. It lasts about 7 hours as advertised for medium activity (browsing, office applications, utilities etc.) The hybrid sleep is PHENOMENAL. It's basically a mix between sleep and hibernate and it turns on in a glimpse. Half is stored in ram, half is stored on HDD and you could tweak which programs to load first making it even faster when you open the lid par example. I could go and on, but there is no laptop comparable with the same specs for this price. It has a wonderful design and I don't have any major or minor issues that really pisses me off so I could remember it. It is very ergonomic and has stylish keyboard.

Don't hesitate to ask questions.

 

Can you tell me what driver you have installed for the wi-fi adapter? If you go back a page you'll see a couple of us are having problems since we reformatted the OS.

It seems the drivers Samsung provides online are incompatible, but the ones that come preloaded work fine. Not sure why this is, perhaps they are different drivers. Can you tell me what driver version you have installed? It'll say in the device manager.

Thanks.

 

I also did a clean windows 64bit install and I had no problems what so ever.I tried both online drivers from samsung and one which came up with notebook. If you think the driver which comes with notebook works fine and if you have your recovery partition alive I recommend restore to factory settings, create System Software backup using samsung system backup utility to an external media. Clean install the windows and run the restore utility from the backup media. It is a gr8 utility and works perfectly.You can choose what all you want to install


I have also slipped in a SSD and this laptop rocks. The more I use it the more I am loving it.

 

I repartitioned the hard drive, so I no longer have the recovery partition. That's what I normally do when I buy a laptop, I didn't anticipate this. It's too late now, I'll have to try and find a way to manually install the correct driver.

So you're saying the wireless driver from here works - Samsung ? ver.13.2.1.5, windows 7 64 bit?

 

Yes it works for me without a hitch. I clean installed twice and installed the drivers from the same link which you mentioned. The version is also what I am running now.

 

I slipped in the samsung ssd and it wokes perfectly. I did not had any problems using the ssd.

 

yeah it must be this cheap microcenter brand (actually made by adata) 64gb ssd, the same ssd boots up perfectly and everytime on my desktop. i think im jus use the original hdd, it seems its pretty fast for a 5400 rpm hdd. I got another question if i get 1333 or 1600 speed ddr3 would it be downclock, anybody know if i can upgrade the optical drive to a bluray and how come the newer nivida drivers dont work on this 310m?

 

What version of windows 7 are you running? Did you use windows update before you installed the drivers? And what other samsung drivers/software did you install before getting the wifi driver?

I doubt it would make a difference, but I'm pretty desperate.

 

Be careful with the Supervisor BIOS password. I tried to "un-set" mine and ended up bricking my system on day2.

I had win7 and opensuse dual-booting fine and even managed to preserve the recovery partitions.

laptop arrived at Intelisol last Fri and waiting to hear from them now.

 

Woo! It's fixed. Turns out I was downloading from the American Samsung site. I live in Canada and apparently I have a different (?) wireless network adapter on the laptop. I downloaded the wireless broadcom adapter driver from the Canadian site and it works great. Link = Extra Slim, Extra Fast, Extra Mobility. - NP-QX410 - Notebooks - mobile computing | SAMSUNG for anyone with the same problem.