Samsung Q40 fanless laptop is pretty good.

DAve_M · Post by **DAve_M** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:24 pm

Just got a new samsung Q40 fanless laptop. As you can imagine it is very quiet it has a 1.8" 4200rpm HDD as the only thing that makes noise (so I guess it makes as much noise as a video ipod). The noise the HDD makes is high pitched whine. With the seeks being very quiet and not that noticeable.

Battery life isn't steller. I managed to drain the smaller battery (you get one small and one big one included) in under two hours watching a film with max display brightness. Should get 9hrs life out of both batteries in normal usage although I havn't tested this.

It uses intel core U1400 ultra low voltage single core CPU which is excellent with only 5.5W TDP at 1.2 GHz. Tested it with a high def video - 720p xvid. CPU useage is around 50% which is good as my athlonXP 1.5GHz would only just be able to cope at around 100% usage with smoothish playback.

I would recomend Q40 I think it is one of the best laptops out there (best one ever for me). Can't wait to upgrade HDD with a SSD!
See TrustedReviews for a proper review... http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks ... otebook/p1

DAve_M · Post by **DAve_M** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:51 am

I'm going to get a wireless access point soon. Does anyone know if it's worth getting a 802.11g AP that supports 108 Mbps? The laptop has 802.11g network cards.

FlorisNielssen · Post by **FlorisNielssen** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:09 am

??? Then it's a 802.11n AP, not a g. Because n supports 108Mbps, g 54. But if your laptop has g, I don't think it's worth getting an 108Mbps AP.

Also see Wikipedia.

Copper · Post by **Copper** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:54 am

There are "G" systems that support MIMO, like "n," affording the higher bandwidth. As long as you have it at both ends it should work in theory. I say in theory because I have nothing but lousy luck with wireless bandwidth. My home wireless G system always proclaims to be connected at 54 Mb with the reception varying between excellent and very good, but I'm lucky to see 1 or 2 Mb of my 5 Mb internet connection.

I only get the full speed if I connect by LAN.

aaa · Post by **aaa** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 2:26 pm

FlorisNielssen wrote:??? Then it's a 802.11n AP, not a g. Because n supports 108Mbps, g 54. But if your laptop has g, I don't think it's worth getting an 108Mbps AP.

Also see Wikipedia.

N is more than 108. The 108mbps was a propriety extension by Atheros from before N came about, so you'd need a 108 Atheros card to match a 108mbps router. N cards will not work at 108mbps with such a router, they'll do 54.

And the speed of your downloads depends on the number of packets dropped, regardless of rate. Just a few packets dropped by interference can kill a tcp download's speed. I've found that this really depends on the client card and less on the AP (along with how much interference there is), some cards drop more packets than others for some reason.

PatrickSc · Post by **PatrickSc** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 8:54 am

Hi,

I've got a Q40, too und I also noticed the whine sound from the hard disk.
It is clearly audible even at a distance of 3 meters.
This is pretty annoying and I also plan to upgrade to SSD.

Do you know whether this is an easy thing to do? Is it just opening the case and replacing the HD?
(I'm a layman but I dare doing this myself...)

And what type of 1,8" SSD do I need?

Apart from the lousy hard drive the Q40 is a really great gadget

DAve_M · Post by **DAve_M** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:06 pm

I would wait a while for SSD to come down in price. A year from now they will be much cheaper. 1.8" SSD are not easy to got hold of at the moment. SSD still too much of a niche thing.

Unless you are trying to sleep in the same room as the laptop, i dont think the HDD is too anyoying. It wouldnt put me off buying it.