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John Ratsey

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  1. John Ratsey
    I assumed you appreciated that the $1,100 was clear-out pricing getting ready for the new model. We've got our own thread about the 2022 model. I would assume that the non-Nvidia model will appear at whatever price the P series was when it arrived and the dGPU will add more to the price tag (and reduce the time on battery). Given that you've got the generous returns window you've probably got time to see the new prices and be sure that you need the anti-glare screen (and ideally find out if it significantly degrades the sharpness) before you have to make your return. Yes, you need a full USB-C cable and charger for the power delivery system to work (the chips at each end have to talk to each other and find out the highest voltage supported by both devices). Power-delivery capable power banks also exist if you want a longer time away from a power socket. The power supply options definitely apply to my Galaxy Book Pro 13 and probably most (all?) recent notebooks which use a USB-C power supply (recent goes back a few years as my Dell Latitude 7370 would run on other USB-C supplies). I'm wondering what difference there is between the 17Z90P and 17Z95P versions. Does the 17Z95P come with Win 11 pre-installed?
  2. John Ratsey
    I suspect tht the Win 11 is a standard installation whereas Win 10 has been customised. I'm sure a little research will reveal what registry edit is needed to reveal the missing advanced power settings. I've noticed the fan at times but only if there's no significant ambient noise. It's quiet compared with the XPS15 I had on my desk last week being prepared for rehoming. A consequence of the low fan noise is the low power limit imposed by the BIOS so the CPU will only run at full speed for a short period before being throttled. I think the photo below has the answer: The slot is marked "NVME x4 SATA3." A SATA SSD has two notches and a SATA-only slot has two keys whereas an NVME slot has one key. SATA will fit into an NVME slot but not the other way round. Regarding your earlier comment about the small PSU, the PSU provided with the UK version of the Gram 17 is significantly larger than the 65W PSU provided with the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro which looks like an over-sized USB-C phone charger. However, if you want to travel light then there's a good selection of compact 45W USB-C chargers which are fine for powering the Gram 17 and charging the battery at moderate rate. The 65W charger allows a faster charging rate. The computer will complain about but run on a 25W charger - it might need to draw on the battery under maximum CPU load.
  3. John Ratsey
    Thanks for the pointer to Explorer Patcher. I'll keep an eye on how it evolves although it's also possible that M$ may modify Win11's behaviour. You could also try changing the touchpad's sensitivity setting to see if it helps with the remaining problems. And I'll be interested to hear the outcome of your battery drain investigations. One measure I've used in the past is to cap the maximum CPU speed as the turbo mode uses a lot more power to provide a small improvement in speed. However, the CPU settings (and others) are missing from the advanced power options so tweaking will be needed to un-hide those settings or use software such as ThrottleStop.
  4. John Ratsey
    I've got a 2TB external SSD so I copy everything I might need from the big computer onto that and then copy files onto the little computer as an when needed. Then, before heading home, I copy anything that's been changed back to the SSD. Quite often on my travels the network connectivity is poor and sometimes non-existent so backing up to the www is less reliable than using local storage. I've just replied to your comments on the Gram 17 and one thought I've just had is that you should be able to use the dual SSD capability of that computer to have a primary SSD and a mirror SSD.
  5. John Ratsey
    That's good value. There's also some clear-out pricing on this side of the pond but in British pounds instead of US dollars (but our 20% VAT accounts for much of the difference). Personally, I think the 1TB SSD is more useful than the slightly faster CPU which probably hits the power limit a bit quicker. It is an unusual display resolution but provides more sharpness than FHD while not going all the way to QHD. I've just checked and I'm also on 175% scaling. I've also got my older software where I've had to fiddle with the High DPI Settings in the program properties to find the best compromise. Overall, I like the display, particularly the sharpness and the 16:10 aspect ratio. The glare problem I was having a couple of weeks ago has diminished as the sun has got higher in the sky. My hands and fingers have got accustomed to the offset keyboard and I've got NumLk off so the numpad becomes a navigation pad. I haven't used the trackpad much as I've got an external mouse but one suggestion for the two finger scrolling is to try to hold the fingers together. I've had the problem of two fingers being interpreted as zooming on other computers so it's not specific to this computer. One work-around is to disable the pinch to zoom in the touchpad properties. I'm surprised by your observed battery drain which needs investigation. BatteryInfoView is simple free utility which makes it easy to check the current power usage in Watts. You'll be looking for no more than 6W to get a comfortable 10 hours on battery. Task Manager shows which software is using the resources (particular CPU and Disk) although tracking down which software is causing high activity by a background process can be challenging but Process Explorer will help. Also check the effect of display brightness on power drain. I'm wondering if OneDrive is one of the problems if it is continuously trying to sync files. It will be using the CPU and network connection plus stopping the SSD from sleeping. I've avoided Windows 11 as it won't let me put the Task Bar on the left side of the display so I can maximise the vertical space. I also appreciate the good selection of ports although most are having an easy life as I bought a Thunderbolt dock which is connected to the computer using a magnetic USB-C plug which seems to provide good connectivity (no adverse impact on the speed of an external SSD connected to the dock). Overall, the Gram 17 is fulfilling my objective of having a bigger screen than a 15.6" notebook while being easy to clear off my desk.
  6. John Ratsey
    The Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 has only one slot (m.2 2230) whereas the Book Pro 15.6 has an empty 2280 slot (see notebookcheck review). OneDrive gets shown the door at the first opportunity. I'm more casual about backups than I used to be as storage drives are much more reliable. I wasn't aware that it could have a significant performance impact but I suspect that could depend on the size of the data files being changed.
  7. John Ratsey
    It's good to see that LG hasn't messed up what is a good basic design. The anti-glare coating is the one feature that I'd like to have. I don't like white or silver keyboards because backlit lettering doesn't show up.
  8. John Ratsey
    Here's my list of the updates: The sound appears to be working OK. I'm surprised that the BIOS doesn't get mentioned as I can't find any separate BIOS updater and it's version T2ZF0320 X64 dated 23rd April 2021. Most manufacturers have issued one or more updates during that time.
  9. John Ratsey
    After a week of use my hands are happy with the keyboard even though it's offset. They action is good. I can occasionally hear the fan but it's very quiet compared with an XPS 15 which I've temporarily got alongside it. I've got a Thunderbolt dock connected using one of these magnetic connectors which means that disconnection doesn't cause any port wear. The very glossy screen is noticeable when sun is coming in the window but can be mitigated when there's a light background by turning up the brightness which I normally have at about 60%. I haven't discarded the possibility of getting an anti-glare screen protector although this may worsen what is a delightfully crisp display. A factory-applied slightly matte finish would be the best solution.
  10. John Ratsey
    You were given a warning, not threatened with being banned. The warning about posting keys is valid as the last thing this forum wants is to be harrassed by a software company for posting their keys. You say they are free, but there could be conditions attached and the moderators are not in a position to to check the details.
  11. John Ratsey
    Both. I first got the solar panels and then quickly realised that the timing of domestic consumption was out of phase with the solar generation so the battery was added once one was available. In UK there's the added benefit of being able to charge the battery with cheap night time electricity. The result is that in the summer half of the year most of the consumption is met by solar generation (direct or via the battery) and during the winter most of the consumption is met by cheap night electricity stored by the battery. You can see the power flows at pvoutput but note that to see the battery data you have to select the right-most blob under the date selector (extended data). This week's good news is that after four years of waiting, Tesla's "intelligent" charging algorithm now appears to be looking at the weather forecast.
  12. John Ratsey
    The MSI Z17 is a completely different machine made for a different purpose. The Gram 17 is for people who want a big screen for everyday tasks but many of the other 17" machines are 3D graphics workstations or gaming machines where a 17" display means a bigger chassis for holding the hardware. That's a valid point about using an eGPU connected via Thunderbolt. It's not something I've had a need to investigate but it merits discussion in the accessories forum. I assume that the technology has now been fairly well debugged.
  13. John Ratsey
    My setup is simple compared to many: A Virgin Media 100mbs cable modem is in one corner of the house (so not very good wifi coverage) which is hard-wired to a TP Link Archer A7 router which is located upstairs in the centre of the house (my study) from where there's OK wifi coverage to all corners. There are three wired clients (two printers next to the router plus a powerline adaptor to a Tesla Powerwall battery in the garage) plus 14 wireless clients. The cable between cable modem and router was installed about 20 years ago when wifi was in its infancy and most computers needed a wired connection.
  14. John Ratsey
    Some more comments: (i) There's a quirk in the Battery Life Extender option in the LG Control Center. It's meant to limit the maximum charge to 80%. However, if the function is enabled when there's more than 80% charge then the system maintains the maximum charge at 100% until the cumpter is used on battery for long enough for the charge level drops below 80% whereupon the extender becomes effective. (ii) The audio quality through the built-in loudspeakers is surprisingly good with more than a hint of bass. (iii) I did some simple speed performance tests on both the Gram 17 (Core i7-1165G7 CPU) and the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 (Core i5-1130G7 CPU) and compared these with some results in my archive for older notebooks. Two noteworthy points are (a) the near doubling of nominal CPU power doesn't provide a very big speed improvement and (b) performance is similar to my Precision 5510 with an i7-6820HQ CPU which was quite potent in its era.
  15. John Ratsey
    I recently bought a Gram 17 model 17Z90P to replace a Dell Optiplex all-in-one which, I had decided, was taking up too much desk space. Before the Optiplex I had used an XPS 15 but my eyes were suggesting that they would like a bigger screen. So, with the Optiplex too big and and XPS 15 too small, I'm hoping that the Gram 17 will be a happy compromise. What attracted me to the Gram 17? There's not much choice in the 17" category and the XPS 17 is overpowered for my needs. As a long-term user of the thin-and-light notebooks I was also curious to try an LG product and the 3lb Gram 17 would make a good companion to the 2lb Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 which I recently bought to use away from home. I spent most of yesterday transferring everything to the Gram 17 which is now in use. What have I noticed so far? The screen is very reflective but this can be largely mitigated by tilting it back as there's no loss of quality due to the excellent viewing angles. The keyboard action is very pleasant - fairly low travel but comfortable. I'm not a fan of having a numpad and would have preferred a column of navigation keys on the right side of the keyboard. However, pressing the NumLk key toggles between numbers and navigation keys (there's no status light but on an-screen display to show when the status is changed) so it's better than nothing. My last encounter with a notebook with a numpad was a 15" Dell E5570 which ended after a few months as there wasn't enough room for my left wrist on the palmrest. There's no such problem with the Gram 17. A few days ago I had opened up the Gram 17 to add a 2nd SSD (Intel 660p which had been used in the XPS 15). Reviews elsewhere had indicated that getting inside wasn't easy. The difficult part is removing the four rubber feet on the corners as these are not only held in place by adhesive but are also embedded in recesses so it's a matter of prising them out of the holes. There's also a strange little foot between the two back feet which is too small to be in contact with the desk surface. The other screws are under covers which are easy to remove. Once the screws are out then it's a matter of prising off the base. I started at the middle front. Anyway, here's a view of the inside before I added the 2nd SSD: There's plenty of empty space and I assume that the boards are shared with the smaller Grams using different cables. The fan isn't very big but nor is it noisy. To be continued in due course ....
  16. John Ratsey
    I also wondering how much bending these thin notebooks can handle before something breaks. It's unlikely to be the electronics as the boards are relatively small and joined by ribbon cables. My 13.3 goes into a neoprene sleeve when it's travelling and the display is supported because it's closed against the chassis. It's possible the display will be pushed against the keyboard and get marked so putting a sheet of paper between the two could be prudent. My 13.3 is very quiet unless put under load and then it's more of a purr than a whine.
  17. John Ratsey
    That's a very tempting price, even though it has the numpad. It's time to (re)read the notebookcheck review. There's an empty M.2 2280 slot should you need more storage capacity.
  18. John Ratsey
    In NBR's early days Andrew Baxter used to publish user reviews which varied extensively in terms of detail. This later evolved into standardised reviews which lacked the perspectives of individual users. A further feature of the earlier NBR reviews was that there was an associated thread for discussion of each review where readers could give their own comments or ask questions. I found this very beneficial as comments often enhanced the initial review. Building links into the NBRarchive will help the search engines bring people here. One of my pending tasks is to build some sticky threads for the Samsung sub-forum based on the old NBR sticky threads (list here) linking to the contents (here). It's largely a matter of copying something like this and rebuilding the links. It should provide an example of what can be done in the other parts of the forum.
  19. John Ratsey
    I share your dislike of glossy screens and the numpad but considered them to be acceptable trade-offs given the Gram 17's other attractions including a 16:10 WQXGA display. I hadn't previously noticed the reflection problem but have just checked and it's there. Similarly the 13" Samsung has a glossy screen but it hasn't caused me problems perhaps because modern panels are brighter than those of 10 or more years ago. I hope I'll be able to adapt to the Gram 17's offset keyboard once I get it into serious use. My last encounter with a notebook with a numpad was the Latitude 5570 which had the touchpad lined up with the spacebar leaving insufficient space for my left palm to sit on the palmrest. I found this to be uncomfortable so it was rehomed and I got a Precision 5510 which was more comfortable to use. The Gram 17 has more space to the left of the touchpad. I share your bafflement as to why Dell didn't include a column of navigation keys on the bigger XPS machines and would have preferred if LG had done this. I briefly looked at the specs for the XPS17 but it appeared to be overpowered and too pricy for my needs. There's no mention of a 17" version in Samsung's announcement of the Book2 Pro notebooks. I suspect that the market for 17" notebooks is thought to be relatively small but now that they no longer weigh a ton then I expect more people could be interested.
  20. John Ratsey
    I've been looking at Thunderbolt docking stations as I wanted something I could connect to an LG Gram 17 which would both provide power for the notebook and be the connection point for fixed accessories. I had still been considering my options when I came across a new Lindy Thunderbolt 3 dock on ebay for £50. With two Thunderbolt ports (up and down) plus five USB-A ports it fulfilled my key requirements so I pulled the trigger. The 130W PSU is a brick that's much heavier than than the docking station but the rest is OK. There seems to be a performance loss through the device as the sequential speed of a Crucial X6 external SSD which is about 700MB/s when connected directly to the notebook drops to about 500MB/s when connected through the docking station. I don't know enough about these devices to know if this is normal but it's OK for my needs and, if nothing else, will provide useful modestly priced experience to guide future investment on something better. I'm also using one of these magnetic connectors to act as a port saver. Many are good for USB-C power but this one claims to have TB3 compatibility (and was in use during the above test). The magnet isn't as strong as I would like and moving the cable (which currently sticks straight out) can easily break the connection.
  21. John Ratsey
    Samsung has announced the Galaxy Book2 Pro series. The key changes from the current Book Pro series appear to be the Intel 12th generation platform, a FHD webcam and some enhanced security features. There's also the comment "Additionally, new algorithms extend the battery lifecycles and lower standby power reducing the need for frequent battery replacements" (does this mean that the current products eat batteries -I've got mine set to a maximum 85%charge)? The specs (at the bottom of the Samsung web page) also show a 32GB RAM option and Intel® Arc™ external graphics graphics option for the 15.6" version. Unless the new products include a "must have" feature, now is the time for buying the remaining stock of the current line-up at reduced prices.
  22. John Ratsey
    I've found that hibernation / resume to be impressively quick: Writing /reading the RAM contents should be a good test of sequential performance and a fast SSD should reduce the performance bottleneck when the paging file has to be used. However, performance in everyday usage depends on on the ability to handle the random access reading and writing and newer SSDs tend to be better than old ones in this respect although there's nothing like the performance boost which came from the shift from spinning disks to SSDs due to the negligible access time of the latter. That said, I've had problems with an almost full SSD appearing to freeze a computer when asked to write a load of data as it first needed to do a load of house-keeping to create a contiguous block of empty space.
  23. John Ratsey
    Yes. The 2021 Galaxy Book Pro 13.3 model code is NP935XDB. The two sizes will have much in common. Notebookcheck has a good review of the 15.6" version. There's a free M.2 2280 slot should more storage be needed. It's intriguing to see how notebooks have managed to shed weight over the years. Just over 15 years ago I bought a Samsung NP-X60plus which was, at 2.55kg (5.5lb), one of the lightest 15" notebooks of its era and it was impossible to imagine how things could evolve to give something better at less than half the weight or thickness. Travel is also made easier by the use of USB-C chargers. The bundled 65W Samsung charger is light for the power rating but the computer is happy being powered by an even lighter 45W phone charger and will work, with a warning, using a 25W charger. If you have any more questions please ask. I've just been away for a couple of weeks with the 13.3 and, apart from the glitches noted above, it performed very satisfactorily (one advantage of 8GB RAM is that hibernation / resume is very fast). The hinges don't have much strength but the display is so light that it doesn't need strong hinges. I thought that the Dell Latitude 7370 which I used to carry was a lightweight machine but this new machine is even lighter to the extent I start to wonder if it's in the bag. I start to wonder if I should have bought the bigger Book Pro for travel as it's the same weight as the Latitude 7370 but one attraction of the 13.3 size is that it's almost the same size as a standard A4 document plus the UK version of the bigger Book Pro has a white keyboard which I see as a major disadvantage as it reduces the visibility of the backlit lettering. I've also bought an LG Gram 17 to replace an all-in-one desktop which is hogging too much desk space. However, I'm still in the process of setting it up so it's too soon to compare the LG and Samsung alternatives.
  24. John Ratsey
    Some of the old mod squad are here so be careful what you say about them. 😁 It's sometimes prudent to choose the words you type to avoid being offensive. I joined NBR in April 2005 to make some comments about my new Asus W3A. Most were positive but I was annoyed that the advertised weight was 4.2 lbs and the actual weight was 5.5 lbs (which discussion concluded was due to my W3A having a battery and the advertised weight being for a small battery). Since then many manufacturers have got slightly more careful with their words and prefix the weight with "starting from".
  25. John Ratsey
    I've had another incident on a similar theme. This time it was the Wi-Fi that disappeared and Device Manager showed that the Wi-Fi card had a problem. I can understand it getting a little challenged by a troublesome internet connection and also running concurrently with 4G but it should be designed to handle such situations. I then tried shutdown and restart (no change), visiting the BIOS setup (no change) and finally sleep-wake (which fixed the problem). Clearing these errors seems to be a bit random but the errors shouldn't be happening in the first place. Samsung Update says that the Wi-Fi driver is up to date but it's version 22.60.06 from 27 May 21. The Intel Driver & Support Assistant shows that there is a much newer driver (also newer graphics and Bluetooth drivers but not anything which might be related to the USB controller problem mentioned above). It therefore appears that Samsung hasn't changed its ways from the past when updating its system to show the newer drivers isn't given a high priority.
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