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Samsung Launches 3200x1800 Pixel ATIV Book 9 Plus Laptop

Posted by samzenpus on from the brand-new dept.

sfcrazy writes "As expected Samsung has updated its Ultrabook family giving direct competition to Apple's MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. When Apple launched its MacBook Air with 12 hours of battery life every one was looking at only one company to outdo Apple and that company was Samsung and the leading Android maker did not disappoint. With the launch of ATIV Book 9 Plus featuring:

* 256GB SSD (seems 128GB would be the base model)
* 3200x1800 resolution
* Touch Screen
* Haswell Processor
* 12 Hours battery life
* More 'standard' ports as compared to Apple's proprietary ports."

58 of 397 comments (clear)

  1. Resolution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The high resolution is a major win over the Macbook Air. Typing this on a MBA and the one thing I wish it had was higher screen resolution.

    1. Re:Resolution by sosume · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have never heard of Windows desktop software struggling with monitor resolution. Please elaborate. Everything is fine here at 2550x1600, why would 3200x1800 suddenly cause 'too many programs' to 'not run properly'?

    2. Re:Resolution by Smirker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      When you increase the DPI so you can actually read the content, some poorly designed programs struggle. You can see this for yourself by going into Display settings and increasing DPI from Smaller (100%) to Medium or Larger (125/150%). Windows doesn't "zoom" the content, but more or less forces changes in positioning and sizing of elements and font sizes. This screws with many apps that have positioning defined that is incompatible with this type of resizing. Honestly though, the problems encountered are minimal.

      One basic example: iTunes (Updater) in Windows has a Label element with text such as "...blah blah blah, for more information, click this URL: ". To the right of the "URL" text is a Hyperlink control that is independent of that Label control containing the hyperlink. It is positioned explicitly so it fits the flow of text (at normal DPI). When you change the DPI in Windows, the text in the label changes position relative to the Hyperlink control, and the text overlaps.

      So sure, if you left DPI at the normal setting, everything would work fine, but you probably couldn't read very much comfortably. You would want to increase DPI at such a high relative resolution, but as described, there are some shortfalls.

    3. Re:Resolution by Benaiah · · Score: 2

      2560x1600 is the standard 30" monitor res.
      Cramming 3200x1800 into 13" can make many things appear mighty small. Its not that it wont work. Its that windows (and 3rd party apps) has traditionally been pretty bad at handling anything other than standard 96 PPI. The Samsung screen has an actual PPI of 275. So that x on the top of a window is going to be 1/3 of the size of what windows intended unless its scaled. Same with all your menu bars and whatnot. If you are using a fixed size application such as Calculator it may end up being unusable.

    4. Re:Resolution by Stuarticus · · Score: 3, Informative

      But then the text overflows boxes and looks horrendous. It isn't consistent across all software either.

      --
      If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
    5. Re: Resolution by Stuarticus · · Score: 5, Funny

      When will someone produce finally produce a good Linux blue screen analyser? A question I'm sure we're all asking ourselves.

      --
      If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
    6. Re: Resolution by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

      If you really want hassle-free, you would use windows. OSX needs 3rd party apps for everything. OSX is always trying to sell you apps. Windows has lots of great free apps, like NotePad++, but OSX wants you to pay for BBedit. Plus the OSX MS Office is far inferior. Also, it's way harder to fix a mac, always have to deal with permissions problems. For every good thing I like about OSX, I find some bad thing about it too. It's a wash at best. Plus, when I'm working, I don't want to have to stop to look up how to do XYZ on a Mac, when I already know how to do XYZ on windows.

      You need to mark your post clearly as being sarcastic, or people might not get it and think you are on drugs or something like that.

    7. Re:Resolution by rsmith-mac · · Score: 2, Informative

      That would be with XP style scaling. On WinVista and later that mode can only be used with scaling levels less than or equal to 125%. After 125% you get Vista style scaling, which depending on how well behaved an application is will result in one of two things.

      If the application is flagged as being DPI scaling aware (Office, web browsers, etc) then the application will take care of scaling on its own, and hopefully render a suitably large image natively. If an application isn't flagged as being DPI scaling aware, then Vista reverts to "fractional scaling", where it simply does a bilinear upscale of the application window, resulting in a blurry, god-awful mess where nothing was rendered natively.

      Apple does something similar here, but their innovation was that instead of resorting to fractional scaling on non-aware applications they do integer scaling, which is far cleaner in practice. Furthermore all of Apple's drawing APIs were retina aware, so applications that weren't fully retina aware themselves could still have their text drawn natively, whereas Vista would always have to upscale the resulting Window.

      The worst case scenario then for Mac OS X (a non-aware application not using Apple's drawing APIs) is that at the default 2x setting (backing scale factor 2.0) every element will simply be scaled up by a factor of 4:1; every 1 pixel now occupies 4 pixels. This means that there aren't any benefits gained from using the retina display, but using integer scaling means that this doesn't introduce any fractional interpolation artifacts that hurt the text quality, since every original text pixel maps cleanly to 4 display pixels.

      Right now the expectation is that Microsoft will be introducing something similar in Win8.1. There's only so much they can do without breaking backwards compatibility, but if they follow Apple's "render big then scale down" philosophy rather than Vista's "render small and scale up" philosophy, then results should be much cleaner.

    8. Re:Resolution by dbIII · · Score: 5, Funny

      Typing this on a MBA and the one thing I wish it had was higher screen resolution.

      Me too, but I wish I had a table instead because the MBA won't keep still and keeps complaining he didn't go to college to be treated like this.

    9. Re: Resolution by dbIII · · Score: 3, Informative

      We really need to expose these kids to *nix in school instead of an MS monoculture. The tools you are looking for begin with things such as "ps" and "top" which are older than linux itself, and end with a cast of thousands covering a wide variety of niche uses.

    10. Re:Resolution by amorsen · · Score: 2

      It does not work. It scales the fonts, but in many applications it does not scale the bitmaps. Lots of applications are effectively unusable on a high-DPI display.

      The release version of Firefox is fairly broken for high DPI on Windows, but the Nightly handles it fine.

      Remote desktop is almost unusable at high DPI in Windows; you cannot change scaling per user in Windows Server, so it only works if all your clients are high DPI.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    11. Re: Resolution by fnj · · Score: 2

      Pretty certain you ARE joking, but in case you are not, linux comes with a FAR richer set of tools in that vein and they are all free. And linux tools are designed to hook together in bash to whip out any ad hoc construction you need in quick order

    12. Re:Resolution by JDG1980 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Screens are supposed to report their physical size as well as their resolution, so the system can work out the DPI and scale things accordingly. Unfortunately many things just use bitmap graphics which look crap when scaled, instead of vector artwork which would just look more detailed.

      Unfortunately, the standard Win32 API has no support for vector-based icons. What you're supposed to do is create an .ico file which has about two dozen different bitmap images, all the way from 16x16 with 16 colors up to 256x256 32-bit. (This latter resolution was added in Vista; before that, icons maxed out at 48x48 if I'm not mistaken.) The OS will then scale one of the bitmaps to fit the size needed.

      There are good reasons for having a hand-drawn bitmap for 16x16 (scaling vectors or larger bitmaps down this low usually means subpar results, for the same reason that non-hinted fonts look bad at low point sizes). But most of the intermediate sizes are really only there for legacy reasons. The Windows icon file format is a sloppy and outdated mess.

    13. Re:Resolution by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is strictly application-dependent. If app declares itself as high-DPI-aware (which they have to do explicitly in the app manifest), then it's expected to properly handle DPI by scaling everything appropriately. Some frameworks do it automatically - for example, WPF. Others do not, but people declare their apps as high-DPI-aware anyway because they don't understand what it actually implies.

  2. Left out the best feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    FTFA:

    weighs only 1.39 grams

    1. Re:Left out the best feature by geekmux · · Score: 4, Funny

      FTFA:

      weighs only 1.39 grams

      Wow.

      All the weight must have gone out the Window(s).

      ba dum dum..tiss.

  3. Apple's has proprietary ports? by dugancent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Care to name them?

    --
    SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
    1. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by stephanruby · · Score: 2

      Care to name them?

      They're probably comparing it to an iPad since the MacBooks don't have touchscreens.

    2. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Proprietary" may be the wrong word, but Thunderbolt display output may certainly qualify.

      Is there anybody other than Apple who makes a display which works with Thunderbolt?

    3. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Many, many mini-DP compatible displays out there.

      Thunderbolt is more than just a graphics port--it is an all-purpose port.

    4. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 5, Informative

      Any monitor with a displayport. Mini-displayport plugs directly into thunderbolt. Nothing special required except a cable with the correct plug on each end.

      I'm a little shocked and a lot disappointed that this is still uncommon knowledge.

    5. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Thunderbolt is Intel's not Apple. Fireware is an IEEE standard. Only minidisplay port is an Apple "proprietary" port.

    6. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 3

      Reality shouldn't be uncommon knowledge. Maybe I'm also one of the few people that knows you can plug a monitor with a DVI port into an HDMI port with a simple cable. And that i-link and Firewire are the same thing.

    7. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by the_B0fh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thunderbolt is proprietary the same way USB is proprietary - both are owned by Intel.

    8. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by the_B0fh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Name one one fucked up port? Are you saying the Thunderbolt port that Intel created is a fucked up port? And the fact that Thunderbolt cables require a chip in them (that Intel made necessary) is now Apple's fault?

      Seriously? You've been smoking too strange stuff.

    9. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you want to use IEEE1394, you need to pay... Apple.

      That was true ... in 1998. Yes, we said it was stupid at $1/port and then stupid when they went with a flat fee. Eventually they got that. By time they bought Zayante for the PHY's this had all blown over.

      https://developer.apple.com/softwarelicensing/agreements/firewire.html

      Waiting for the inevitable mod-down by Apple fanboys who dont like the truth.

      You can't just be wrong and them blame fanbois for calling you out on it.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    10. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by rsmith-mac · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was transferred to Intel nearly 2 years ago.

      http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/20/thunderbolt_trademark_rights_will_be_transferred_from_apple_to_intel.html

    11. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by threephaseboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Thunderbolt and the Thunderbolt logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S and other countries

      --
      .
    12. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      USB is non-proprietary. It was developed by Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel. You may be thinking of Intel's southbridge chipsets which have a USB controller built into them, and are ubiquitous on motherboards taking Intel CPUs. Well, AMD has their own southbridge and it does USB just fine.

      Thunderbolt is proprietary - owned solely by Intel. Mini-Displayport was proprietary too (Apple). VESA finally incorporated it into the (full-sized) Displayport standard a few years back.

    13. Re:Apple's has proprietary ports? by fnj · · Score: 4, Informative

      And in case somebody out there doesn't believe this actually happened, INTEL: Usage Guidelines for the Thunderbolt(TM) Trademark.

      To be fair, when Apple DOESN'T fuck up, they don't fuck up.

  4. Proprietary ports? by Roogna · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Which port is that exactly? The USB, the HDMI, the SD slot, or the Thunderbolt ports. All of which are standards.

    1. Re:Proprietary ports? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Thunderbolt is a standard now? Show me a non-Intel Thunderbolt host implementation then.

      Remember kids, calling something a standard doesn't make it a standard. Documenting it doesn't make it a standard. Documentation plus multiple independent implementations capable of interoperating makes it a standard.

    2. Re:Proprietary ports? by noh8rz10 · · Score: 2

      the magnetic power cable port is proprietary.

    3. Re:Proprietary ports? by grub · · Score: 2

      I love that magnetic power port. It has definitely saved my Air from damage when the dog/girl run by and pull it out.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    4. Re:Proprietary ports? by Crudely_Indecent · · Score: 4, Informative

      Mac Air:
      2xUSB 3.0, HP/Mic, SD (Air 13), Thunderbolt

      Ativ:
      2xUSB 3.0, micro HDMI, mini VGA, RJ45(Dongle), SD, HP/Mic

      Ativ beats air by 2 video outputs and wired ethernet. Also by SD when compared to the Air 11.

      So, going by the dictionary definition of the word "more", I'd have to say the the Ativ beats the Air when it comes to standard ports.

      --


      "Lame" - Galaxar
    5. Re:Proprietary ports? by martinX · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While micro HDMI and mini VGA might not be proprietary, if you expect to plug them into anyone else's displays and you aren't carrying an adapter cable, you're going to be disappointed. Samsung should have put in a Thunderbolt port and sold adapters.

      --
      When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
    6. Re:Proprietary ports? by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Informative

      The magnetic connector was used on deep fryers for a very long time before Apple managed to get a patent on it.

    7. Re:Proprietary ports? by rsmith-mac · · Score: 2

      Samsung should have put in a Thunderbolt port and sold adapters.

      At the very least they should have put in mini-DP. What's the point of a 3200x1800 monitor, and not having the ability to drive an external/second monitor even half that resolution? Micro-HDMI is cute, but it's incredibly limited in 2013. One mini-DP1.2 port would get you the ability to drive a 4K monitor, or easily convert it over to HDMI or VGA.

  5. Literally unbelievable by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and weighs only 1.39 grams

    Wow! It must be constructed from helium infused aero gels and space age nano-materials. Almost makes the horrible OS worth enduring. Almost.

    --
    If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    1. Re:Literally unbelievable by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...and weighs only 1.39 grams

      Wow! It must be constructed from helium infused aero gels and space age nano-materials. Almost makes the horrible OS worth enduring. Almost.

      Careful. Wipe the bloated Win8 OS and the damn thing just might float in mid-air. I mean really, it needs some kind of paperweight.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  6. WTF is a muktworld? by Sez+Zero · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At least link to an article with more than 300 words. Review at CNET.

    1. Re:WTF is a muktworld? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      TL;DR

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  7. crap article by Ritchie70 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    TFA is hideous. Poorly written and says nothing really factual except that Samsung has a sexy new laptop out.

    --
    The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
  8. Just for windows? by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does it runs Linux? Does gets bricked if try something different from Windows 8, or even windows 8 itself? With that resolution and battery life even Linus could love it... if can run his own system on it, of course.

    1. Re:Just for windows? by Nerdfest · · Score: 2

      I'd love this as a Linux laptop to replace my Acer ultraBook. I haven't seen any mention of a price though, and that worries me a bit. The Acers play quite nicely with Linux ... I hope Samsung sticks to fairly mainstream supported hardware for wireless, etc.

    2. Re:Just for windows? by rrohbeck · · Score: 2

      I haven't seen any mention of a price though, and that worries me a bit.

      If you have to ask...

      --
      thegodmovie.com - watch it
  9. Price? by hahn · · Score: 4, Informative

    When they announce a price of $1299, we can start comparing this to the Macbook Air, okay?

    --
    "The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
  10. Will it run Linux? by sconeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or even Win7?

    Does it have the stupid-ass "Secure Boot"? Does it need to be disabled?

    DETAILS!!! Even the CNet article linked in the comments doesn't cover this.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  11. Be wary... by djnanite · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bought a Samsung Chronos Notebook a year ago, and it was a horrible experience.

    The touchpad broke twice.
    The headphone socket produced a buzz every time the laptop was plugged into the mains.
    The WiFi kept disconnecting
    Out of date drivers that have never been updated.
    No support for Windows 8.
    Terrible support staff who were either incompetent, lazy, or bored.
    Badly written system software: it takes a full 20 seconds to enable/disable the WiFi, no support for non-administrators, it's intrusive and yet it's also required for full system functionality.

    Even if all the hardware on this new model is up to scratch, nothing else has changed, and this deal will leave you sour. Basically, don't expect any real after-sales support in the way you probably expect it from most other laptop manufacturers. If you think of it as an appliance (like a TV) and never upgrade it, you *may* be fine.

    1. Re:Be wary... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      No support for Windows 8.

      Why'd you include that point with the list of failings? That's a feature.

    2. Re:Be wary... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Funny

      I bought a MacBook air a year ago. The first one exploded to blew my hand off. The next one killed my dog. It wouldn't run DR-DOS at all. The wifi screwed up and sterilized my nuts.

      Overall I was left with a really bad feeling about all Apple products, which obviously must all have similar defects. Anecdotes by unverifiable semi-anonymous internet posters prove that to be true.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Be wary... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 2

      Clearly he's more clever than you, because you didn't notice that it wasn't an anti-Apple post. It was a post about how the plural of anecdote isn't spelled "data".

      You missed the "Anecdotes by unverifiable semi-anonymous Internet posters" part, where he basically says that the above story is false.

      --
      Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  12. Re:Samsung Linux? by Arker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Why on earth would you want to use a Samsung Linux distro?"

    First reason - to be sure you have all the drivers. (Better way to ensure that is simply to donate the drivers and specs to the kernel team for maint but people still think this way.)

    Second reason - a fantasy that Samsung would actually clean up the UI and make a more polished OS. (Doubtful, the last time I saw a company try this it was Asus and their Linux version was exactly the opposite of polished. And I mean it was bloody awful. It was clear that it was made by someone who had no clue about linux, and I expect Samsung would do little better.)

    --
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
  13. Re:borat by noh8rz10 · · Score: 3, Funny

    its just the right risze, not to big, not to small fits in your hands,

    that's what she said!

    the hardware is great, my sister has one

    erm... awkward!

  14. Re:borat by cbhacking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft mandates that all Windows OEMs who implement UEFI Secure Boot for WIndows 8 also allow the user to disable Secure Boot. Even Microsoft's own Surface Pro has this option. This has been widely reported for months now, there are easy-to-find tutorials online discussing how to do it, and...

    People are *still* complaining about that? Really?

    Ubuntu is adding Secure Boot support so that you can leave Secure Boot enabled while running Linux, as a protection against malware attacking or replacing the bootloader (either on the internal storage or removable media). This is a reasonable enough goal. However, it is not and never has been required if you want to dual-boot or want to replace Win8 entirely.

    --
    There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
  15. I will believe it, when I can buy one by bored · · Score: 2

    Samsung announced a laptop last year with a >1080p screen (to lazy to google it). For about 6-8 months I regularly went to their site and searched google/ebay for one.

    Nada. It was just a paper release. Now this, maybe they will release it, but until I can click buy and have it shipped to my door in a couple days its just BS.

    Frankly, I can't really believe that the only manufacture making a laptop with a screen >150PPI is Apple. Every single PC manufacture thinks it ok to put a garbage screen on their crapbooks, and maybe grace the really high end ones with full 1080p, like its some kind of magic resolution. No wonder dell/HP are screwed, 3/4's of the tablets I look at have better resolutions than nearly every laptop sold at retail outside of an apple store.

  16. Re:borat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Microsoft mandates that all Windows OEMs who implement UEFI Secure Boot for WIndows 8 also allow the user to disable Secure Boot.

    Only on x86.

  17. 640x480 is still supported by Ottibus · · Score: 2

    Try using a version of Windows that isn't 15 years old. 640x480 isn't even a supported resolution

    640x480 is still supported but it is hidden in the UI when larger modes are available.