Euphoria 💕So disappointed with my new Samsung Notebook 7 spin & Windows 10 and with Samsung's ineffectual Customer Support. The phone line listed on the box gave me an automated system that wouldn't accept the entries, their online chat feature said it's not available due to the high volume of customer calls (THAT should tell us something!) & the reps I interacted with neither seemed to regard all I said nor had the proper information to determine the issues.
The last person I spoke to when I was finally transferred from Samsung's Cellphone Support, who I called out of desperation, said he didn't blame me when I told him I was going to post all over Social Media regarding the issue with a brand new, seemingly defective laptop & the horrible resources for diagnosing & repairing the problem. He actually said "I'd do the same thing". Maybe Samsung doesn't record phone conversations or he just doesn't care about losing a job like that.
Marcin Cieślak@EuphoriaLavender we need to find ways for those things to come out before we buy those things.
You've got that right! That's exactly why I'm sharing my experiences now, so it might save some others aggravation.
Ironically this laptop was about my 3rd choice. There were issues with purchasing the other ones I tried to buy. The first suddenly became unavailable & the others wouldn't go through because I didn't have a phone number that I could be reached at in the same country my card account is in. I'm sure these companies lose lots of money due to this asinine policy.
@EuphoriaLavender That latter explains why relatively crappy hardware from large providers tends to dominate the market.
They have more mature, larger and more localized sales channels. There is probably a #Samsung sales rep somewhere in your country accepting local payments; unlike, say, the new #VAIO (no longer #Sony) computers that used to be available in Japan only and are barely available anywhere else currently.
Kind of Copernicus' law of sales.
I didn't know that Copernicus /had/ a law of sales. :)
I wish I could say whether or not the Samsung hardware is crappy. It seems like the Bluetooth went bad, which is a big problem for my health, as having the Bluetooth keyboard seemed so much better for me, but it could be a software issue. Microsoft referred me to the hardware manufacturer & everyone refused to believe that the setting to turn Bluetooth on & off disappeared. Paired devices showed up but no actual Bluetooth
@EuphoriaLavender I was paraphrasing https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Copernicus_Law&redirect=no about bad money.
Interesting: Bluetooth stack was almost always something you wanted to be provided by somebody else (my old laptops had WIDCOMM stack installed for example). Microsoft stack coming with Windows is sometimes working but is missing some features sometimes (although simple devices like keyboards should work).
My theory is it makes huge difference on usability of Windows depending on the OEM (#Samsung, etc.) - I've had relatively less problems with #Sony OEM'ed Windows compared to others.
In C:\WINDOWS\INF you will find probably a bunch of "oem1.inf", "oem2.inf", "oem3.inf" files (unless Windows 10 changed it all completely). Those are additional drivers that came from #Samsung, not from #Microsoft. It might be good to try to reinstall some of them. There might by paths to the drivers embedded in those files (they are human readable).
You can right click on the .INF file to "install' it.
See that? This is much more and better information than any of the Samsung reps seemed to have! They all asked me about the driver & seemed to think I was lying when I said I couldn't figure out how to reinstall it & that it didn't show up in the GUI for their updates.
I'm not sure I understand what you've suggested but I'll have a look in a day or two. I just moved & am having some issues with getting settled, which is why I'm here now instead of unpacking.
Thank you!
@EuphoriaLavender Glad to help!
Anxious to learn some more about the new location of yours!
Thanks! You're so generous in sharing your knowledge.
My new place is on a hillside & mostly open. The kitchen, living room & patio are all under a roof but otherwise outside. For the part of the house that "closes" bars were put on the windows OVER torn screens, which cannot be removed & replaced without taking the bars off first, so there's no way to keep out mosquitoes & other little critters. It's very peaceful, though. I can still hear the sea & it's a bit cooler here.
@EuphoriaLavender so you cannot open windows in the closed (probably bedroom) part?
Actually, the windows remain open all the time. There are shutters but they have holes in them and there are also holes in the screens that are on frames behind the bars, so... I can close the shutters for more privacy and a bit of air gets through, but not much.
Some people are here now (unexpectedly) to install a new gate in the entrance, which may make the place at least a little more secure.
@EuphoriaLavender I think I misunderstood that part about the bars and screens then.
Understandably. The world I live in is rather different from what most people are used to. It's wonderful living somewhere with such mild weather.
I probably should've taken some photographs of the filthy disaster area I arrived in. It's still a mess, so I can take some "During" photos & then I'll take some more after I've gotten well-settled.
@EuphoriaLavender photos would be great, yes :)
Whenever I read descriptions on your dwelling I always came back to my old dreams to live on a sailing boat.
I suspect your dream of living on a sail boat will come true one day, @saper. Living in the Caribbean was a fantasy for me for many years, one I thought would never be a reality, but here I am more than nine years later. living in this beautiful tropical place.
I'll try to take some photos tomorrow. I've got a busy day ahead as I'm actually going to stay indefinitely at my friends' house with their dog while they rebuild their house in Texas.
That's good to know. I don't think I've owned any Sony products since I had a Walkman. :) I have noticed a huge difference in the OEMs too. I thought my friend's lenovo computer I've been using for a while was a pain, but it's a joy next to the Samsung. The technical owner can't deal with it, which is why he leaves it with me so I can help him about once a month when he really needs to take care of some things. It's also got Windows 8.1, which I rather like.
My personal theory is that using Windows got almost as bad as using Linux, i.e. you need to know all the internal tricks in the registry and the .INF files etc. etc. etc. to tame the system at a reasonable level.
For example DEVCON.EXE is a great command line tool to manage drivers and devices on Windows.
And the managment console ("Device Manager" also known as "devmgmt.msc") is next to useless unless you set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES to 1 in your environment!
@saper
I used to be a Windows expert in the olden days, though I chose to use Macs personally. Not anymore though, to either of those things. I suppose I might take a Windows class or buy a book or something, though I still hope to start booting from Linux if I can figure out which freakin' key to press during start-up or, better yet, how to change the BIOS setting to change the boot drive order.
Thank you for the DEVCON tips! I'll try these once I unpack the Samsung. Maybe it'll help!
@EuphoriaLavender No Windows class will help. As a self taught Windows survivor I cannot imaging getting those skills on any course.
Two sites to immediately recommend: sysinternals.com (Microsoft hired Mark Russinovich and made him a big boss because his tools were so cool) and ss64.com as a ultra-cool command reference to everything. Haven't read Mark's "Windows Internals" books but those are recommended by some.
Learning PowerShell is useful.
@EuphoriaLavender
Using Process Explorer, Process Monitor and the likes from Sysinternals helped me to solve 99% Windows problems. They basically tell you WHAT YOUR COMPUTER IS DOING RIGHT NOW.
The rest 1% hardcore stuff I am solving using performance toolkits, kernel debugger (you should have debug symbols installed from Microsoft:) and learning how to use NTSD.EXE / CDB.EXE powerful commandline debuggers.
(Visual Studio is useless for that kind of problem solving)
@EuphoriaLavender I share your pain.
I had to buy some new laptop recently because my old ones were causing strange looks of my prospect customers :) but decided to buy few year old machine identical to the once I have already - all under $200.
Claiming loudly "Will not buy a computer for more than $200" feels like my friend - a hobbyist car mechanic - that has three cars, none of them cost more than say $1200 :)
But that works mostly if you are not afraid to open it with your tools.
I'm not afraid to open a computer--Opening computers was a large part of my work at one time. I did upgrades & retrofits & got my own computers to do things that "old" computers shouldn't have been capable of doing.
That was a good idea to buy an older computer. Maybe I'll look for one that's already been upgraded. I wanted a lot of memory & lots of hard disk space which limited my options, especially to keep the cost down. I plan to sell the Samsung.
@EuphoriaLavender on most laptops it is trivial to add more RAM (make sure it still has space). I have boosted some old man laptop back to usability by giving him 4GB RAM.
Have some SSD lying around but still not sure if I prefer the speed and less capacity of it vs the HDD drive that came with my used laptop.
I guess it's worth it to have something reliable, affordable and less intrusive. Ironically the friend who brought me the computer from the USA is heading back there on Tuesday so I will ask her to send it in for service there and maybe even to sell it there, too.