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Sammy, I hardly knew ya…
I ended up with one of the NC10s with the screen blotch problem:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12938442&postcount=432
http://www.sammymobile.com/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?5280.0
I ordered mine from Amazon via Buy.Com on November 28, shipped December 1, and am returning December 16. I am hoping that Buy.Com won’t hassle me for being one day over the 14 day return limit. I am downloading all of my program files and taking out my 2 GB of RAM.
I plan on purchasing another NC10, but it will be a white one. I love the metallic blue, but the fingerprint smudges really look bad after a while.
I will let you know how it goes with Buy.Com. I also wrote a complaint letter to Samsung, including the links above. Again, I will let you know what I hear back.
Pugrider
Nooooooooooooooooo – why do the good always die young!
Sorry to hear that chap. Best of luck with the return and fingers crossed for the replacement. Let us know how it goes 🙂
FYI, here is my email to Samsung, and what I heard back from them an hour later:
My email to Samsung:
“I wanted to let you know that I am in the process of returning my blue Samsung NC10 to Buy.Com. The netbook screen has two noticeable blotches in the left lower portion of the screen. This defect has been found by a number of NC10 owners in the United States and England:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12938442&postcount=432
http://www.sammymobile.com/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?5280.0
I am hopeful that this is a manufacturing, and not a design defect, as I like the NC10 very much. Once I am assured that this is not a problem with all NC10 netbooks I plan on purchasing another one. However, next time I will order a white one, as the metallic blue is beautiful to look at but collects too many fingerprints.
Please feel free to email or call me about this issue. The NC10 is the best netbook in a crowded market, and I would hate to see it receive unfavorable press because of this defect.”
Samsung’s response:
“Thank you for contacting Samsung Electronics. We appreciate your interest in our newly released line of Notebook PC’s.
I apologize for the issue that you have experienced with the NC10. We have been made full aware of the issue and we have a resolution with the blotches on the screen. For any customer that has this issue they can have it repaired by Samsung at no cost. I’m not aware as to if the resolution will be implemented in future releases, but I would assume that it will be. It may already have been corrected and the next one you receive may not have this issue. If it does, I would recommend you contact us so that we may get it repaired for you. Thank you and have a nice day.
If you should have any other question or concerns you can either reply to this e-mail, or call us at 1-800-SAMSUNG (726-7864).”
The good news is that Samsung admits there is a problem and will fix it for free, the bad news (and the broken English makes this hard to interpret) is that there is no way of knowing if the next NC10 will have the same problem or not.
Should we do a poll to how common the problem is? if you run the free screen diagnostic software you will clearly see the blotches in the green screen. Mine were visible in Word as well – it looked like two thumb prints near the bottom left quarter of the screen. I had two IT guys take a look at it, and both agreed that it should go back.
Sigh, I miss my Sammy…
Pugrider
Pugrider, just had a GOOD experience with Buy.com myself through Amazon. All they did was fail to notify me of shipping me a set of cordless phones i had ordered. I find them outside soaking wet in a box that had fallen apart from the sprinklers! I gave an honest review at Amazon and only gave Buy.com 2 stars for NOT answering my 2 emails. I explained that they arrived just 2 days after my order was placed but with no ship confirm and the UPS driver just laying them outside my house so the sprinklers soaked them seemed shabby to me. I also stated it was NOT buy.com fault for the idiot delivery person but they need to advise when they ship!
Next thing I know, a rep emails me from buy.com and offered me to keep the cordless phones and refund ALL my money as an apology!!! Well after I regained consciousness…..I accepted and just this morning removed my 2 star review of buy.com.
Hope you do as well!
___________________________________________________________OOOPS! Forget everything I said. It was http://www.buynow.com/
MikeSorry to hear about that, Pugrider. I’m not getting mine until Christmas Day, it’s been delivered on Tuesday though and I have a fifteen day money back guarantee, so if it does have a problem with the screen, I think I’ll just return it and then wait and see what happens with Samsung and how they go about resolving the issue…
It’s good to see that Samsung have admitted there’s an issue though.
FYI, here is the review I posted on a few other forums regarding my choice of the NC10 over the HP Mini 1000:
Happy holidays to everyone! I promised I would write back with a review of the Samsung NC10 and my impressions relative to the HP Mini 1000. Here it is:
I received my blue Sammy about three weeks ago. I did the traditional swapping of the RAM to 2 GB, loaded Firefox, MS Office and VPN on it and away I went. In terms of netbooks in general, can honestly report that the Atom processor did everything I asked it to do and more. I was impressed with the quick loading times for programs and had no stuttering with web pages loading or scrolling. I did not install Ramdisk software, but probably would have if I kept the netbook (note the ominous foreshadowing). Both the bluetooth and WAN wireless connections also worked well. My greatest triumph was using the Mobishark program to create a Bluetooth connection with my Blackberry 8700G so that I could use it as a modem. The speed wasn’t great, but my BB is provided through work with unlimited data, so it is a free way to stay connected when a free wireless signal was not available.
For NC10 specific features that differ from the HP Mini, I really liked the matte screen, and it was plenty bright enough with even low brightness settings. I loved the keyboard – it is 93% the size of a standard keyboard, and has an excellent layout and key size. I preferred the NC10’s keyboard to the HP Mini 1000 because it has tapered keys like a standard keyboard. This makes the top of the keys a little smaller, but feels better to me than the flat tops of the HP Mini 1000 keys. I definitely appreciated the 160GB 5400 RPM SATA hard drive – I was able to create both a C drive for programs and a D drive for files.
So, I was very happy with the NC10, and had it set up so that I could use wireless router at home and work as well as my BB as a tethered modem while on the go. The tech guy was so happy to play with the NC10 (VPN connections were not an issue) that he set up a separate VGA cable to my second monitor so that I could use my larger screen at work. It was then that I noticed what appeared to be two large thumbprints on the lower left portion of my screen. I cleaned the screen, but they were still there. It was then that I read that several NC10 owners were reporting blotches on their screens:
http://www.sammymobile.com/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?5280
Long story short, a significant percentage (20%?) of the early NC10s had these same blotches on the same portion of their screen. I had bought from Amazon, which had run out, and fulfilled the order through Buy.Com. I checked the Buy.Com return policy, and it is 14 days FROM WHEN THEY SHIP YOUR ORDER. I had used the free ground shipping, which meant it was now the 15th day! I quickly went online and received an RMA# and a prepaid UPS shipping label. Also, you have to have EVERYTHING that came with it, including the original intact box and packaging. I did, so I was able to box it up exactly as it was delivered to me. I then wiped the HD clean and back it went. I also emailed Buy.Com directly to let them know that I was returning a defective netbook and wanted a full refund. They just received it yesterday, but from emails I have received it looks like a will receive a refund rather than a replacement or offer to have Samsung fix it. I will post again if that is not the case.
In the meantime, I also emailed Samsung about the screen blotch problem. To their credit, they responded right away, and acknowledged that there was a problem with the screens. They are offering to fix any NC10s with this problem free of charge. However, they also noted that there was no way of knowing if the next NC10 would have the same problem or not, and if it did I would need to send it to Texas for repairs. Ugh!
To be clear, the screen blotches are not that noticeable, and are most apparent on a white screen. Some NC10 owners are just keeping theirs, and others are having them repaired. Given that Samsung is known for their high quality LCD screens, I thought this was an odd flaw for their new netbook to have. However, given that not all NC10s have it the problem was likely in the assembly process in China rather than a design flaw. Nevertheless, a higher level of quality control would have likely spotted this problem. I showed it to two of our tech staff while making my decision as to whether to return it or not, and both thought it was bad enough to send it back, as the blotches might darken over time.
The only other major gripe I had with the NC10 was the glossy cover. I really liked the metallic blue, but like black it showed every fingerprint and smudge. I am not that much of a neat freak (you could feed a small African village with the crumbs in my work keyboard tray), but the case looked really bad by the end of the day. I know that the HP Mini 1000 has a glossy cover with the design, and it tends to show fingerprints too. The NC10 comes in a pearl white with a matte finish, and I would definitely go with that over another glossy finish. Also, the white version comes with a white keyboard, which is easier to see in low light.
Unlike the HP Mini 1000, which now seems to be on sale everywhere in the US, the Samsung NC10 won’t be in stores until sometime in January of 2009. That does not appear to have slowed sales, as online stores were routinely running out of stock prior to and during black Friday, and the NC10 held two of the Amazon Net Monday top 10 sales slots for electronics.
Overall, I am very irritated that I had my NC10 set up pretty much the way I wanted it only to have to return it. On the other hand, I was very happy with my Sammy, and would still chose it over the HP Mini 1000 if I had to buy a replacement today. However, the HP Mini 2133 update is scheduled to come out in January of 2009, Samsung is releasing the NC20, a 12″ netbook that will have the Via Nano in the Trinity chipset, and Sony and Apple are rumored to be releasing their versions of a Netbook in 2009. So, I am probably going to wait to see what the new year brings. But I do miss my Sammy…
Pugrider
i have checked out three different ones so far and not seen this problem yet…
are the affected ones from a specific batch or factory line or something?I am one of those waiting to see how one that gets fixed comes out before sending mine in.. And my blotches ARE GETTING DARKER! It seems I may even be getting a faint 3rd blotch beginning? I have YET to see one report of a fixed NC10…..
I hope you are just paranoiac dude. If they are really getting darker than i’m pretty much f*cked… Well, we’ll see…
Not just darker but one is elongated now as well. It also not just seems to blur type in this website but now shows through most other colors as well. Even interferes with Yahoo sites etc.
Ok, if mine will go the same way than im pretty much f*cked… Mine was bought in the US and I live in europe.
[quote1230303206=Szabs]
Ok, if mine will go the same way than im pretty much f*cked… Mine was bought in the US and I live in europe.
[/quote1230303206]Samsung should still fix it for free, you can always email them and see where to ship it to in Europe.
Pugrider
Hi,
I received my NC10 a little more than a week ago. Straight out of the box I noticed these kind of weird lines running through my desktop wallpaper and Firefox’ navigation bar. Then I kind of forgot about them as I have yet not had time to properly set up and start using my netbook, but they are still there.
You can see them in the pictures I’ve added. It is kind of like the left 1/3 of the screen is brighter and that is why you can notice a line. It runs through the entire screen, it is just more difficult to notice it on a lighter background.
Guess I am going to have to contact Samsung about this and hope the warranty covers it.
Images:
http://hotimg25.fotki.com/p/a/67_180/203_167/DSC06946131.jpg
http://hotimg23.fotki.com/p/a/67_180/203_167/DSC06947.jpgAnybody else had or heard of this problem?
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