Samsung has integrated a numberpad into the R580's keyboard, the better, perhaps, to make the machine appear less wide, something that large areas of blank plastic either side of the keyboard tend to exaggerate. There's surely no practical value in having a numeric keypad on an entertainment- oriented notebook, unless there's some advantage to having one when playing World of Warcraft or you're definition of 'fun' is 'hours spent engaged in double-entry bookkeeping'.
Shiny, shiny
The lozenge/chiclet keys themselves have a nice tactile matte look and are solidly underpinned, so typing is a joy even if you're not engaged in some late night accountancy. There's another of these lights above the power key - where it makes sense, sort of - and the status LEDs on the front-edge are likewise bright blue.
Inside the R580 there's a 500GB hard drive, though Samsung also offers an R580 with a 320GB and only 3GB of memory. Not that that's a problem since the R580 comes with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, so can't address more than 3GB of Ram in any case.
You're looking at paying around £550 for the 320GB model and £600 for the one with the 500GB hard drive. There's a Core i5 model coming, that will set you back £700. You certainly get plenty of laptop for your money, physically - it's a chunky boy - and from a features standpoint - 802.11n, Bluetooth, eSata, Gigabit Ethernet, ExpressCard 34 slot, a 1.3Mp webcam and a pair of 1.5W, SRS 3D Wow-fed speakers complete the set.
Verdict
The R580 is an attractive machine: visually and on the basis of its specs and the performance they deliver. Occasional gamers will like it, as will film fans. Only the 13in-screen resolution on a 15in display disappoints. ®
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Samsung R580 15.6in notebook
COMMENTS
nice review, if obsolete already
I bought one of these on Monday. It's the JS04UK spec machine, which has 4 gig of Ram and a 320 Gig disk with Windows 7 64 bit. The top of the range JS05UK runs an i5 with 4 gig ram and 500 gig of disk, also W7 64. This review seems to be of the deprecated JS03UK model spec which samsung no longer ship. The 04 and 05 are the only listed current models for the uk via the importer. The 03 and 02 are still available though.
My observations based on a couple of evenings so far...
The machine seems robust, with a tough solid feel, quite unlike the plastic fantastic budget cases I see provided by work.
Windows Experience chucks out a 5, with the weakest value being the graphics, the rest are 5.5 and up, with the CPU over 6.
Setup took forever, because it insisted on backing up the system, which is a good idea, just not fast.
It also gave the option to partition during install, though with no real info on what to do. Good job I knew what it was fishing for, and I got the scheme I wanted.
Keyboard feels solid and responsive, but I keep hitting the wrong keys because the num pad forces me further to the left on the keyboard than I'm used to. I'll get used to it, I'm sure.
There's a lot of demos, but that's not unusual, and they were soon vanished.
Initially the screen seemed awful, however the setup screens are all low res, and when it finally booted up properly, the screen is sharp and clear.
I bought this as a development box that I can use on trains planes and automobiles, so the target usage is IDEs such as Eclipse, and it runs that smoothly doing builds with no hassle.
Second monitor seems seamless, and took a bit of setting up with resolutions, but nothing untoward.
My biggest complaint is that it's running windows 7, and this is my first encounter with it. I'm not impressed so far, and linux will be trialled shortly.
Good system, crappy keyboard on Canadian model.
I picked up an R780 in Canada about a month ago after my wife's Dell Inspiron 1420 suffered a sudden GPU failure and we needed an immediate replacement. With a GT330M GPU and an i5-430 CPU, it was reasonably specced for both everyday computing tasks and even some light gaming. On the plus side, it's a lot quieter than the Dell that it replaced, and the performance is notably better.
There are a number of downsides to it, however. Samsung really should have done something better with the large swath of plastic between the keyboard and the screen. The odd-looking speakers and the power button still leave a large chunk of real estate empty.
Furthermore, the keyboard of the Canadian model is not the same as the one pictured in this review. The Enter key is double-height but narrower, and the pipe/backslash key has been located to the right of the apostrophe key! If that wasn't annoying enough, they also made a duplicate of the *same* key on the left-hand side of the keyboard between the Z and the now half-width shift key. A poor design choice.
Things I'd like to know...
Can we get pictures of all around the machine? (Even the bottom) Now I know I'm asking a lot here, but can you guys flash up Ubuntu on laptops when you review them? I have no need of a Windows laptop, but Unix/Linux is actually useful (I know - weird).
I quite like laptops with "striking" designs - helps to identify the machine (especially on site where most people have black or grey).
