Samsung ATIV Book 6 – Windows 8.1 Drivers

I finally got a new laptop with US-only keyboard. It is a big deal for many people living in Canada because 95% of the laptops sold in the retailer shops have bilingual keyboards.

I bought a nice Samsung ATIV Book 6 from http://www.adorama.com/ via Amazon. Adorama ship to Canada (thank god!).

The computer comes pre-installed with Windows 8. Since Windows 8.1 is available I decided to give it a try. I wanted to do a fresh install vs. upgrade. Since the laptop does not have an optical drive you need to burn the Windows 8.1 ISO file to USB drive and boot the installation from there. I also used the opportunity to upgrade the standard hard drive to SSD following this video (although it is for a different model).

Everything went smooth and I got a freshly installed Windows 8.1. The next step was to make sure I have all the latest drivers. I went to the Samsung’s web site, provided my laptop’s model just to find that there were no drivers available for download:

samsung

It took me some time to figure it out. If you click the “Use Our Interactive Tool To Fix Common Problems.” and try to “fix” a specific problem eventually you will see a link that allows you to download “SW Update”:

samsung2

Here is a link to SW Update as of the moment.

Install it, type in your laptop’s model, choose the version of the Windows and it will show you the list of available drivers. You can choose to download them or you can install them – individually or all at once:

samsung3

I am hoping this might help someone and save them time.

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EDIT: Just found this: Update to the new Windows. If you click “Firmware and Drivers” it will download the SW Update. It is newer version (2.1.21.0) vs. the link above (2.1.6.45)

Google Chrome looks blurry in Windows 8.1

Recently I bought a new laptop with screen resolution of 1920 x 1080. It has Windows 8.1 on it. At some point I noticed that Google Chrome looked a bit blurry – both the browser UI and the web page displayed. I thought the problem was with the display driver but even after installing the latest version the problem was not fixed.

It turns out the browser was doing “display scaling” because o the high display resolution. It is a setting that you can change. Right-click the Google Chrome icon and select Options:

Google Chrome Properties 1

Google Chrome Properties 2

By default the “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” is not checked. If you check it the blurriness will go away.

Here is a screen-shot of a blurry screen:

before

This is a screen-shot with the check-box checked:

after

Both images have the same resolution 1016 x 368 pixels. Because the first screen-shot uses scaling things look bigger and blurrier. Less information is displayed. The second picture shows much more content but it looks smaller and sharper. If the font is hard to read you can always use the browser zoom in functionality (Ctrl +) to make the text bigger.

How To Install Windows 8 or 8.1 From a USB Device

If you have a laptop or ultra-book with no DVD drive and wondering how to install Windows on it read this article which helped me:

How To Install Windows 8 or 8.1 From a USB Device

Free SSL certificate from StartSSL

If you own a web site and would like to provide better security to your visitors in terms of encrypted communication between your server and their browser you need to install a SSL Certificate. You can get a certificate from different companies and the price can vary.

The StartSSL

Photo Stitching

How many times have you wished you could share the beautiful scenery of a waterfall or a picturesque mountain range in the fall with your friends? Yes, you can take a picture and share it on Facebook but even with the best digital camera you can capture just a fraction of what you see. The camera does not have the angle of view a human eyes have.

One solution is to take a panoramic picture. Many cameras have this function built-in. Alternatively you can take several pictures manually and stitch it later using a software on you computer. I have used several different programs in the past but recently came across one from Microsoft which is really easy to use and it is free.

The program is called Image Composite Editor. You can download the version for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 or the one for Windows 8.

You can also share your panorama pictures with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading it to the Photosynth