Hello.
A week ago I purchased Efika MX smartbook and I found that it is really useful and nice device for me. I'm very pleased with it overall.

However there is a small problem with my display. For some reason, on default backlight settings, the display makes a noise which is really annoying to me. I'm not sure most people can easily hear it, but I do and it's considerably more noticeable than on other laptops I own.

The problem was solved after I put brightness on maximum level. When it's on maximum, the noise disappears (or it almost disappears, but the point is it doesn't matter anymore). It also disappears if I put brightness on very low level.

I had to turn off "Reduce backlight brightness" and "Dim display when idle" boxes in "Power Management", because otherwise it reduces brightness to precisely the level where it makes most noise.

The high brightness is absolutely ok for me, in fact my eyes like it more than half-dimmed display...
But there is the following problem - when the laptop goes to sleep, it turns off the screen, but the backlight is left turned on and on maximum level. So it's kind of inefficient in terms of battery and it just looks weird, since it's a black screen with backlight turned on.

I wonder if there is any way to adjust it that when it goes to sleep, it turns off backlight as well. There seem not to be an easy way to configure this in power management, but maybe it's possible to do it manually? I'm not very savvy about Linux configuration files, so I would like to ask people here, if they know how it can be done, if it can be done at all.

Thank you.

We're looking into the backlight bug. It's definitely a bug; but I am not sure where it came from (nothing changed in backlight handling for a fairly reasonable amount of time). It may be down to an Ubuntu software update (gnome-power-manager or the X server).

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Matt Sealey

Neko Thanks!
Good to know that.

New Smartbook owner here, with the same problem. Any news on this front? Is this a hardware or a software issue?

It looks to me like some kind of HW defect in the inverter or backlight.

Hi.

The noise you hear has to do with a particular set of components that generate some high frequency oscillations. It is located in the high voltage generation circuitry for the backlight. In some cases it may give more noise than others, and it can be due to the tolerances on the components.
Often it also depends from person to person whether the sound is audible or not. Some sound is even normal, some PC's (and Mac's) have this from day one, others get this later on in their life.

In the end, if it is really disturbing and seriously annoying, we can replace it - just contact your local re-seller or sales directly.


Johan.

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Johan Dams, Genesi USA Inc.
Director, Software Engineering

Yep, I have a blog... PurpleAlienPlanet

Back in 2003, I had a Powerbook G4 that emitted a similar high pitched noise that was barely audible but got annoying once you noticed it. Apple refused to replace the machine, with the "geniuses" claiming they couldn't hear anything and that it was working "fine". This was weird, as my friends were all able to hear the high pitched sound.

Needless to say, I don't buy Macs anymore :) Kudos to Genesi for being willing to replace such machines.