ENVY dv7t-7200qe or Pavilion dv7t-7000qe?

I ordered a custom ENVY dv7t-7200qe last week and should be here some time after the 11th. I've been out of the laptop market for about three years because of financial issues, and my Windows 7 64 Touchsmart 300 has been a solid machine. When I went on to HP's site, the entire lineup seems to have changed. I had heard of the ENVY before, and figured I'd get one some day. I remember them being separate from the dv line of Pavilions, but now they seem to have been renamed. There is still a Pavilion line, but now there is a line called SPECTRE. The naming is a bit confusing. Is there any real difference in quality between the ENVY dv7t-7200qe that I ordered and the Pavilion dv7t-7000qe that I saw a few days later? I remember ENVY was the "premium" line. Has the ENVY line been watered down? And did I in fact, order the same damn thing as a standard Pavilion? The only real difference I've seen is that the ENVY has more options in dedicated video RAM, while the Pavilion has shared video memory and a slower base processor, though the Pavilion has faster over all options. I don't regret the purchase, I'm just confused as to what the hell is going on with HP.

 

There is really no difference between the ENVY dv7t-7200qe and Pavilion dv7t-7000qe in terms of hardware aside from the slower base processor (i7-3630QM vs i7-3610QM, respectively). All Pavilion dv notebooks with Windows 7 have been refreshed and re-branded as ENVY dv notebooks with Windows 8.

HP is consolidating their notebook lineups - most of the Pavilions are now under the ENVY brand, while the ENVY ultrabooks are now under the Spectre brand.

 

The only caveat with the dv7t-7200 is that if you really wanted Windows 7 instead of Windows 8 it's pretty hard to "downgrade" to Windows 7 if you find the Win 8 interface and changes to be undesirable. If you are looking forward to Windows 8 and don't care, then you'll be fine with the dv7t-7200qe. Good luck, you chose a nice machine with a good price to feature ratio.

 

Thank you very much for the information. Looked high and low, but couldn't seem to find info on what was going on.

 

Well, hell. Shipment delayed until Dec. 18th, 2012. I've read many horror stories about HP delays leading to further delays. Guess I should expect my computer to come in on Jan. 31st, 2013.

 

It usually takes me 10 days (including weekends) to receive an HP laptop when ordered customized. I'm sure with the time of year and number of orders they have received since Black Friday that could be a different story. Hope it at least gets to you before Christmas.

 

Fortunately, the delay seems to have been resolved quickly and it's now in transit. Should be here by Tuesday morning.

On the topic of price, quality and performance. I was looking through Dell's Inspiron and Alienware systems and ran through a customization of a system comparable to mine or as close as possible. The Inspiron's higher price for the same configuration was bad enough, but the Alienware. Holy crap! That was the "low end" Alienware for WELL over $2k almost $3k!! Maybe one day if I ever win the Power-ball or something, but sheesh! Lots of 9s in that price. I'll stick with my HP. Seeing as my brother-in-law has an over two years old HP dv7-????wm AMD Phemon II X3 with a 1GB Nvidia card and only 6GB or RAM and still runs the latest game releases like a boss, I'm confidant mine will play Caesar 3 with no problems. (laughs)

If my Touchsmart 300-1120 can play heavily modded versions of Oblivion and Skyrim with an OKAY frame rate, can't wait to get Xbox 360 like frame rates back, and connect the laptop to my 37" HDTV (birthday gift from grandma) from the new system.

 

I just gave my old 2007 HP to my brother and bought a DV7-7200qe ordered Nov 27 rec Dec. 5th

 

We'll I was hoping they would create a Spectre 17 inch Notebook (a slim one) no optical drive or at least an option not to have an optical drive. And have a retina or (retina-like display) with a good choice of SSD choices and a combination of Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 ports. What are the chances that we may get some of these spec's in 2013?

 

Major fail in the par of HP. I've already had to send the stupid thing in for service. First it's wireless card would continuously lose signal after a couple of minutes. I spent HOURS with Tech support, and we finally had to resort to pulling the wireless card out, and putting it back in (Bow chicka bow wow). That seemed to largely resolve the issue, but it would lose signal if I got too far from the router. Even my old 2005 DV5000 receives FULL signal strength at greater ranges!! Come on!!

Then I noticed games were not running as smoothly as they should with a 1GB Nvidia card with the dedicated RAM, and 8GB system RAM. I fiddled around with the graphics, and discovered in DXDIAG that the default card was the integrated Intel HD Graphics card, even though the Nvidia control panel was operational. I called tech back, and after another hour, and discovering there was no option in BIOS for ANY graphics card, they said they would send me a box so they could take it apart and figure out what the heck is wrong. Though they DID call me every day until the box came to see if there were any more problems showing up so they could fix them. Though I've got to give Intel props. Their graphics cards have come A LONG way since my last system to have one. I got rid of that one quick because there was just not enough power for 3D graphic design and gaming.

Not only that,but I had purchased a 2 year subscription for Internet Security, but it came with no security key, so after MORE time with both Symantec (who had no record of the purchase) and HP, I was FedEx-ed a new security key, and that was AFTER I had already sent my system in. Not since my first DV9000 have I had such huge headaches, and we all know about the first line of dv9000's overheating issues...

The only positive thing I have to say about the system is that Windows 8 64bit is AMAZINGLY fast. I've never had a system start up and ready to rock so quickly, and have never had one shut down so quickly either. The shutting down is a plus because I tend to work WELL into the night and morning hours until I can't keep my eyes open, and I no longer had to wait until my system shut down. It just did and I got to sleep that much sooner. Windows 8 took a bit of getting used to, but once I did, it was actually more convenient than Windows 7. Searches were anyway. I had the system less than week and now she's gone. Story of my life. lol

 

Well, I got my machine back from and it's performing flawlessly. Now to self upgrade to 16GB RAM and a second HDD.