Fell in love with Envy 13, disappointed by specs!!

After lugging around a 15 inch notebook, I am so ready to jump onto a 13 inch option right away, because of its portability and weight (I am a commuting student). Although dv3 makes a sensible replacement option, I had been considering making jump to macbook pro and installing windows 7 on it, all because of its design and its light weight. So when I saw Envy 13 on engadget today, I immediately fell in love with it. But after reading more about its specs and comparing it to dv3t and its own sibling Envy-15, I am totally disappointed. It has weakest processor and graphics options, and least HDD space offering amongst the three, no back-lit keyboard, no vga out and no ethernet port (an usb adapter needed), no mic input jack (at least by looking at the picture) and ODD is external. The macbook mousepad is definitely cool on a HP notebook, but still other specs kind of disappoint me, especially since Envy 15 is getting lot of strong options like night-vision webcam and i7 processor. I understand Envy 13 is designed to be portable not powerhouse, but I was hoping my next notebook would be more portable, yet comparatively more powerful than my current dv6700t.
What do you say?

 

Reminds me of the Macbook Air, nice size and design but its functionality is significantly reduced. Have you checked other configs they offer for that model?

Try a different brand perhaps?

 

Will have to wait till October 18 to see what kind of config options are available, but as you said, nice size and design but the sucker has no functionality. Even things like ethernet adapater need to be carried in bag separately with this. With sad heart, going back to considering dv3t and macbook pro with win7....

 

In all fairness to manufacturers, nobody buys 13" laptops.

 

Well the m1330 and XPS13 is very popular and powerful too. Just not as slim and better looking

 

I used to have a 12.1"... And it both supported an optical drive (i had a 2nd battery in there tho), and had built-in ethernet. But i agree, since i got my DV9700, 15" looks small, let alone 13". I absolutely love the full-sized keyboard.

 

The mic-in is combined with the headphone jack -- but is that really that big of a deal? The graphics card is actually extremely good for a 13" ultraportable, so I don't think that's a concern, either. And as for the processor, of course it's going to be slower because it's a thin-and-light.

It sounds like thin-and-light just isn't your thing. The specs on this are better than most other laptops in its category.

 

LOL, so true. For ultraportable, 12 inch and lower is better, for functionality, get at least a 15 inch. Though the dm3 does look like it might be nice... we'll see. I expect that in the next month we will see so many different configurations there will be something for everyone.

 

I would take a 13" laptop over a 12" or 15".

 

Based on the hands-on reviews from Gizmodo and Engadget, it seems the touchpad is a bit wonky on the Envy13. I had a feeling this would happen. Apparently you have to use a 2-fingered gesture in order to enable the gestures to work such as "pinch", "zoom", etc...that stinks.

Why can't it just stay enabled at all times? It seems like you have to keep enabling it to use it, which would be a horrible idea, if that's the case.

Everything else seems to be okay. However, with Windows 7 installed on the Macbook Pro 13", even with their own touchpad issues, I'm sort of leaning towards the MBP 13" again...

The LED screen on the Envy13 though seems to be real good compared to the MBP.

Here are the links:
http://gizmodo.com/5370592/hp-envy-13-review-the-macbook-imitated-not-duplicated
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/30/hp-envy-13-unboxing-and-first-impressions/

 

I agree. I have a soft spot for 13"-14" notebooks because they generally provide the greatest portability without compromising the overall functionality, usability and performance of a standard notebook, all while maintaining prices at affordable levels.