*HP ENVY 14 & ENVY 14 Beats (1XXX series) Owners Lounge, Part III*

One last question. My case manager said I can upgrade my computer up to $200 dollars and I was thinking about getting the 750 gb hdd + 80 gb SSD. Worth it? Does the SSD benefit the computer at all? Thanks!!!

 

I have an SSD in mine. I had to RMA it because it failed so I loaded my OS on a 5400 RPM drive. Every day I used the computer it made me miss the SSD more. I can cold start and get to firefox in about 30 seconds. Photoshop loads almost instantly. Also, the SSD itself doesn't make a huge difference in battery life, but considering the fact that you can get things done more efficiently I think you get better use of your overall battery time.

 

Those of us that have experienced SSD speeds will never go back to rotational media...

However, 80GB is barely enough these days and you'll find yourself needing a new one eventually, especially since the bloat of Windows will eventually force you too. Even if you install all your programs and data on the HDD, your SSD will eventually be used up by windows patches. Due to the cost of SSD's, it quite common to put your data on a secondary HDD, but you want your OS and programs on the SSD for the best performance. Good luck.

P.S. I have the 160GB SSD from HP and only have 70GB free (~90GB used) with all my programs installed on the SSD and all my personal data on a HDD.

 

for laptops, nothing beats a SDD for sure , unless you do HDD intensive tasks (which wear SSD's significantly faster than HDDs)

for desktops, a HDD RAID 0 setup is almost as fast and quite a bit cheaper than a SSD setup. It also gives you the durability of HDD and a MUCH larger storage capacity.

 

May I ask what happened to your laptop?

 

well he's letting me upgrade up to $200 dollars because the laptop that is being replaced had the 16x9 resolution and the current models dont : /

Anyways if your still curious what happened to my laptop, I was having breakfast while checking my emails and I got up to get a napkin and while I was sitting down I bumped into the table my laptop was sitting on and that spilled my OJ all over my keyboard : (

Moral of the story: Accidental damage protection really paid off : )

 

So you're saying eventually random windows files will completely fill the SSD? And if so, will it still preform well?

Lastly, if it were you, would you get the extra slice battery or the SSD + HDD?

 

Actually I think the moral of the story is "Don't have liquids near your laptop."

 

Hey guys, I think I'm going to be buying the beats envy 14" this coming week.

Just wondering what is the performance difference between the Intel Core i5 580M and the Intel Core i7 720QM? I checked notebookcheck and it seems the i5 is performing better on most of the tests.

Also, what's the performance of the ATI 5650? I heard it's underclocked on the Envy 14", is it possible to overclock it? And how would it perform in lets say Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and GTA 4?

 

I think the speakers are a bit better en the Beats Edition, but the internals are almost the same.

 

I played both of those games on my last envy 14, although it might be different for you somehow; they were playable at medium / low settings. Keep in mind these are two of the most graphics intesive games on the market right now so it's no surprise a mid level gaming rig would have some difficulty running them. But I want to clarify, they are definitely playable.

 

Medium-low on which resolution and what was the FPS?

 

Yeah that's something I forgot to mention. I played on an external monitor, either at 1600x900 or 1920x1080 depending on the game. So if you're planning on playing your games at the native resolution of 1366x768 you should have no problem at all running these games.

On my external monitor I was anywhere between 20 - 50 fps in bf:bc2. Huge explosions can really drag the game to a hault : /

 

Just a note: My ENVY 14-1207TX died; no power (intermittent). Seems a few similar cases happened before.

 

is it still under warranty ?

and do you have a radiance ?

 

I have played crysis 1 and 2.....reso at 1366x768...crysis 1 on med settings I got around 32-39 fps...and crysis 2 at low-med settings I got around 27-37 fps...so yeah the 5650 at this reso is kinda ok with all games...

 

Just want to say, F%$# the envy 14. Found this gem and I'm going to run with it. 1080p resolution, CORE i7, HD RADEON 6770m, BLU RAY? and it's cheaper??

 

yeah. We coulda mentioned to you that the dv6t and dv7t got dell's XPS15's 1080p screen a few months ago.

 

Yeah, I just would never had guessed the lower tier laptops got screens twice as good as the envys. Nevertheless, luckily my case manager hadn't placed the order for the new envy so I'll definitely let him know I'm changing my mind.

 

yeah. that screen wasn't around when the sandybridge dv6t stuff launched.


needless to say, when it showed up a lot of people in the dv6t forum were glad they waited on the fix to the intel sandybridge motherboards (the sata 2/3 throttling issue)

 

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Only if you get the entire display assembly

 

can anyone confirm that the envy 14 1xxx model works with eSATAp? i want to make sure before i get the powered eSATAp. i cant really tell if the ports match, i know its a little different for the eSATAp port

 

Google says "random anecdotes say yes"


some guy on anandtech said eSATAp worked on his port for a 7200 rpm hdd or something for his envy 14. (anandtech is down right now, using google cache of topic): Bus Powered Firewire 800 External HDD Enclosure? [Archive] - AnandTech Forums

Said guy is also CurseTheSky on this forum as well though I haven't seen him in awhile (maybe)

 

yeah this is the one i read before, but i wanted to ask around here if any one else has experience with it

 

eSATAp should work. The combo usb/esata port is always eSATAp, because the eSATAp port has esata on one side and USB on the other. The esatap port will draw power from the USB side, while transferring data over the esata side.

 

Isn't the laptop made of flimsy plastic though?

 

Technically only the bottom is made of plastic. But youre right, the overall build quality of the of high performance laptops is lower than the envys. That's mainly what concerns me about getting them

 

Can someone help me set up Google Talk? The feature in Gmail which allows you to make phone calls? I had it working last week or so and stopped using it. When I tried to use it today, there was no sound coming out.

The speakers options I have are "speakers and headphones" and "default option." I tried both and nothing happens. Gmail also has a test function and when I test, the bars don't even indicate sound is playing. Everything else works ie I can play music, watch youtube, everything but use google talk.

 

ok. thanks!

 

well I have a Transcend enclosure that has eSATA support and in that is a 7200rpm samsung F3 1 tb HDD.....I use the esata port on my envy....is esata and eSATAp the same????....if those two are the same then yeah it works.....

 

If there is only one cable coming out of the enclosure and into the Envy, with no power cables then it's esatap

 

the eSATAp has like two horizontal lines sticking out compared to regular eSATA. correct me if im wrong.

also, im asking these questions because im planning on buying a 2tb HD with eSATAp, this way i dont need additional power source.
does the power adapter on this item look universal?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380354644236&ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT

 

ohh no I have a power source.....ummm where do you plug the power cable of the esatap???

 

Well, esatap should ideally be just a single cable going from computer to hard drive, and that's it. Sometimes the enclosure doesn't have an esatap connector but they intend it to be used for an esatap computer, so then the enclosure end would be esata + a power connector that is powered by the esatap port

 

I have a little problem here. I was having some graphics issues in SC2 and either did not follow the suggestion I found online properly or it was bad advice but anyway here is what I did: downloaded driver sweeper, downloaded the latest driver for the 5650 graphics card(11.7?), went to ATI catalyst install manager and did Express Uninstall ALL ATI Software, restarted the laptop in safe mode, ran driver sweeper and deleted everything that came up for AMD (display) then rebooted into normal mode and tried to install the new driver but i got a message saying, "AMD Catalyst Mobility cannot be downloaded due to incompatible hardware/software on your computer. The version of your graphics adapter is not supported. Please contact your notebook manufacturer for a graphics driver update." I tried getting this driver from several different places but every time i tried to install it i got this message. So I did a system restore back a few days. Mostly everything seemed okay except whenever I right click on the desktop and hit Graphics Properties nothing happens, same with Configure Switchable Graphics.

Also, when I unplug the laptop it doesnt give me that message asking if i wish to switch graphics cards.

 

my webcam has a circle area of saturation, if i move out of the center circle, it becomes highly unsaturated. does any one have fix for this?

 

install stock hp/ati drivers then latest ati drivers over them.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-drivers-switchable-graphics-11-4-11-5-a.html

 

That fixed it, thanks man.

 

Quick question...

On an i5 Envy, does swapping from a HDD to a SSD add noticeable battery life? Looking at buying one from the HP Outlet.

 

Conclusion : The SSD Power Consumption Hoax

The 500GB 7200.4 uses about 1.5 watts when active, 0.6 when idle.

 

wow, thats interesting. i always thought ssd were more efficent.

 

IMO the efficiency comes in the form of time. Since I switched from the standard HDD I noticed I'm able to get certain things done more quickly. So I can get more done on three hours with a SSD than with the standard HDD... or maybe I'm just crazy.

 

This benchmark was done in 2008, way before the current SSDs on sale emerged on the market. Current SSDs like the Intel G2/320 tend to consume less power on idle. Peak power on SSDs may be higher, but you will have to consider the "disk busy" time.

If the HDD takes 1 min longer than the SSD at disk busy time, the 1 min of extra power used could override whatever power savings achieved earlier.

 

Yeah I was reading that and thinking what a load of bull, but then I saw the publish date and thought, "ahh, that's the reason!". At one point they were comparing the power consumption of a SSD to a 3600RPM HDD... Sure the HDD may consume less power but you're going to waste tons of TIME waiting for your computer to respond at that rotational speed. Also, the throughput numbers for the SSD's didn't seem right which was another odd thing until I saw the date.

For a moment there, I was wondering what was "Tom" smoking!

Also, something to take note of. They did notice that because SSD's responded faster to CPU I/O requests, the CPU (and memory) was MORE active in a SSD-equipped laptop which possibly increased power demand; whereas the CPU was more idle while waiting for the HDD I/O to complete and thus in a lower power state.

Now I'm not gonna say that even today's SSD's grant a noticeable battery life increase, but their performance blows away any consumer-grade laptop HDD. Rotational media's days are numbered in the consumer market; though until flash becomes denser and cheaper, rotational will be used for many years in the datacenter. Then again, I recently read about EMC losing a bid to a newer SAN company who based their SAN on all flash. Impressive to say the least!

 

Can I get rid of HPMSGSVC.exe? If I understand correctly it is the HP Quick Launch buttons. But when I turn it off all I lose is the ability to turn on and off Beats with Fn + B. Brightness, volume, etc all seem to work. Is there some other functionality I will lose if I get rid of HPMSGSVC.exe?

 

You might also lose fn+esc to bring up your serial number and some other stuff.

 

do i need 8gb ram?? I have 4gb now but I was wondering if it would speed up the system as a whole. I dont think I need them but I keep trying to convince myself especially how cheap they have become now.

 

Hi guys i have a quick question. I'm about to buy an Klipsch Image s4i. Will the microphone work on my envy 14? Since there's only a single cord for both microphone and audio.