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

Hey guys, I know right clicking and switching the graphics on or off isn't a hassle, but is there a desktop gadget with some sort of on/off indicator to make it easier?

 

Why not use the option to change it automatically when on battery or AC?

 

anyone played Crysis 2 yet? does it run?

 

Runs beautifully on Gamer settings. I haven't tested with the other ones... lemme know if you have.

 

Hi, I am wondering if anyone can help me with a slight dilemma...

After much research I have decided on buying the Envy 14. I am outside the US but have a friend who is willing to bring it out to me. I also have the money in place which is a good start...

I am an architecture student and am looking for a high quality laptop that will last me around three years. I have found two laptops on ebay which are the same price - $1250. Unfortunately, neither completely fulfills my wish list (such is life).

1. Brand new HP Envy 14, I7-740, 8GB Ram, 500GB Hard Disk-- 2 Year Warranty, NO RADIANCE SCREEN!

2. Refurbished HP Envy 14 I5-520, 6GB Ram, 500GB Hard Disk-- 90 Day Warranty (because it's a refurb)- RADIANCE SCREEN

I have read such good things about the screen and I figure that it is the thing I'll be looking at the entire time. I don't really need the most amazing specs, but obviously the higher the better. Also since the Radiance is an I5 it has switchable graphics which would mean a longer battery life (if I am not mistaken).

I am worried, however, about buying a refurb off ebay- especially from abroad. If something goes wrong (especially with the screen) there is no going back...

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

I'd say the I5 is the better computer for most people, since it's got a better screen and will get significantly better battery life, but it's a bigger risk because the warranty is so short. If you don't mind the lower-res screen and you don't need 4 hours of battery life, then the i7 has a big advantage in the warranty. It's up to you in the end, though - do you go with a better computer (lower specs notwithstanding) or a safer one?

 

Go with the Radiance. Always.

I bought a refurbished Envy 14 with a Radiance last month.... best decision I ever made.

 

Are you in Canada? If so there are a couple of Radiance displays left retail.

 

the bright view screen is a decent screen. I had one for a couple months then was able to return it for an envy with radiance in january and I have completely fallen in love. It's the one thing on your computer that you are always looking at so for me it's the most important. I can't stress it enough. Get one and buy a square trade warranty or one from hp if warranty is a big issue. I had never had a nice screen before so I really had no idea what I was missing. Point of the rant - screw anything else and get the one with the radiance in my opinion.

 

Guys, I'm getting only 1.5 hours of battery life when I'm watching a movie, unplugged, Power-saving GPU on, 100% brightness. Is this normal?

Reviews say it's supposed to last 4-5 hrs on 70% brightness. Can 100% brightness reduce it to 1.5 hrs?

 

..I...

4-5 hours is web browsing and word documents.

1.5-2 hours is pretty good for movie watching.

I think I got...2 hours of 720p mkv stuff at like 60%

I mean sure you could reach 4 hours with the slice or something.

 

Then I might have overpaid (shipping+taxes+customs) to have my refurbished one shipped from the US. Where are the Radiances in Canada?

 

Do you have an i7? i can watch a full hd movie unplugged and still have power left with an i5. Never really pid enough attention as to how long it will last but i know i've browsed for a while after watching a movie.

 

I have an i5 (i7's don't have switchable graphics).... I'd like to note while watching the clip I was downloading stuff at full speed via WiFi...

 

I didn't see anywhere on the last two pages referring to your processor which is why i asked. It depnds on a lot of things why you could be getting less bat life but if you are downloading big files while watching i'm sure that could have a fairl drastic effect. I know that disabling a bunch of startup programs helped to add a bit of time to mine.

 

Try setting a new power plan:

CPU maximum = 85%
CPU minimum = 65%
Cooling policy = Passive

It'll help keep your fans quiet, and save battery life as well.

Also, go to device manager > Network Adapters > Intel 6200 > Advanced

Lower the transmit power and roaming aggressiveness. It'll also save power.

 

I've discovered that messing with cpu maximum doesn't really do anything for my envy (joyous cto-1000 envys and their weird quirks).

either that or I have no way to confirm/deny it's doing/not doing anything.

 

Setting CPU @ 85% locks it at 1.3 GHz for me.

 

huh. cpu-z was all "yeah no, 2.66ghz or bust"

but lemme check it again.

...whoa. that's new. changing the intel gpu from max battery to max performance increases brightness (above 100%). odd.

also setting it at 85% locks the cpu to 1.9 GHz when stressing it, 1.3 ghz while at rest. so yeah. it does work now.

I could swear it didn't do stuff beforehand but who knows. First time I've updated chipset drivers and stuff when reinstalling windows 7.

 

If you want to get deeper into win7 power management, this document is really helpful:

http://download.microsoft.com/downl...412A-A8B6-5E0A75D5B237/ProcPowerMgmtWin7.docx

Helpful stuff about power settings starts at around page 27

 

I get enough power for the most part.

need to get off of chrome. discovered that it DOES use more power than IE9 for at least how I use the internet (and at least firefox 3.6)

not so sure about firefox 4.0

 

Thanks for the advice- as yet I am still undecided...

I am not in Canada, I am actually in Israel- they sell the envy here, (around $500 more expensive) but I am moving back to the UK soon.

All 'real' people I ask say its a no-brainer, go for the better computer, but everyone on this forum (expecially those that have a radiance) have said go for the screen...

My reservation is that if the screen goes, especially once the warranty is up then I am screeeeeeewed....

 

it all depends what you want out of your laptop.
the screen was the selling point for me. if you have never seen a radiance up close, you wont realize how much better of a screen it is. and the i5 will tackle pretty much everything you throw at it with ease, as well as the fact that it has the discrete graphics card which brings your unplugged time up to around 4 hours, vs. 1.5 hours with the i7. it's all really up to you and what you want out of your laptop.

 

I had the radiance with i7. The screen is really nice and when I got back from repair without the radiance screen it was definitely a big difference. The BV display is not ugly or anything its just a standard laptop screen. It looks a bit more washed out compared to the radiance though.

From my experience LCD's don't usually go bad that easily. Especially since these are LED backlight you don't have to worry about the CFL backlight going out. Your worst case is you actually damaging the screen by hitting it somewhere.

If I could do it again I would definitely get the i5 with the radiance. The i7 keeps you attached to the wall too often.

 

Yep, Chrome is not as ENVY Friendly as the new IE 9 and Firefox. I love chrome, but I can always hear my fans getting taxed once I've used it for a while and Chrome seems to like to consume more and more resources. it's kind of like the Pacman of browsers; it's fast, but hungry

 

Is SquareTrade an option here?

 

TBH I have never heard of it before...

Just looked at it now and it looks good...I think it's definitely an option.

I think it will be the radiance, I just think I'll regret it if I dont get it and the battery life will be better as well. Sorry for this rambling monologue, but you guys have been really helpful!

Hopefully I will post here again in around three weeks having taken receipt of the Envy! Adios

 

I think you made the right choice.

 

All this stuff happens when you change power plans too. I noticed the brightness decrease/increase when I was switching from power saver to high performance. I blinked a couple of times and was like "is it getting brighter?". After switching back and forth a couple times, I'm pretty sure it does.
Another thing about the Intel driver, there is an option that only shows up when you have the power feature section set to battery. It has a display power saving technology option. Not totally sure, but I think this might control the brightness of the backlight or something.

Edit: Oh yeah, the processor clocks back on power saver too. I noticed this when I had that CPU-Z installed too. High performance seems to set it at 2.66 ghz.

 

Hey guys,

So I just reformatted my E14 for the second time, but I ran into two problems I wasn't experiencing before.

1. I can't turn off my touch pad. Before, I tapped the light in the top left corner to turn it on and off. Now however, it's always on.

2. Whenever I close the laptop lid I lose internet connection. And it stays down, I have to replug the ethernet cord in (it was already plugged in but the computer seems to ignore it when I reopen the laptop.

Any ideas?

 

Clean install? You're missing drivers.

Mainly for the trackpad, but the internet could be a driver issue as well.

 

Thats what I thought but I did download and install the drivers after I reformatted. Perhaps I should reinstall them?

 

Anyone have any RAM issues with their Envy 14 Beats from the get-go? It shipped with 6gb, a Micron 2gb and Samsung 4gb, other notable specs are the Samsung 256GB SSD. First day of usage, it continually crashed.

Called HP, used their HP test items and it cleared.

Ran memtest86+, clear on the first few passes, 17000+ errors on test 6, another few clear passes. Then 6000+ errors on test 7, another few clear passes.

Used it a full day, no issues.

Currently running Windows Memory Diagnostics, okay on basic, but now it's stuck at 21% on Extended.

Anyone have any similar issues?

 

Movie watching sucks up power.

 

Personally, I usually do mix and match memory on desktops but rarely do I do the same with laptops (Unless it's not mine).

Take one memory module out and runs the test or use as you normally would. If it crashes, put the other one in instead etc.

Either way, might be better to have matched memory

 

well for the touchpad stuff you're gonna have to uninstall the drivers an reinstall the ones that were in your swsetup folder.


well you could also just check touchpad options to see if the "turn on tap to disable" is still in there. If it is, re-enable it.

 

Is there a better solution to two-finger scrolling than Scribe? Scribe is just super laggy and unresponsive. I've switched to using a wireless mouse because of how unresponsive multitouch scrolling is on the Envy 14 with scribe.

 

reil's app does alright two finger scrolling after you set it up.

the built in stuff is kinda iffy for the touchpad.

'course reil's app isn't able to ignore fingers so...yeah.

 

Oh, I definitely agree with you, but this is how it arrived. Purchased it for a business user and was shocked to see two different brands during the test. This laptop isn't even a week old.

 

Ooh I remember backing up the swsetup when I reformatted the first time, I forgot to do that this time... is that bad?

 

Just download these:

Synaptics TouchPad Driver HP ENVY 14t-1200 CTO Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

edit: CTO version doesn't matter. the pad itself is the same, and besides the drivers are an all-in-one type job.

 

not really. all the drivers are on that drivers page over yonder *points at the hp drivers and software forum*

find the touchpad drivers from there, install them, see if the option shows up in the advanced touchpad settings somewhere (search around in 'em)

 

IE9 seems better, though it uses the GPU so when trying to switch GPUs you need to close IE9 which is sometimes a pain. Microsoft did a "study" on browser battery efficiency and, surprise, IE9 was the most power efficient and Chrome was the least IIRC.

 

yeah I know.

the study imo (biased opinion anyway) is questionable but whatever.

I do feel like chrome sucks up the most battery life. still too lazy to reset firefox up. one of these days

 

Any idea what kind of difference switching from Chrome to IE9 would make for battery life? If it's just a couple minutes to the hour, not big thing, but if it's significant I might have to switch...

 

Don't know gcrussel ,but it would be a good test. Maybe do a rundown from 100%-75% battery using Chrome, and then do another 25% rundown using IE9 and measure the times it took to deplete the battery of 1/4 of it's charge for each explorer?

 

Does anyone know if HP is still selling separate Radiance screens in the parts store? I've had a cracked screen for about 5 months and my warranty expires in August, so I'm considering buying a screen now.

 

AFAIK it's there, but you may never actually receive it.

 

My senseless Envy 14 rant of the day:

I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to low-res, lower quality laptop displays after this Envy. The color reproduction is simply fantastic. I still haven't taken care of the LCD cable sticking out and creating a small gap in the chassis problem, but I plan to once finals has ended and when I have a free weekend. Touchpad software isn't perfected yet--but I really hope HP's reps are paying attention to our discussions here. If we could just fix the touchpad and allow for more 3-finger and 4-finger gestures, we'd have the ultimate notebook for years to come.

 

Another thing about the touchpad drivers is that there are actually 3 or 4 different versions installed that have different features. If you go to device manager and manually update the driver selecting choose from software on my computer, there are 3 or 4, 15.2.7.0 listed to choose from. They each offer different features.