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

anyone know if HP or another vendor offers a silicon protective case like apple does for the MacBook?

 

I feel for you but keep in mind that Apple will also charge you a hefty premium for it..but sometimes that's what you will need to pay.....

 

Good luck with the whole apple thing, I had to purchase a mac book pro and that ownership has been an absolute nightmare. Their depot repair service is so great that they didn't plug in ram all the way, so the machine would not boot and decided it was because I had spilled a liquid on the keyboard (even though I never have). The store realized this but couldn't help me on most issues because the depot already canned my warranty.

I will never do business with Apple again, ever. Their laptops are not worth nearly the premium they provide, their support (both official and online forums) are a bunch of rude, holier than thou types. No help, no community unless you are in love with everything apple. Not to mention they don't even offer an accidental damage coverage like HP or Dell.

 

Why not just order a 580m and then swap that out? It seems like less of a hassle than ordering a new system and then swapping the screen.

 

Probably wishful thinking on my part. I can only realistically speaking aim for a fixed system.

BTW, most people I've talked to have said Apple replaced their system free when they decided it wasn't worth the trouble to fix their systems

 

Yeah, at least they don't do ridiculous things like offer a decent screen, then pull it. Not to mention charge WAY more for it when the stock got low....

 

One could argue that's a form of price-gouging, but I would argue that in the bigger scheme of things, it was a bait n' switch scheme that really wasn't worth it for them in the long run IMO. Their corporate execs should've seen well ahead of time that it was too expensive to implement at the $1,000 price range.


I may sound strange when I say this. But it's BECAUSE the Radiance screen is now a rarity that I'm willing to keep my Envy as long as they replace the screw and give me back my RAM. But it doesn't mean I won't demand a free 4gb upgrade for a grand total of 8gb.

 

Apple can do this because they're making such large margins on their hardware. Nothing wrong with that--it's part of the reason one would pay so much more for equivalent hardware (with, IMO, often poor design and build decisions).

It's kind of like an insurance policy, really. You pay a premium of 50% (or whatever) so that you can be treated better (in many cases) after the sale. Personally, I've found it better to simply save my money and be persistent with technical and customer support. It's always worked out well for me.

 

In hindsight, I agree--but to a limited extent. Only when I get a great deal.

In this case, that rule applies since I got a ridiculous deal. So can't really whine. But it's difficult to put a price tag on peace of mind these days.

 

How long do I have to buy an extended warranty? Does it need to be within the 21 days after receiving, or just within the first year?

 

Someone earlier said first year.

Status update: Case manager contacted me. Thank GOD he has perfect English speaking and listening skills!

I've been advised to take snapshots of the scratches/cable, the screw, and the box. I'm going to get that done in a jiffy by tonight.

 

I asked the exact same thing about a week ago.
People replied with you can do it right before your 1 year is up.
they said this applies to accidental warranty as well.
Not sure if they are right or guessing, I will call this week.

 

okay BIOS update F13 is pissing me off.
I now have the CPU Whine, even when not using USB/Bluetooth devices and it can be pretty annoying when I'm at the library

Does JJB's tweak work for non-SSD envys??

 

That goes double for me. I totally agree. Part of the Apple tech support forum is people flaming because you have an actual problem. They won't admit there could be issues with an apple product until some stupid blogger posts that they have the issue. You have to have "proof" because apple can do no wrong. Back when they were on Power architecture they had something different. Now they use the same stuff as Windows but often charge more for it, and good luck fixing it if your "logic board" or power supply fails. These parts are overpriced and if your computer is too old, not even available.

LOL, corporate execs are what is wrong with this industry. I don't believe they know much about what they are doing. Why else get rid of the only feature that sets the computer apart? If it's too expensive ok, but why "bait and switch" if you're losing money on it? If they cut down a little bit on the number of models they offered and actually tested these things out and worked with MSFT when problems came up to get special hotfixes for their computers, they could offer a product much like Apple does and charge a bit of a premium on it "just working". As it is now they just install crap and shove it out the door with, I'm guessing, little to no testing. Apple does have it right with the tailoring the OS to the computer, but I don't believe they are the only ones that could do it.

 

People have had luck with it cutting down on the whine, you may want to try it out, it might help you out.

 

Hey guys, does anyone else have this issue wherein sometimes from startup, the display is suddenly a bit dim? I have to restart to make the display brightness normal again. Any ideas?

 

might be the default brightness setting for your power profile

 

nope, for some reason, it just gets dim for no reason. Even when I max out the brightness, its still dim. I have to restart in order to get back the normal brightness... Any thoughts?

 

oh.

are you swapping from one gpu to the other when this happens. if so that's a glitch with switchable that happens sometimes.

usually why I try to be on the radeon gpu before turning the computer if it's plugged in or being on the igp before turning it on while unplugged.

 

Sounds like the auto brightness sensor in the envy 15, I forget if the E 14 has the same thing or not, it would be in the Advanced Power Plan settings under 'display'...

 

Weird. I installed F.13, have had no problems so far.

 

same here.

what kind of problems are people getting anyway?

 

Hey all. I am heavily considering a purchase of the envy 14 because from the looks of it it offers mostly everything I want in a laptop. Except for one thing. The touchpad. I went to best buy to try out HP touchpads and they had the kind that, called clickpad?, where you may also use the mouse buttons to scroll with as well. I find this to be extremely distasteful and more of a hindrance than anything, especially as a DJ (though an amateur one...but i got skills...digression...). The envy looks to have a similar touchpad. How do you guys deal with it? Does it impede anything? How would you hold down the button and scroll down a webpage lets say? Does the multi-touch affect this? Is it multi-touch anyway?

Apologies for the block of text! Thanks for the help!

 

I dont think E14 has the auto brightness sensor unless I missed it. It happened to me twice now (Since the last two months) and it was really Dim. I did turn on my Laptop and it was unplugged at that time and it was on battery. One theory is that when I turned off my laptop last night, it was plugged in but I shut it down and closed the lid. While it was still shutting down, I unplugged, so that might have triggered the switch to GPU. Then when I turned it back on (on battery Only), maybe it somewhat got confused??!! ahaha... Im out of ideas and the issue is very hard to recreate.

 

The clickpad does support multi-touch for scrolling and pinch to zoom. There is a dead zone where the buttons are located on the pad so that touching the buttons doesn't move the mouse cursor. You can increase or decrease the sensitivity of the area around the buttons to avoid having your palm accidentally move the mouse cursor since the buttons and the clickpad are all one large surface. You can also press down the entire surface of the clickpad and have it function as a button. I never use this though, because I prefer "tap to click" for button presses and grabbing windows.

There are 3 scrolling methods with the clickpad. 1) Single finger scroll using the left/right side, 2) two finger scroll down the middle of the click pad, and 3) my favorite, circular scroll where you place your finger on the pad and make circles clockwise/counter clockwise to scroll up or down (much more efficient and less likely to get wrist carpel tunnel syndrome). The clickpad has to be tuned using the Synaptic sensitivity controls to honestly get the full benefits out of it. However, now that I have tuned the clickpad, I personally feel it works great. It has pinch to zoom like a Mac, but you have to tune (increase the speed) it also to have it work as smooth as the Mac's clickpad. In short, take the time to set it up to function in the manor you want it to and it will be fine for you

If you decide you want an experience thats More Mac like, there are a couple of external tools created by the Community (Search for Reli) that implement inertial scrolling and two finger scrolling for the pad. You'll have to tune the pad to work with those tools also, but they are very impressive if you're not sold on the synaptic software that controls the clickpad out of the box. I used some of the external clickpad tools for a while but then decided to power tune the Synaptic tools and I'm very happy with the way the clickpad works.

 

Thank you for the response. I have no interest in the Mac like abilities. I much prefer the traditional touchpad and two buttons. But it is good to know that all of these settings can be adjusted.

So to clarify, the button area on the touchpad either is a deadzone or can be set to negligible sensitivity to act as a deadzone so that the button area may not be used to actually move the pointer.

 

Yep, the button area is a dead zone with adjustable sensitivity. I must tell you though that as a ThinkPad owner, the clickpad seemed pretty alien to me initially. However, once I opened my mind to some of the new navigation methods available using the clickpad like circular scroll, I discovered that there are other effective methods that can make a product much more enjoyable.

Experiment with all the navigation methods and then find the one that works best with the tool instead of trying to bend the tool to work in the way you've always done things. Sometimes, there is a better way.

 

A very good point. I am too young to be stuck in my ways. Keep it up with the wisdom!

You sir may have also just provided the little bit of reassurance I need to make my purchase of this system.

+rep

 

The heck? The 1600x900 res is not even listed as an option on the hp site or under customization.

 

No longer available.

 

Forever???

 

for the foreseeable future.

the supplier went out of business so no more radiance are being made.

 

Launch envy price on ebay going up then?

 

I would hope not. I am patient and can bide my time

 

Bummer. Spoke to a sales rep and he said they most likely will not look for a replacement manufacturer. Looks like I'm SOL on this one. There's always eBay, someone was offerin the screen update, but I don't want to spend 300 on it

 

I'm curious. Who was the supplier?

Obviously not Samsung or LG, though I believe LG is paying royalties to Hitachi to manufacture larger sized IPS panels. I wonder what an LG-based IPS laptop screen would beat the Radiance.

 

Is there?! Nope, not on mine.

Yep, great offerings from a few posters on this forum.

E14: Trackpad Discussion Only

reil's envy TouchPad is pretty popular so far...

 

Just go to device manager > display (generic pnp monitor) > details tab > scroll to 'Device Instance Path' and the 'Value' will show DISLPLAY\xxxxxx\...... The part after 'display\' will be the monitor ID which you can google for the vendor info and P/N etc.

Or several free system info apps will list this info for you, I prefer Everest, the freeware version should show all the details you could ever want to know about your system along with all sorts of useful features, CPU benchmarks, monitoring and stability testing etc.

 

For anyone who owns the 1366 variant, how does it look? Manageable? Also, can anyone give me the vertical measurement of the actual screen? (from one corner to the other)

Thanks!!

 

Looks great. Runs games really nicely at the native resolution. The maximum brightness is really bright. I usually have it on 50%.

No problems with viewing angles. Colours are bright. Blacks aren't ultra-black on high brightness settings. I haven't printed anything yet, but I think the Radiance would give(/would have given) a more accurate colour preview, if you like that kinda thing.

Can't find a tape measure. I guess at 178mm high for the bit that kicks out light. 220mm for the whole glass/screen height.

 

Does anyone know if the SD card reader in the Envy 14 is fast enough to support booting an operating system from an SD card? Specifically Chrome OS?

 

depends.

it's a usb 2.0 card reader. so it's technically hooked into a usb port....at least as far as the motherboard is concerned

 

Could somebody please repost the X-rite .icc profile?

I would like to try it on my Envy. Thanks in advance.

 

X-rite_9-1-2010_2.icc


in a related note. how do you set these things up again so I can swap between it and the original with that displayprofile thing (right now it either works or not since I haven't installed the xrite correctly)


forgot how you install it.

 

Amazon has the Envy 14 with i5 460m for only $944.64 with free shipping.

Seems like a great deal for those of you who dont want to wait for HP to make yours.

It would cost you $1050 plus tax at HP.

 

Would these profiles work with the DM4?

 

try this free app from X-Rite-- X-Rite: Get exactly the color you need, every time, anywhere in the world.

 

I just bought a 300 N-router. Can Envy 14's wireless card fully support N routers or it bottlenecks it? when i looked into the status of wireless network it only says 144mbs.

 

I'm using that

the weird thing is that it won't stay like it did last time. it goes back to the default scheme unless I load up displayprofile again.

probably because I didn't go and setup the xrite file right (through the display settings stuff in windows 7).

Before I reformatted I could go between the two just by selecting one or the other with display profile. now if I pick the correct color display it just stays at that. but it won't default to that either (which is kinda what I want)

 

That's a good deal. Btw, what does "Relic laptop" mean?