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

Well, according to their own teardown documentation, they chassis on the Envy is metal, as well as the bottom panel. According to one review I read it was a magnesium alloy. If Its the one I'm thinking of, then I does feel a bit like plastic, but ts metal. You find it a lot in car parts.

 

yup its metal, you can tell by how easily it bends..I noticed in a lot of reviews that said that it's plastic which got people confused, but it is 100% metal/aluminum

 

Hmmm... Still, I think it is more flimsy than the metallic components they used to build each Elitebook...

 

There you go, lording your Elitebook over our heads. If you weren't such a drunk Sumeragi....(Yes, I've seen 00. Even the movie0

 

Interesting. I wonder why it feels so "flimsy". I suppose if it felt "sturdier" it would contribute to increased laptop weight.

 

I see what you did there! (I am waiting for the NA Release of the Movie).

I don't want to be an "elitist," but my experiences with the Envy 15 (Officially an owner of it for a year) has shown that their definition of "Magnesium alloy" is a joke. My Envy 15 got damaged a few times on things like zippers from taking in and out of bags. That metallic surface acts worse than most plastics on other laptops. In a startling contrast, the Elitebook never showed any markings. I originally brought the Envy 15 for the alloy. I figured it would be more resistant to wear and tear than the unanimously hated acrylic plastic everyone else seem to love companies use as a chassis material. Instead, it was worse.

I don't know, maybe I am drunk, but I really had a love and hate relationship with my old Envy. I got so infuriated with that thing so much, yet I still miss it as it was pretty unique and powerful for its size and weight. However, I have been more content and worry-free ever since I upgraded (thanks to my friend who wanted my Envy so badly, he literally nagged me a week to sell it).

Aside from my mini rant, the truth is, the Envy 14's top cover doesn't seem to feel all metal and it sure ain't going to resist like one either. Then again, the Elitebook cheats and adds additional Magnesium support brackets.

 

I feel like this will be the case, which means I'll either have to get a laptop case or use the bag that came with the laptop while carrying it around.

Anyone update to the newest 11.1a drivers from Guru3D? Increased in performance?

 

If its the same alloy that I'm thinking it is, its rather soft, but hard to tear or outright break. It has a rather high strength to weight ratio, but the density is rather low because of this.

 

All the unboxings I've seen say its metalic, equal to the current dell XPS line.

 

If you use the the bag it comes with, it will be sufficient enough to help protect that nice paint coat when you put in your messenger computer bag or backpack for transport.

As for the material, it is durable enough that it won't crack under normal usage, but it will show some flexing if you apply point pressure in an area and whatever you do, don't even attempt to test its limits by standing on it, cause that will do it good. However, the paint finish they used on the chassis is awful. Even worse than the MBP's. Be warned.

Also, I seem to not have gotten the 11.1a drivers on Guru3D to work for me. I checked the .inf files and saw that they weren't modded for any Mobility Radeon, only for desktop cards. I think I have used another hotfix driver package that someone modded to work with Mobility Radeons. Let me search for it.

 

Well, if you think the finish in the MPB is bad, well, you've got some odd standards.

 

To tell you the truth, the only laptop finish I ever liked was the rubbery surface IBM ladened over the Thinkpad T40. Very resilient and durable.

 

Ah. I understand your thinking now.

 

Well after all, I do rant like a drunk! One more note, if it wasn't for my friend who brought my old Envy, I wouldn't have a chance or the funds to get my Elitebook. I am pretty broke bloke in general.

Anyways, with proper care and considerations, The Envy 14 shouldn't be difficult to maintain. HP has done to a degree better QC and material selection on the Envy 14 than they did when the 15 was around. I am sure you will have a better and easier time working and maintaining the 14 than I did with the 15.

 

Thanks for the reply! IIRC, people have also had success installing the 11.1a AMD ATI mobility drivers over the HP ATI drivers. I may be wrong though, there seems to be some conflicting reports.

Let me know if you find it!

 

Found it and tested! It works!

Should show 8.820.2.0

Download AMD Catalyst Mobility 11.1a Hotfix [email protected]

Proof:

 

I'm planning to upgrade my ATI drivers. Will i need to remove the exisiting HP drivers before loading the latest HP ATI drivers? Im assuming once i have the latest HP ATI drivers i can then update with 11.1a?

 

If you are using Catalyst 10.x (8.7.XX), then yes. However if you are using i5 Switchable, then no. Just override over them. If you are using non-switchable, then I recommend an uninstall first.

 

Hi All,
so I clean installed my envy 14. I also added a 4Gb stick of ram and changed the regular HDD to an OCZ 256GB SSD. My battery is fully charged and its saying 1hr1min remaining. I have it running on power saver mode.

Do I need to calibrate something? I have an i5-580. and 1hr of battery life on power saver mode with wifi turned off and screen at half brightness seems pretty bad to me.

I even let it fully charge for like 3 hours before I booted it for the first time.

 

Check out the battery life log thread. (not being a smart alec) You'll answer your own question there better than any one person could here.

 

okay, I have another question... Since I now have two Envy 14s, can I hot swap the hard drives? Or is that going to give me all kinds of problems?

 

I've had my beats edition for a while now and I think I may have a problem. Does anybody else with a brightview screen notice a weird 'static' on mid to dark grey colors? Like if I go to this site (only site I could think of with a grey scheme), its almost as if the image is moving. Like a very subtle tv static.

Sorry if my description is odd, I'm not really sure how to describe this.

 

Sorry about the double post

 

FF, I don't see that problem. Do you see it in the default theme as well?

 

Yes, anytime there is a dark grey it has a weird 'static' on the colour. It's very subtle, but it's there.

 

it may mean the phase is not correctly set, but I do not know how to tweak that on a laptop screen ...

 

How do we turn that HP light off without putting a sticker over it? I use the laptop in class sometimes and I don't want that light on.

 

You can't turn it off. You would have to disassemble the screen and clip the wire.

 

Wish someone could post instructions on how to disconnect it without having to clip it.

 

It's temporal dithering, caused by the 6-bit screen.

In short, the 6-bit screen can only display 262K colors while your incoming 32-bit (actually 24 bit) monitor feed is capable of displaying 16.7 million colors. Your display driver chip uses an algorithm to simulate the extra colors your screen cannot display.

see Dither - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

That might be possible if the light(led) is on a connector.

You can ask those who are swapping out their brightview for a radiance to make a note of this and to take a pic of the area.

 

Anybody else noticed MSFT seems to be gearing up for Windows 7 SP1? Anybody know when it's supposed to hit?

 

It's a small connector near the bottom right hinge, where the display connector goes into the monitor. You'll have to take apart the monitor, I posted a thread with instructions a while ago...

Also, the cables behind the LCD panel have a low amount of slack, so when you take the screen off the back panel, be sure to disconnect the wires before you lift the panel off.

When you're putting the front glass panel back on, I recommend to first use eyeglass cleaner + a microfiber cloth to clean off the dust, and keeping the inside surfaces pointing down, quickly put the top panel in place. Then, use some canned air to blow any dust that might have gotten in down to the bottom of the screen, where it'll get stuck in the tape dust seal. That way, you won't have any dust in between your screen after you put it back together.

 

OK, so I tried to search for this in the forums, but was not able to find any help through the search with this forum.

My problem is that when I press fn+b to turn off beats (or fn+esc to access the bios view) it no longer works for me. I could have sworn I've seen someone come across this issue before, but I can't find it now. For the record, the function button does still work as I am able to access f1-f12. It's just that it is no longer working with the main keys.

What can I do to get this to work again? Any ideas or fixes?

 

Thank you for the info.

I was just concerned that my screen was messed up. I never noticed it on my old Pavilion laptop.

 

Hello everyone! I am an owner of HP Pavilion DV6t SE. I understand this thread is not the right place to ask for solutions to my problem. But I am posting my query here because this is one of the most active threads in the forum and there are many knowledgeable owners here.

A couple of days ago I installed the updated touchpad drivers found in Justin's thread. Since then I have lost the capability of turning the touchpad on/off by double tapping the top left corner.

Is there a way to solve this issue? Do I need to reinstall the old drivers again?

I would really appreciate your response.

 

do you have the syntaptics configuration setup under mouse settings in control panel? If so, there should be an option in there

 

Whoa! I didn't know they came with these processors.
NEW HP ENVY 14 Laptop Core i7 EXTREME i7-940XM Notebook on eBay.ca (item 360341734451 end time 09-Feb-11 03:39:55 EST)

what would the battery life be? sounds like one would need to tote around two Slice batteries...lol

 

wow thats a 55w processor...not sure why you would want that anyways since your still limited by the 5650

 

Thanks Waleed! I found the option and the double tapping works now.

 

Whats sucks also is you get all that power but it doesn't even have the radiance screen #fail

 

on battery it'll probably barely over an hour. Such a CPU is only usefull for heavy processing.

As other said the GPU is already a limiting factor on the i3 ... so imagine on this.

 

The seller must of opened the laptop and added in the Extreme Edition into the laptop for resale. I don't think the Envy 14 ever came with the option for an Extreme Edition and in accord with other member's initial reaction, it is too ridiculous for such a machine.

 

leave it on.
represent HP.
show up the MBP owners how much better the Envy is

 

+1. You win the internets for the day!

 

Can anyone recommend a good product to clean the radiance screen? I dont want to somehow ruin the screen by using something that I shouldn't be using. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Hellz ya!!

 

Any decent microfiber cloth should do it.

 

I've been using a microfiber cloth and it works great. You can get them anywhere especially an eye place. Grabs all the dust a regular towel would miss and you won't have to worry about scratching the glass.

 

has anybody ever replaced the usb ports on the left side?

the one furthest from me is damaged i believe. still works, but the rectangular piece inside is loose. probably doesn't NEED to be replaced, but it is bothering me.

1 - has anybody ever done this?

2 - if so, how easy is it, and where can i buy the part?

3 - would my warranty cover parts?