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

it is amazingggg..Envy #2 is supposed to ship out tomorrow I hope it doesnt have any defects like my current one!

 

ive heard that many, many times.

 

HAHAHAHA! Analogy of the century!

Does the human ear vary that much in sensitivity? And do we need a CPU whine thread?

haha...oh god I can't stop laughing....

 

Sorry for the OT, but I don't understand the rave reviews. It was a contrived and complete stretch of the imagination.

Spoiler

Everyone can magically appear in someone else's dreams with no reason or explanation. They could just manipulate someone else's dreams without someone really noticing? The physics of the world shifts in their dreams in relation to the real world? It's a dream, why would it? Sorry, it wouldn't matter much but that was a big part of the plot.

Sorry, but it just didn't cut it for me.

 

On the bright side, they didn't spent a ton of time trying to explain the science fiction elements of the plot, so there was more time to develop the plot itself.

Personally, I'll give it a 7-8 out of 10. Thematically it came too close to Leo's most recent work to feel as fresh as I had hoped it would, and the last 45 minutes were largely less-engaging than I had hoped.

 

hi guys, if i do a clean install, would it be safer to install the drivers using swsetup or use the drivers listing in the 1st page? i heard some of the drivers in the driver thread are missing compared to swsetup.

 

So, if I did a full backup, firmware update, and restore...I should be good to go right? I guess I could go for a clean install instead of a restore, but I figured I would give the factory install a try and see how bad it is.

I've never flashed firmware on an SSD before. Should be interesting. I'll cross my fingers and hope that I get updated firmware.

It looks like we have the same essential config (i5 520 and 256 SSD). Mine is still on order.

 

My Envy isnt set to ship until tomorrow, but when I get it Ill let you all know about the whine (450M). I can hear it on my work Dell and my home Dell E1505.

 

I am noting slight whining on my i450. Is this dangerouns at all..? or is it just a disturbance. I don't think this would warrant a exchange but if it is a precursor to future problems i would like to know...

 

My Dell has been whining for 3 years now

 

Ahhhhh...

No wonder I hadn't been receiving email instant notifications! There's a 2nd thread.

Damn you all, for not notifying me via PM (my luvrboiz: 2.0, Magus, htwingnut )

 

We were hoping to ditch you......

 

oh my. part two? my bet says that this thread won't go up to 300 within the week =P.

on a side note, since we can 75% assume hp bcb is dead, i think i'll end up buying the base config....


so for the people who got the momentus XT, any feedback you wanna give back?

 

How exactly is the whine supposed to sound? The only sounds I hear coming from the laptop are the hard drive and fans... When the screen's brightness level was turned all the way down (In a dark, quiet room) I could hear a slight hiss from the screen it seemed but that has stopped as well. I've been examining my envy up and down since I've heard about quality control issues, but so far everything is fine other than the fact I want to upgrade my processor... I don't even think I'd wanna risk sending it back and starting over

 

I have a whine on my envy 14 520m. I called hp and they are sending me a replacement.

 

Don't beat yourself. I kind of regret upgrading to the i5-520M after learning the hard way it's not much better than the 450M (or probably even the i3!).

 

but missing the two bcbs, especially the second one so foolishly, deserves a thorough mental beating....which i think i'm done with. lol.

yeah luckily all the ppl posting on this forum convinced me to just go with the i3. forget the i5's bragging rights....i don't want to risk the cpu whine people are reporting, and i'd rather save that $50 for lojack.

haha where's lviv, jjb, all those other guys? magnus?

 

the hdd is whining more then my i5 450 cpu

 

BTW I know someone asked about this earlier, but I hooked into a 30" display @ 2560x1600 using the displayport today without issue.

 

There was a second BCB?? I caught the 30% one (thank whoever runs this universe) if there was a more discounted one Imma be mad.
Oh and questions about LoJack
1. Can I re-install, after doing a clean install
2. Is it a program, or is it in the CMOS or somewhere else in the PC where a thief couldn't just ditch a part easily.
3. How quickly do I get my laptop back if it gets stolen?

 

Just finshed some battery life testing using that Granola application from the OP, the short answer is I think it is owned by Al Gore as all the claims seem to be full of hot air!

Even though I have an E 15 the results should give you an idea of what it doesn't do.

Test 1) Granola max power save mode, wifi on, fans on, screen 80%, light browsing (9 tabs IE8) and light CS4 editing (with some significant 100% idle time but never in sleep or off) 3:04 till shutdown. Computer also felt a bit 'sluggish' when typing and starting the scrolling action etc.

Without Granola, same settings, continuious light usage = 3:15 Obviuosly it is hard to say if the usage was the same but my battery bar average says 3:06 and it always goes past the '0%' for several minutes.

Test 2) Movie watching. Granola max power savings, GPU downclocked to 75/150, wifi off, fans disabled, 80% bright, headphones at high volume (enough for airplane). Playing Star Trek digital copy, 720P full screen .wmv in win media player (repeat playback). 2:15 till shutdown.

Without granola, same settings 2:18. So i'll call this one equal....

According to granola I have saved 43% of my CPU energy Saved from what? How? It uses less power without it..... Sorry Al Gore or whoever is behind the site, I'm not buying it..... Oh yeah it also claims I will save 327 lbs of CO2 emmissions if I use it for a year LMAO...

FWIW, all my best battery life has been with the CPU set to 0% min and 100% max in all power plan settings and no other CPU adjustments or tweaks, any attempts to change the CPU or disable turbo boost or cores has resulted in much lower battery life. My advise is trust intel who designed these chips to be as power efficient as possible, don't mess with them....

 

For those interested, by OCing to 585/830 I'm able to go from 32.1fps (stock) to 37.6fps in the Resident Evil 5 benchmark. A decent increase I must say. Especially considering that Afterburner wouldn't let me go any higher on the core clock, and we're still undervolted (that stuff about E14's being undervolted IS true, right?).

Most (nearly all) of the FPS gains appear to be from OCing in the core.

 

there was one july 12th midday i believe
then the next morning from 7-10 am.

edit: deleted cause jjb's answer is better d^^b

 

1) yes
2) It's in the BIOS I believe and you'd need to be pretty saavy to work around it from what I've heard, plus no way for the thief to know it's installed
3) no guarantees at all, IIRC they payout up to $1000 if it's not recovered after so many days. A lot depends on your local police dept, some just file reports and never even look for them, others pursue to prosecute....

 

Wow That was Quick, and you guys are super boss. +1 for the both of you
Thats good, I dont want a theif to just ditch the HDD, and me never see it again. And if they pay 1000, thats just enough to replace mine.
Oh, and July 12th is when I got mine. I saw someone mention 75% or something..... its late and im not thinking straight.

 

oh i said 75% sure HP bcb is dead, not 75% bing cash back. no way! lol.

 

Forgot to mention above. My tip of the day: To get the maximum battery playback time for movies; forget the DVD drive, save your files to an SD card (or SSD) as .wmv for windows media player playback. It buys you an ~ 20 minutes over same movie on HDD, and a DVD would be worse. Also WMP gets about 20 extra minutes over itunes when playing the same movie, for some reason itunes is very CPU intensive with movies on a PC.

 

Lol race you got my envy yesterday and plan to install the caddy early next week (as it means I have to strip my m15x down to get the caddy out which takes an age!)

 

Would you mind running the FFXIV benchmark with that type of OC?

 

Thanks for that testing +1. Good to debunk crap.

I've been using CPUGenie with my Sager for a while now. It's a CPU undervolting proram. Works pretty good. There's three auto settings: brief, standard, ultra-safe. Basically it will stress test your machine at each voltage until it finds the most stable clocks. Time to run can take from about 3 hours for brief and 18 hours plus for ultra-safe.

It's a free utility, but it costs $15 to unlock all features, I can't remember what though, it's pretty full featured without registering. I endedup registering just to support the devleoper, and it unlocked a few things that made it more usable.

Just a little utility for possibly eeking out more battery life and running cooler.

 

afaik, cpugenie doesn't work on i5 cpus properly. AT least last time I tried it didn't.

Also, just wondering. In your sig it says your laptop is supposed to ship yesterday. Did it? I'm curious since mine is supposed to ship today.

 

Is there anything you should do to maintain a strong battery life in the long run? (as in at what % do i plug in the charger/etc)

 

Don't know about i5 support, will have to look at that.

No, my laptop did not ship yet, at least according to the online status. I'm not going to bug them until Monday though. Give them a couple days of benefit of doubt!

 

You can take the battery out while not using it for extended periods and store it at 40-60% charge. Dont cycle it all the way down to nothing (worst thing you can probably do). Dont let it get hot for extended periods (second worse I would say), and keep the charges/discharges minimal.

 

Thank you :]

 

wow this thread is moving slow now.

any updates on the quality problems? was it just the first batch that had afew mistakes?

 

Well, I think people that received their orders from launch week, then there will be an onslaught of users getting theres in the next week or so from the 30% BCB. So I'm sure we'll see the threads pick up pace for a week or two, probably addressing a lot of the same issues, maybe a few new ones.

 

hopefully not. i ordered around july 6th. so thats 2nd batch i believe. Ohwell have to wait and see

 

Well, I just meant that when the product launched there were lots of orders so lots of people got them, then only a few, so fewer posts, then tons of people ordered with 30% Bing Cashback.

But if you ordered on the 6th and haven't received yours yet, that's discouraging.

 

I ordered mine July 8th and got mine on july 19th
unfortunately, the battery latch wouldnt open so I had to RMA.

 

anyone having problems waking up from hibernation? I can get into the windows loading screen, then it becomes black...

 

I'm sorry to hear that you had to RMA it, I remember you on here asking for help i'm really hoping when i get mine that I don't have to RMA it.

 

I dont have time to RMA it. I need it in tip top shape :/.

 

yeah same. i think you have to hold the power button for a bit. its kind of annoying im use to just opening my laptop up and its ready to go

 

That would be me. I ordered one for me and one for the wife. Ship date was supposed to be yesterday and I didn't see any updates so I called HP and they said the laptops were built & shipped. And that I should get them by the 28th.

The wife is hoping she'll notice it being faster than her almost 3.5 year old DV6000 one.

 

Yepp this thread has officially died down. a full 40 mins with not 1 post!

 

Hopefully we'll be getting some more action in here middle of next week when folks start getting the 2nd big batch of envy 14 orders (basically all of the lucky 30% bcbers).

Looking forward to some more reviews.. .

 

Seriously guys. I am on vacation for 2 days and the original thread hits 10,000 plus all the other threads explode. Most talked about notebook on NBR ever?

 

shoulda known about that ever since the Availability Etc... thread

 

probably better just sleep the computer then to put it into hibernation.