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

I would definitely return it, and ask HP for a new one.

 

i freakin love you thank you

 

Exchanging is out of the question. I would have to return for credit and buy a new one, which would be stupid and cost me 100 dollars for the damned Radiance Screen. Which is ironically the problem right now.

Does anyone have an idea of how the dust got inside? So maybe I can take a shop vac or compressed air and suck the s out?

I really thought it was a closed screen but I guess microphones gotta let the sound in somehow.

 

ask them to match your price andspecs, they usually do that, it took me 4 hours but in the end i got it for the same price, new one is like perfect, no whine nothing, but the loudness of 2 fans running is noticeable. The one thing that funny is that you knw the illusion with black square and white lines running along them, if you stare you see black dots that arent there. Thats what is happening with the keyboard

 

I contacted HP and they would not disclose the brand of the 256GB SDD hard drive...

 

They did price match me before the lady realized I had Bill Me Later on my order.

I guess its just a speck and I wont notice it.... hopefully... oh please dont let me notice it... STOP LOOKING AT IT!!!!

 

Anyone have stats on the time frame for SSD Drive degradation if TRIM is not supported? $525 bucks for a short term coaster isn't going to cut it. My ENVY was just ordered on 07/22/2010 and will be here on Tuesday so I'd expect a newer firmware than those who ordered last month or early this month, but we all know HP isn't known for their quality control.

 

You bet!

 

There's so much misinformation that goes around on NotebookReview. It really makes my head hurt.

TRIM has absolutely nothing to do with the life span of your SSD.

All TRIM does is ensure that your SSD runs near the speed you got when you bought it. Even so, if you decide to flash to a firmware supporting TRIM in the future, you can restore the drive to full performance by doing what is generally called a "secure erase," or "sanity erase," which deletes all data on the drive.

Even so, I'm fairly sure that Samsung SSD has background garbage collection that will keep the drive running at a reasonable speed, which is always going to be faster than a standard hard drive.

There's such a scare going around about drives not supporting TRIM. Yes, you always want TRIM support, but if you don't have it, it's not the end of the world.

If someone had never mentioned TRIM here, I doubt people would have cared. I doubt anyone here could tell if their drive has started to degrade in performance anyways. SSDs are still so incredibly fast.

 

The speed of writes will degrade slightly with each use. It gets more noticeable as the drive fills. If you don't put much on it you probably won't notice TRIM missing for a long time.

You can restore any degraded SSD by performing a secure erase. You lose absolutely everything on the drive forever, but performance is restored to out-of-the box condition. Note, formatting the drive, or deleting all of its contents does not restore performance.

 

You're welcome but I'm not 100% sure if it's the right email so if it doesn't work, you can go to their support contact site here https://support.live.com/default.as...&brand=cashback&&mkt=en-us&st=1&wfxredirect=1 and go to the bottom where you see "Submit a Service Request" in orange. Then click on the orange button under that saying "Submit a Bing cashback Service Request".

 

Would the same principle apply to your standard usb flash drive?

 

USB flash drives aren't usually exposed the volume of writes that an SSD is.

The flash memory in a USB flash drive is nowhere near as durable as the memory in an SSD. If you exposed a USB flash drive to the amount of writes that an SSD usually undergoes, it would likely die quickly due to it running out of write cycles.

 

Thanks for the information! I noticed some people suggested that the firmware on the Samsung main site might not be the same as a custom HP firmware. However, what custom features could be supported on a Samsung specific firmware? HP isn' at hard drive maker so why would they muck around with the controller in a custom firmware instead of leaving that to Samsung?

 

Quick question.... are the driver's pretty easy to get for this laptop? I'm ordering mine with Home Premium, but I have a copy of Ultimate x64 at home that I would like to install. That way I can eliminate all that garabage software that's preinstalled

 

You're right, I'm not sure where people got the idea HP is using a custom firmware on these drives.

You very likely could flash the updated firmware to the SSD.

I know up until something like six months ago, Samsung did not support TRIM on drives using their controller, but they eventually released a firmware update that supported TRIM. I don't know if they released a user upgrade tool for the 256GB SSDs, but you could certainly look.

I wouldn't be surprised if people got 256GB SSDs from many months ago, as the 256GB SSD due to its price is probably not a quick sell.

 

Now I'm even more intrigued to see what will come in the mail on Tuesday. The PDF on the site has pretty detailed instructions on how to perform the upgrade. I wonder if it's worth it to try the upgrade on a clean install or just ask for a drive with a newer build date for most 256GB buyers. I know i'd try the Firmware upgrade; just the Engineer in me. However, for some that might not be the ideal solution.

Thanks for all the great info. As a computer Engineer I still marvel at how much I actually learn form Forums in comparison to all my studies and jobs across the globe.

 

When trying to do a clean install on my Envy, I get a blank screen after the Windows Logo disappears, does anybody know whats wrong?

 

Which should I go with?

I5-450 w/ 8GB Memory
I5-520M w/4GB Memory

Hard drive will be the 256GB SDD.

Difference in price is $100...

Which would you chose?

 

so I did the "Minimized Image Recovery" instead of a clean install ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/6529347-post17.html) and now my temps are ~10*c higher... any reason for this?

 

Just wait... It'll go back down eventually.

Someone else complained of this same problem, and it went away after a couple hours I think.

 

yeah I had that happen off of a clean install.

it's because win7 is indexing stuff all the time for the first two or three or four hours of it's new life.

give it a day or two and it'll cool down.

 

sounds good.

also just comparing clean/minimized image install.. how many processes did you guys have running after your clean install? how many do you have currently?

 

I don't remember but probably like 54 or so

at 59 now.

edit: I haven't done anything to optimize the startup and now also have 3rvx, hpquicklaunch (fix that damn wifi light), part of mediasmart I think (fix that damn volume light), and twofingerscroll running.

 

Anyone know how many CDs I need to have ready to do a clean install? I need to make a windows 7 disc too.

 

Do you mean for making the recovery disks?

Windows 7 itself will fit on a single DVD, doesn't need to be dual layer.

 

Does anyone else have problems with the scrolling on their touchpad?

 

That's funny. Before I got mine they told me (and several others) that it was a Western Digital. Lo and behold it was a Samsung.

 

4 DVDs for recovery discs. Can't touch the laptop while burning and verifying or HP will say they failed and you'll get a coaster

 

You will absolutely be able to tell the performance degredation. All the garbage collection that is done in the background when the drive is not active, is done when you perform writes, significantly slowing down the operation. Not to mention the Samsung is already crippled with 4k writes. So far it looks like some support TRIM and some do not. Hopefully all new ones built from here on out will have TRIM. Sure without TRIM, it would still be faster than a hard drive, but when you spend $565 wouldn't you want it to be as fast as it can be throughout its lifespan?

Imagine if you bought a car for $80k that went 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, much faster than most cars. Well, lets say after a tank of gas, it goes from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds. Sure its a bit faster than your standard sedan, but still a lot slower that what you spent top dollar for.

Wear-leveling, not TRIM, is what affects the lifespan of your SSD. Without it you would burn out your SSD in only a few months most likely because you'd keep writing to the same spots that are "empty". It is built into pretty much every SSD in existance.

 

Wingnut...if you didn't use Bing, I would return the system.

The 256GB SSD is $565... you can get the Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB for $580 over at newegg, and I'm sure if you do more than the 1sec searching I did you can find it for cheaper. The 256GB C300 is basically considered to be top of the line at this point. Also, don't forget to factor in that you will also be receiving a 320GB 7200rpm HDD from HP, that won't be costing you any extra. So basically, if you return your system and opt for the base HDD, by paying $580, not only will you get basically the fastest SSD out there, you will also get a 320GB HDD.

G'luk.

 

but can u put both in one comp? 320 and 256?

 

not til someone makes an ODD tray for the envy 14

 

If you still have to original OS on the drive, make sure the Norton trial is deactivated, I forgot I let it activate while I was rushing through the HP crap when I first got my laptop.

 

I did use Bing @ 30%, I wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

I just got off the phone with the customer resolution center and they are for lack of better terms, useless. They offered me $100, but I still want a drive with TRIM. I didn't take the $100 because I don't want to lose the chance to get a replacement drive.

I also don't think the CSR understood what I was saying, she had a very thick oriental accent and maybe I didn't understand what she was saying. I don't have all day to sit on the phone.

She said the only other option is to exchange the laptop, but I explained the Bing situation to her, and she said she could extend the return window to 30 days instead of 21 which means she absolutely didn't understand what I was saying since I told her I won't receive my BCB for another 40 days.

She said they can under no circumstances send a replacement component because they would need a certified HP technician to replace it. I told her the laptop has a quick flip latch to give access to that component and takes the mechanical capacity of a monkey to change it (well not exactly like that).

Anyhow, I'm a bit frustrated. I still expect a call back from the "case manager" due to my chat with technical support, hopefully by sometime Monday.

 

I got that. I had to reboot a few times to get it to work. I didn't care to root cause the problem, it just eventually worked.

 

The cooling is pretty nice, fans are loud when running load though, creating my recovery disks, processor at 100 and 113 F and room is at like 78 F, though I saw erath's screen shot at like 120 something F when he said he was creating disks

 

yeah. Erath's was that high 'cause he had a room temp of 'bout 88 or so

 

I was looking at newmodus or whatever that site is that has the ODD trays...and they have one for slot ODDs. I figure it should work...right? I mean, all drives "should" be the same dimensions.

I could be totally wrong..but I would bet a bucket of chicken a standard slot ODD tray would work in the Envy.

When I buy my Envy, that's what I'm going to do... get that tray and pop in a 500GB drive to compliment the 160gb SSD. Don't know when I'm going to buy the Envy though...so either I'll be the first one, or someone else will beat me to it.

 

Definetely I would go with the i5-520M. Memory is one of the easiest user-replaceable parts of the laptop, so, if you ever need more than 4GB, just buy and install yourself.

 

Envy slot is 9.5mm or something but if you find one that works for it it could work.

 

hmm so i installed the HWmonitor and it says my processor is a 520m, but i have a 450m

 

it's just a glitch

 

or you could get the i5-520M w/6GB Memory... which would be the same price as the 450/8 ... thats what i would get

 

See 1st page of this thread.

 

I forgot to tell you guys (but of course most of you already know), but a few days ago I compared the Envy screen to my MBP 13 inch screen. There is no comparison. I didn't realize how bright the Envy screen was until I did that. 2-3 notches below full brightness on the Envy matches full brightness on the MBP. Very bright, and I'm liking it.

 

Since it seems like people have had some success emailing HP asking for better prices and things, I'd like to email them about how the configuration I want (base + i5 450m and Radiance) has just gone up by $100 due to the Brightview being standard now, and ask them whether I could pay the old price or something like that. What email address should I email them at? Thanks!

 

Hey, just a question for you guys. Are the sides of the Envy 14 aluminum too? Or is it only the top cover that is aluminum?

And also, do the flowery etchings bother any of you?

 

The intel 160GB (both G1 and G2) from HP do have 'HP' imbedded in the part number so the intel firmware update tool does not recognize them as intel drives, so you cannot update the firmaware. No work around has been found, also you could not update them (if it worked) while they are installed in the envy because the BIOS does not have the required options to do so. You are correct in that the intel firmawre version number is intels 'last' version and in no way custom.

 

Call them. Number is 1 (866) 433-2018.