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

so I got a pert number for the 256 gb SSD drive for the envy 14 from online chat.

608368-001

It is reported as "SPS-SSD SATA 256G 2.5" in stock for $585.20
The price does fit in accordance with the other hard drive option for the e14

the rep said it might be western digital, seagate, samsung, or maybe others

It's not that much information, but it's better than nothing I hope.

 

2.0
Can you please add this info to the first post?
Thanks in advance you amazing mod!

 

Delete please

 

yes
please read this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...hp-envy-14-owners-lounge-287.html#post6460481

EDIT: delete this too
EDIT2: or you can leave it up, I don't care

 

As long as the 256 ssd supports trim I am keeping mine if not then it's going back to hp.
I found a good ssd review
A look at new SSDs from Corsair, Kingston, Plextor, and WD - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

I asked about the battery life today while I was on the phone with HP too, and they told me 4-6 hours, depending how you use the computer. I guess the 4 hours is already confirmed by someone's battery test so it's probably in that range. I am very curious as to why the 8 cell battery is a lower capacity battery than the 6 cell battery. Anyone think (or hope) that HP will make a newer internal battery that might have a higher WH?

 

I hate the inconsistencies HP support provides.

My chat representative said that the SSDs only ship western digital OR intel. Since intel doesnt make a 256gb ssd, I narrowed it down to the WD SSD. Either way, I chose to not mess around and just go for the 160gb ssd and know FOR SURE that it's a x-18m g2.

 

haha, kudos on the quick catch

*robot voice*
"must submit to the laws of 2.0 and dividing by zerooo"
"must... must..."
"terminate those that oppose 2.0..."

 

Does anyone know whether the Envy 14 ships with the Windows 7 DVD? Are the drivers for switchable graphics hard to come by? I am going to remove the HDD and replace it with a SSD....

 

I know that this would happen with Dells. Whenever I ordered new batts for my work laptop (every year), the capacity would go up as the tech improved. I'd like to see a company like A123, who one the contract for the Chevy Volt's battery, start making laptop batteries to see what they can do.

I'll also repost my battery question here which was left unanswered in the other forum:

I have a general question about batteries. I want the extended slice, but didn't buy today even with the BCB 30% because it is still quite overpriced for an extended battery. There are numerous 3rd party manufacturers out there who sell on ebay and the like, some are good, some not so good. I'm wondering how long in the past has it taken from laptop release to these manufacturers selling compatible batteries? Also, is there a 3rd party manufacturer that is known for making good quality batteries?

 

It's not an X18-M.
It's 2.5" which would be an X25-M, and it hasn't been confirmed because no one has received theirs. It's heavily assumed though. It's hard to begin every sentence in a paragraph with "it's". It's also hard to get reliable information out of HP sales reps.

It's not something I would do to... hell with it, I'm ending this "it's" thing.
Anyways- I wouldn't trust a 3rd party's slice because of the vents on the bottom of the envy. If it were returnable or testable beforehand it doesn't seem like a bad idea. And AFAIK, there are no 3rd party slices for the other envys.

 

yay it opened up

Umm after hanging out with you all. I'm still confused on my laptop....this kinda sucks THATS WHAT SHE SAID XD

[Bad Joke...]

Anyway I was thinking of a 15 inch Sager, but the battery life is bad...you know the envy 14 is really nice. but everyone on this thread owns an i5. I want to know how it is with an i7, lots of RAM and the likes. My task is gonna make this laptop work hard and push it like there is no limits, so I wanna make sure it doesn't break

 

No it doesn't but you can make your own recovery disks.
Here is more info on drivers, clean install, out of the box instructions:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...ut-box-guide-2-0-windows-7-a.html#post5496480

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-hp-laptop-out-box-guide-2-0-windows-7-a.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...icles/285280-computer-optimization-guide.html

 

Forgive this possible noob question but this is my first laptop (required to have it for school). With cell phones, when you get them they usually have a little juice in the battery and I have read that it is recommended that you use it and keep it on until the battery runs out, then charge it completely before you really do much else. Is this the same with laptops?

 

Here are some good guides for laptop battery:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...et-upgrades/91846-notebook-battery-guide.html

A notebook battery guide ... Why is your notebook not getting the battery life it's rated at even right out of the box? Are you doing something wrong or just d ...

 

............

 

Here's a question I saw once but was never really answered:
Is there a specific kind of mini displayport to vga adapter we have to use?
Will apple ones work, will generic ones (nearly all are made for macs) work?

 

Thank you so much!

 

What is this?
What's in the card?

 

User manual :] Saves them the paper they would normally use to print on.

 

Yes Zeth?

 

Ah. That makes sense. Smart LOL.
Free 2GB card after I erase it, I guess

Cool.

 

Yes, I was wondering the same thing...

 

Best of all, it says ENVY on it. Talk about flaunting your memory.

 

In other news I really hope you can install the newer catalyst drivers on the i3/i5 version of this laptop.


'cause if not....that'd suck

 

Any particular reason why we wouldn't be able to?

 

I figured it was a 2.5" after a bit more reading. That's good news! Or so we hope...

 

X25-m has been confirmed on the dv6tse.

 

For those of you that didn't get the HP warranty, what are you planning to buy. Is squaretrade a good idea? And if so are you getting the accidental on top?

 

*takes a look through the envy drivers on hp's site*

Well what do you know.

those new touchpad drivers that came out for the envy 17 that improves that touchpad (that came out 7-9) were already there for the envy 14 back on 6-18 (when all the drivers got put up on the page)

But there's a previous version...hmmm. I'll have to see what version is installed on my computer when it shows up.


Also they combined the ati and intel drivers into one big thing.

Well...I hope the newer catalyst work anyway. If not...whelp. maybe uninstalling everything and installing catalyst first then the double could work.

 

Interesting. I suppose we'll have to wait until someone who ordered the 256GB gets their Envy 14 delivered before we'll know for sure.

 

Isn't it an X-25M G2?

 

see above..

 

I hope it's a X-25M. I almost refrained from buying a SSD wondering if it was 2.5' or 1.8'

 

Sorry. Missed your reply.

This thread just moves too fast.

 

And the other Envys, but it doesn't mean the 14 will have it, it's just evidence showing that the 14 should have it.

I can't believe there are more than 1,300 posts in the quasi-official thread

 

well a lot of them came from this thread

 

is there anywhere i can buy the slice battery as i did not order it with the laptop and i kind of want one.

 

I don't plan on buying a warranty. Because I bought with a AmEx, I get bumped to 2 years base warranty. I pretty much figured, after 2 years, if anything goes wrong, it probably won't be a major component and will be cheaper to replace myself. Should anything major go haywire, it might be time to buy a new laptop anyways...

 

I didnt see your post, even using the search method and searching your username. Point me to the right direction plz. Thanks!

Also, does anyone know if there'll be a huge diff between 4 and 6gb of ram on this thing? My desktop and laptop each have 1gb of ram and older CPUs and W7 runs fine (just like XP Sp2 for the previous 8 years). Will I actually notice a diff in the OS itself, or will the +3gb's of ram for me only be noticeable in games?

 

not much will use 6 to 8 gig of ram right now prob in like 4 years it would be more useful imo I bought 8 gig so I never have to worry about it lol

 

Yah, even 2gb would make me happy. For now, 1gb seems like I'm spoiled 4gb is like winning the lotto for me. 6gb is ridiculous, such that it seems like almost a waste to buy. Btw, anyone know what brand of RAM these things have? Also, anyone complain to HP about the lack of Intel net card yet? Broadcom isnt bad, but its BT features suck terribly on my dv2610us.

 

There's a chance that the CTO Envys shipping to the US will have the Intel cards as advertised. The broadcom cards could be just on the pre-configured models in germany and maybe on amazon. I'm going off the info in the first post.

 

yeah.

the manual shows broadcom for everywhere outside of the us.

and then yeah some in the US too.

then there were two separate intel part numbers for the us and outlying areas or something. Don't feel like breaking out the maintenance manual again. Until someone gets their CTO envy we won't know. But let's just assume it's the intel since it states it's the intel in the CTO

 

Also, how much "faster" or noticeable of a difference in speed/capability will there be in this "DDR3" ram vs my laptop's dd2 533(pc2 4200) and my desktop's ddr2 400 (pc2 3200) ? Will I seriously notice a diff "in speed" considering there's already a spike in memory(ability to open lots of stuff, playing sc2 on ultra, etc) going from 1gb to 4gb?

 

The envy 15 I have has 2 X-18m's, not X-25m's.

apparently multi-quote isn't working for me. Just clearing up that the 15 has x-18m and not x-25m like the e14 is planned to ahve.

 

Ther is absolutely no performance difference between the 2.5 and 1.8 intel 160GB SSD's. As a matter of fact the only difference is the 1.8" is 1.6 ounces lighter... The envy 15's come with 2 x 1.8" 160GB in RAID 0 mounted sideways in a 2.5" drive bay with a special bracket. So if your really lucky maybe HP thought ahead and included an extra SATA connecter on the 14's mobo and you can eventually get (or upgrade) to 2 x 160GB SSD in RAID 0 = 500/MBs read and 300MB/s write

BTW I have un-RAIDed mine for redundant storage and am getting ~250 MB/s read and ~105MB/s sequential write speeds. While RAID 0 was cool for bragging rights there is really nothing you can do with all that W/R speed in real world applications, maybe down the road with USB 3.0. I actually did not notice any difference in actual performance when I un-RAIDed the drives, it's still blazing fast...

 

Clock speed is clock speed so 1066Mhz is the same on any computer, where you'll see the improvrment is in the intels icores memory controller (onboard with CPU) and win 7's memory management.

BTW from your above post regarding amount of memory, be forwarned that the envy 15 comes 'out of the box' with like 78 processes running and IIRC 1.6GB of memory in use when you simple turn it on.... so 4GB is a good thing The 14 seems to have essentially the same software package so it will be simialr before doing a clean install.

 

I apologize in advance if this was already answered, but did anyone happen to get the brand/CL readings of the memory? I understand the memory maxes out at 1066 Mhz? Trying to get a feel for 4gb stick prices...

 

Thanks. Ya, my dv2610 came with crapload of bloatware on it + Vista's first release, so I'm very aware of the crap that's on there. I ended up dual-booting XP with it, and well, it eventually became just using XP all the time, and having Vista at hand whenever I was bored (which was like never). Then I installed W7, and it's just like going back to XP but with all the pretty visuals. Currently, on my desktop w/ W7 ultimate, there's only 17 processes. I should be expecting around there, when I clean install W7 on it. I haven't decided if I want to to do an OEM install, or just use my Ultimate serial on it.

Anyways, 4gb will be like overkill then, right?