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

The E15s have had a mix of 1066 and 1333 since the release, latley they have all been coming with 1066 (including the i7's ). But the only reason I have the 1333's is that they were $30 cheaper than the 1066 at the time I ordered. It is a commodity item and the best price wins.... At least the 14 has a 1x4GB option, I could only order 2 x 2GB and had to remove both and replace with 2x4GB, Grrrr... to HP

 

got my Envy 14 today, only been playing with it for about an hour at this time. I absolutely love everything about it so far.

The only thing driving me nuts is the constant cycling of the fans. I have the 450M and the only thing I am doing is surfing the web, nothing else. The fan keeps coming on every 3-4 seconds, and remains on for sometimes anywhere between 0.5-5 seconds. It is very audible and very very annoying.

Any idea on what is causing this and how to stop it?

I have disabled the "fan always on" in the BIOS. Bluetooth & ATI graphics disabled also. The fan does this when using the regular and slice battery, and outlet power.

 

Uh.... there was a decent amount of sarcasm in my post, hence the

Point still is, as long as it's DDR3-1066, you're not going to notice any difference between a Samsung stick or a Micron stick or a Crucial stick...what have you. System is going to perform the exact same...

 

I kinda wish I bought the HP Dm4t now. Mainly because it is a little bit smaller. But it doesn't have as good graphics (not that I really need that) and no back-lit keyboard. Nah actually never mind, I'm glad I took the envy 14 lol.

 

Oh thank god. The max screen tilt is the only thing i care about right now. It could downclock to 100khz for all i care. If the screen angle sucks on the 14, i'll probably have to get a.... (oh lord help me) Acer 4820tg

 

Can you link us what specific memory you ordered?

 

Got it them at e-wiz, looks like they are ot of stock and the price shown was actually $105.98 last week with the $10 off coupon they were $95.98, now they show as $117. But hat's how the commidity pricing varies... Sign up for email updates, they have very good normal pricing and normally a good coupon code discount weekly....

M471B5273BH1-CH9 Samsung DDR3-1333 SODIMM 4GB Notebook Memory - DDR3 SODIMM 200 Pin - SuperBiiz.com

 

I just noticed that Speccy says Stirk's memory is:

Max Bandwidth:
PC3-10700 (667 MHz)

Is that right? Is it not supposed to be 1333 MHz? I read some stuff online that it appears to be a BIOS setting?

 

Its DDR so double the frequency.

 

Memory ratio. 1066 FSB uses 533 and 1333 FSB is 667.

Edit - beat me to it.

 

Rather than having fan on-off-on-off constantly, i would have it always on becuz its less annoying lol.

 

No BIOS setting for memory, just charge mode, fans always on / disable, boot order and VM if you have i5 or i7 That's all the options . And the i5's have an onboard memory controller that can only run 800 or 1066 anyway, i7's are 1066 or 1333.

 

A few last impressions before I go to sleep:

Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase, and I think most of you will be too.

There are only two things that I am unhappy with. The first is the touchpad- two finger scrolling does not work that well, and as I am typing my right thumb is apparently brushing against the touchpad and moving the cursor around. I am also a little shocked at how small the text is on the screen, due to the monitor's high resolution. It makes reading a little difficult, but maybe I will get used to it. Obviously, this is more of a personal thing

Oh, and I got fallout 3 working fine. Very playable at 'high' settings at 1920x1080 on an external monitor.

 

Yes, this is what am have done now. But I am disappointed that it cannot run cool enough to not need the fan so much. Maybe something else is going on.

Hopefully there is someway to set the threshold at which the fan turns on.

 

You can change the text size by right clicking the desktop > screen resolution > make text and other items larger or smaller and choose another size, or you can use a custom size. Win 7 does an excellent job of scaling the text. plus I would enable and 'calibrate' the 'clear type' feature, it makes a big difference on my 1080p display.

 

Did you clean install? If not, it could be the bloatware running your cpu.

 

as expected from a locked down HP-branded motherboard

 

The fan is much more reasonable if you keep the mode in the bios to standard (don't allow the fan to turn off) and set your fan control in the power settings to passive. It runs at a much slower speed and is much less invasive. I've been using it this way for a while, and i've nearly forgot about it....(honestly, i've probably just forgot about it because of how crappy this processor whine is)

 

Alaskajoel, are you sure its processor whine?

It could be the microphone glitch whine...

 

Sorry, been following the forums on and off today. How exactly do the fan settings work? Do the Win7 (or is it BIOS?) power settings allow you to control fan speeds? What's the optimal setting for keeping them blowing as fast as possible during gaming environments? Is it really safe to turn off the fans?


Sorry about the Q-bombs.

 

RMA. It's not worth the literal headache.

 

This machine is getting RMA'd no matter what. I just want to run it into the ground with benchmarks, game testing, and CS5 applications to make sure it'll do everything I want and need it to. I have another e14 coming (build date is the 21st) that I got with the 30% bcb.

The secondary machine has the 450m instead of the 520m and no slice, but a secondary standard battery...amazing how I paid almost 1700 for this first setup, and less than 1100 for the second. If it makes noise too, i'll be pissed. One bad machine is unfortunate, two bad machines is stupid. After reading about people that bought 4 envy15s before getting a good one, i'm not too excited.

 

I've also figured out how to (temporarily) make the whining stop! I've setup the fan profile to passive (down clock the cpu before increasing fan speed) and i've setup prime95 to run continuous stress tests on just 1 thread. It basically keeps the processor set at a constant 25% usage an I get no buzz! (this is getting REALLY pathetic)

In other news, with it setup this way, battery bar shows my battery at 82% capacity, discharging at a rate of 26w...and you thought battery life was poor to begin with :laugh:

 

haha 26 watts run the battery to the grounddddddd

 

So what makes your processor whine?

Do explain so I stop fearing an envy 14 fail

 

At least it's not whining...
If you wanted to do any video encoding or DVD ripping, this seems like a perfect opportunity

 

For some reason, I don't have any "tap zones" option in my Synaptics settings. Is this the same for anyone else? I haven't messed around with mine at all. I know where it should be, it's just not there.

 

I don't seem to have it either. I'm trying to figure out how to assign a tap over the right click button to register as a right click. I assume this "tap zones" option could do this?

 

SO,

Basically I've never understood what the whole touch pad thing is about.

I couldn't stand touch pads and never used mine and have a leetle blue tooth mouse anyways.


So yesterday I was on my friends Mac and asked him about everything the touch pad could do. Wow its so responsive and smooth, now I get it, you really can replace a mouse with one -IF ITS NOT TOSHIBA OR ASUS-. Cause both my previous laptops have had SUCK touch pads.

Now I get it.

Now I wish for a good touch pad also lol

 

Neither do I...It seems it was a function in one of the previous driver releases, but not the current one. I don't know why.

On my machine, the whine is a direct function of the CPU power states. Whenever the processor is below 15% use, it starts making a very annoying, almost morse code like whining noise. If you're familiar with 'singing capacitors', it sounds a LOT like this. I say morse code because depending on how much the processor is being used, the frequency of the whine will change. It goes away entirely around the 15% usage mark, and becomes worse and worse the lower the cpu is used. (If kept at 0-3% for more than 30 min, it will give me a headache)

This is why i'm using prime95 to stress the processor to 25% usage all the time. The flip side is the chip heats up to high 40s and the fan kicks in to compensate...it's a lose / lose situation.

My machine seems to have a worse case than most others, but others have reported it. One person, as I recall, opened the box turned it on, heard the whine, turned it off, boxed it up, and sent it back the same day. I don't blame them - It's a god-awful noise.

 

HAH, so you've finally seen the light! It's like I've always said. You can rag on Mac users for loving their touchpads, but once you actually use one for 10 minutes, it's difficult to let go. Seeing is believing, my friend!

 

My favorite features of this touch-pad so far are: "momentum", "bounce off screen edge", "slow motion", "constrained motion", "sticky borders", and "coasting"

I never knew you could do these things on a touch-pad, it's rocking my world!

After configuring the pad, I love it. I feel like it's actually easier to use than a mouse for many functions!

 

Is there a function that imitates inertial scrolling by chance?

 

So, finally I decided to buy a Sony Vaio Z-model, including SSD, UMTS, win 7 prof, non-glare display and on stock and not to accept HP's poor marketing policy in Europe: only ONE model of the Envy 14, no built to order. And not on stock in Austria/Germany. And the rebate system in the US make me only jealous. I'll pick up the Vaio today and its ready - no waiting, no work für upgrading. And the price: Is not more than the Envy 14 + SSD, UMTS (?), and win 7 prof upgrades/replace. I'm posting this here in the hope some HP guys may read it. Sorry for that dear Envy 14 customers.

 

It's the other way around for me, after using an Envy 15.. I thought the macbook pro's touchbad was crap. It wouldn't continue scrolling when my finger's on the edge.. no side scroll, the clicking just doesn't seem as satisfying either.

 

For scrolling, not that I am currently aware of. You can do like "flick scrolling" (not sure if I am using the right terms here). Like if I flick the pad with 2 fingers, or 1 finger in the scrolling zone, it will continue scrolling even when I take my fingers completely off the pad, and then it will stop once I touch the pad agian.

But for simply moving the mouse pointer, the "momentum" function acts like inertial scrolling.

The "momentum" pointing and "flick scrolling" makes things so much easier for me.

 

I've personally always hated edge scroll. Inertial scrolling, however, is a nice replacement for it. Perfect for surfing 30-post/page threads.

 

Since you are all on the scrolling topic, just a reminder from my earlier post; In the synaptics control panel make sure to click the 'wheel' tab and change it to scroll '1' line at a time. It will make the pages look 100% smoother as you scroll....

 

This CPU noise is very interesting, it must be physically vibrating (oscillating) at such a high rate of speed when under full power that the noise it makes is above 20Khz and cannot be heard, and when under low power it slows down enough to enter the threshold of hearing. Maybe it can be fixed by reseating the CPU in the socket and redoing the thermal compound

 

Yep, did exactly that on my non-multitouch Asus, works like a charm! Only problem is the scroll settings tend to reset each time I reboot. Probably has something to do with Logitech's Setpoint software.

 

Hopefully the tap zone functions will come back, I was curious if I could map the zones to work with iTunes.

On that note, in deleting bloatware I seemed to have deleted the software that has on screen pop ups showing screen brightness levels/volume levels, does anyone know which one that is?

And JJB thank you for the setup guide you provided, after only a day's use it already feels better than a MacBook's touchpad to me.

 

This may be a bit off topic but I am planning on doing a clean install of Windows 7 Pro on the Envy when it comes in with its Home Premium version. What folders do I need to back-up before installing Windows & and is there anything I need to do different besides launching the disc?

Thanks

 

SW_Setup. Forgot where it's located, should be able to find it easily.

 

yepppppppppppp. Took me 3 and I'm still at HP's throat over this (they don't even offer the i5 in the e15 anymore!)

 

Can anyone confirm for the US-model, if the netcard is Intel or Broadcom?

 

Hey Dookie, get me into the SC2 Beta and I'll test it for you

 

I know two US owners have said intel. I forget the model number, but I think it was centrino 6200 or 9200. I know it has two antennas.

 

Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 AGN

 

Dunno how You can get Beta key from Gamestop if you reserve the game though, can't you?

 

Does it achieve good range/speeds?