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

nah they stopped handing out beta keys because the game is being released soon. I should have thought ahead and pre ordered, but I was just to busy to get into SC2 lol

 

Know if anyone else has tested SC2 on the E14?

 

nope. I might try out the cracked singleplayer version on my Envy if I cant wait till the 27th. The AI is awful on it though, and it wouldn't be a great representation of how the envy14 will actually play the released version of SC2, because its poorly optimized =\

 

My comcast is currently in limbo so I'm borrowing WiFi from a few houses down, so I can't comment on speed but the range is fantastic.

 

After 2 days with my envy I'm pretty pleased

gripes: no deadzones on touchpad
not as good battery life as i had hoped
the slice battery is rather heavy, i'm not sure if I'm even going to use mine unless i really need the extra battery life ($200!)
fan seems to be running constantly, interesting

other than that it's been awesome

 

This is one of the best tips I've ever come across - makes a huge improvement. I couldn't understand why scrolling on windows lappy always had to be so jerky.

Is there any similar setting to improve the jerkiness of the zoom?

 

Buy me an Envy 14 and ship it to Aus, i will do some SC2 (and any other games) benchmarks for you

Will also consider trading my exclusive very super rare SC2 Beta account for an Envy 14 laptop so you can try it yourself

A man can try right ?

 

The official system requirements are out.
It seems like the Envy 14 will manage to play SC2 quite well.

Someone must still test it out though

 

You can buy it from ebay in case you didn't know. Thats where I'm getting mine ( I also live in Aust ). Here's the link to the lady who sells them: eBay My World - opal_cadet You can send her an email with the configuration you want from the American HP website and she will send it to you, the only extra cost is shipping, she charges the exact same price for the laptop as on the official website. Several people have ordered from her.

 

Can you record this whining sound and maybe the others that say they don't have the whine can see if maybe they do hear something similar? It would be helpful for us folks just getting their Envys as well. Thanks.

 

I dunno. I've used a macbook touchpad. It seemed ok but it's still far from a good mouse replacement. Kinda like a video gamepad controller. They have better ones, but nothing will replace the keyboard and mouse combo.

I can say other manufacturers could definitely learn from the Mac touchpad, so its at least bearable if you don't have a mouse. Otherwise my touchpad is only for emergency situations.

 

Honestly if your Envy has a whining noise, as painful as it might be, I would send in for a replacement one.

Mine has 520m, 160gb SSD and when I'm just surfing there is NO noise what so ever. No fans, no HDD (obviously), no clicks/buzzes/whines..

Sounds like something is defective.


As for the SC2 testing. I wasn't fortunate on getting a Beta invite, however I plan on getting it Day 1. I'll tell you how it runs if people are still curious by then.

 

Which CPU do you have in the laptop? How long are you getting on the standard battery?

 

I don't know about TaKiToes from Austria, but for us in Denmark we only get two choices of configurations available - one with low resolution display, and one with slice battery, 6GB ram and a ridiculous price ($2410.38 and no discounts whatsoever), so if it is possible to customize orders through eBay it might even be cheaper despite the additional tax and shipping costs.
Yet there are some other things to take into account:

• The guarantee that if anything goes wrong or is wrong with the computer from day one, can it be repaired in our country (Denmark, Austria etc.)
• Keyboard layout is different from US layout, so I need to be able to customize to a danish layout (Usually with island keyboards the buttons have same sizes and locations, so the top plate will likely be the same as for US models).

If anyone has any knowledge/answers to the two above points, please don't hesitate to post them.

 

As for the touchpad, most of my other experiences I've had with laptop touch pads are on my friends Macs. After changing a few settings like the scroll to 1 line, disabling touch to click, and making my cursor faster, I found the touchpad was about as good as a Macbook's. It's different, I feel like I need to apply a little more pressure than you'd need on a Macbook, but it's the best Windows touchpad I've used. My personal opinion.

As for battery life, I'll do I timed test later. My unscientific first impression is that I'm getting better battery life than some of the claims, but I guess I'll test that out later today.

The backlit keyboard is even and gorgeous. There is some leaking of the light if viewed at a 90 degree angle, but when using the laptop it looks good.

The speakers are okay to good. There are not bad by laptop speaker standards but they're not great. I need to buy some nice headphones since I heard the audio from the headphone port is great.

Disc drive is nice. Not as cool as my Wii's where it get's sucked in, but it is abnormally quiet!

I"ll be back later for more impressions, maybe a few stress/battery tests.

 

Ugh there was a 30% bcb?! I must have missed it. How long ago was it, and how long did it last? Too bad bcb is ending on July 30th, I probably missed my chance to save a bunch of money on this laptop...

 

Yeh i know You could have saved a bit of money using PriceUSA btw

Im just a little worried about import tax + GST which would push to price out $200 - $400 depending on the configuration.

Ill wait till end of July when the stores here get it in, and see how low we can push them

Currently we have i5 models with 1600x900 and higher from there on (no SSD models i think though), starting at $2399 RRP though

Purchasing through ebay will inevitabley work out a little cheaper though, simpley because those smelly yanks get everything cheaper and there dollar is so weak at the moment (at least compared to normal, and for Australian dollar).

 

Opps sorry double post. Please remove.

 

Lasted 2 days for a couple of hours. Small chance they might bring it back next week. I'll send you a PM if it does. Set your profile to notify you by email if you have a new PM. Then you can use your phone to check. Google has a email to text message service. You can use that too.

 

2.0 can you do this for me also?

 

I don't blame you. If HP won't let you buy the much better configs available elsewhere then they shouldn't get your business. I've heard great things about the Z; I'm sure you'll be pleased!

 

For those of you who want to reinstall windows:

HPs QuickPlay program does something funky with the MBR. I was NOT able to reinstall my own copy Windows 7 enterprise off of a bootable USB or DVD. Instead, I had to start the installation process in the already-installed copy of Windows 7 and let it go from there. After that, no problem.

Interested in hearing other accounts about this. Can anyone confirm/deny?

 

I am highly considering doing this!

Just wondering how it is working out for you and what you're paying all up roughly?

This notebook seems perfect for me, so very keen to see if I can get it this way. If only they offered it in Aus, although even then it would be stupidly expensive.

 

Oh, and a little bit of other information:

It looks like you can only use the HDMI output port if you're using the 5650. I don't think the intel is able to drive over the HDMI port- which is a shame, because many of us use a dual monitor setup, but are aware that a HDMI cable is cheaper and provides higher quality output than than a mini port -> VGA adapter. When I'm not gaming, I would prefer to use the 5650, just to keep heat down.

 

Oh, you're Australian? (disregards me calling you Austrians then )

Do you have same keyboard layout as "those smelly yanks", and are you able to get RMA handled by HP Australia?

I'm reluctant to buy through eBay as we in the over-bureaucratical country of Denmark get pretty good terms when buying something through the internet (basically, we can almost test a computer under water and return it to the retailer and get a full refund, as long as it is done withing the first 14 days).
So if I can avoid it, I wont buy from eBay, but with the danish prices an configuration options, I'm close to buying two computers and hope that one of them works optimally - this will be approximately the same cost as one top-model version in Denmark if I can avoid the tax office

 

Of course.

 

Sorry if this has already been covered
Is there any way to disable the touchpad on the left and right mouse buttons. I like to rest my thumb on the left clicker but the entire touchpad is.. well ... a touchpad, including the buttons. I can't find an option for it in the settings menu.

 

If it's not too inconvenient for you, I'd like to get in on this PM too, 2.0. Sank yoo.

 

Can i get in on the notifications as well? I think I may have asked already but the brains not working so well this morning......
Thanks!

 

What does she gain, other than rep, by doing that?

 

*looks at all the SC2 talk*


whelp. Mine's out for delivery and I'm in the sc2 beta.


Soooooo

 

The 10% student discount she gets.. She is selling for standard price.. Smart girl if you ask me..

 

Added.....

 

got mine! first impression: THE SCREEN IS AMAZING!

 

Got mine as well! First impression: this thing has new car smell.

 

You paid for the radiance screen. It's supposed to be amazing.

 

got mine....well not really, but its delivered. I'll be able to get it tomorrow....

LiTh07....so have any more impressions on the screen? find that the contrast is too high or that some tweaking needs to be done?

 

nah no tweaking at all. One odd thing is the screen brightness levels. it goes from low, to medium low, to medium, then all of a sudden BAM full brightness. there doesnt seems to be a 75% brightness option. Not a big deal to me though

 

DUDE you have the 450m! can you let your processor idle and tell us if there is a whine?

 

I know it has been asked here before but wht is the battery life with the slice? I heard rumors it was like 10 hrs?? Can someone confirm or atleast test it out? I really appreciate this thanks so much

 

Thank you for all that info. Really an interesting option. Although a direct import costs some patience and extra expense. But may be easier than buying in the US and picking up there, as they don't accept a foreign credit card and they reject a delivery to a hotel in the US. So we pay stupid prices in Europe i.e. € 1.800 for the Vaio Z (incl 128GB SSD, i5 520, 1600x900 display, backlit keyboard and WWAN, win 7 prof) or a HP Envy i5 520 + SSD + win 7 upgrade, wwan? As I'm living halve time in Austria and halve in Peru I can save a lot money at my dentist in Peru or buying cigarettes (2 packages for less than a dollar) hi hi
The Vaio Z is already running smoothly, in my house doing a lot of updates via wlan. Looks great, bright, non-glare display with excellant contrast, quiet fan (without peak load) playing my full-HDs H.264 smoothly...And a smaller piece compared to the Envy 14) is more mobile, ie smaller.
It seems to me HP is not that much interested in private customers from Europe, sorry.

 

This is my one complaint thus far as well. Full brightness is really bright when playing at night and the colors sometimes look fluorescent. But knocking the brightness down just one click results in a major drop.

 

Yo, idk if I'm allowed to post this here, but the Link-pattern or whatever sleeve. It kinda sucks.

It only opens on the left. I thought it would open from the top.
Also, there's no padding on the bottom. And i think overall this won't protect my laptop well. But again, I used that $25 coupon to get it for $4. Can't return it now. I'll use it whatever.

But just sayin, not recommended.

DO NOT BUY HP'S LINK-PATTERN LAPTOP SLEEVE 14"

 

probably going to have to find a better way to control brightness.

or just set it at 75% manually or something

 

I bought the 14.5inch sleeve.


My assumption of it was "protect from scratches, shove into other bag" or something.

 

yeah i bought the sleeve to slip into my backpack

 

Yay! I like your review- especially "abnormally quiet" optical drive... I've had bad experience with laptop optical drives.

Here are three lower end pairs of IEMs that should sound great in the 14:
Sennheiser CX300 - $25-40 (CX400 if you want a modular cable)
Klipsch image S4 - $60-80
Shure SE115 - ~$100 (newer version of the e2c)

 

the HP media stuff is awful. I wanted to test out the speakers but it wont even play any of my mp3's. Good thing im reinstalling windows

Right now im about to burn recovery discs.... Ill check for processor whine in a min when I can let it idle

 

Same thing was true on my dm4 and on my dv6.

 

Lol you need like 2.5 slices to achieve that 10 hr battery life