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

No, I hear a whine that comes and goes, but only when I have blue-tooth enabled for some reason.

 

Guys mine came, but I am not going to turn it on. But I took it out of the box to check it out and give some observations:

- my box was obviuosly well handled, seriously no scratches or dents on it
- from the outside it looks solid and well build, no question about it. No creaks what so ever
- it does look silver and you can see the flower design, which gives it an artsy look. But honestly its still professional enough looking.
- the keyboard seems great, I get 0 flex while typing around the P region. Even when I press down with full force (hopefully didn't break anything), the flex is very very small.

thats it, you can ask me cosmetic questions if you want, but I don't think there is any problems with mine that would warrant any serious interest.

 

Thanks for the replies. I guess it's not a problem for everyone. Now I gotta decide whether I should take the risk and get the i5-520M or the i5-450M.

I +rep to mostly all of you except I gave too much rep in the past 24 hrs.

 

I also have the 520m and don't hear anything unless I stick my ear up against the keyboard. I think some posters in this forum want a computer that runs at 80 F, is no louder than 10 dB, runs crysis at ultra settings and also does their dishes

 

The better question would be "has anyone with the i5-450m heard a noise from their processor" since we don't know its specific to the 520's.

 

thats great your laptop came in great condition but may i ask why you are not turning it on?

 

You are right I believe someone with a i5-450M reported a whine when they put their ear to the keyboard. I believe it was LiTh07.

 

It's a damn good thing the E14 isn't an Apple-made system. The Steve Jobs fix for this mysterious sound would be "Well, don't use it in excessively quiet enviornments" :laugh:

 

From what I've read the touchpad has no option to set deadzones. I want this because i rest my thumb on the touchpad to click, but any tiny movements of my thumb cause the cursor to move around wildly. Is this confirmed? Are we thumb-pressers out of luck on the e14?

 

I have the 520m but can't here the processor whine. Most I hear is maybe the fan or hdd when I put my ear an inch from the keyboard

 

Thanks for the reply I think I will just order it with the i5-520M. Just waiting on BCB.

 

I'm sorry, I've fallen woefully behind on this thread. It appears lots of people got theirs today? What's the news?

 

I don't know how I'm doing it but as i type I somehow cause the underline button to be hit and then a new page opens up. Stupid touchpad. Palmcheck's on all the way too.

Should update the drivers and customize it some more though.

 

Sorry for off-topic, but isn't apple giving away their bumper cases with all the iPhone 4s now? And sending them to all the early adopters

 

also. It totally has new car smell. Wow.


strong new car smell.

 

A good portion of people are happy with it. A few have problems with some weird "whine" they hear from [supposedly] the processor while using the system in quiet environments. A small minority of folks (one so far?) received systems with physical defects.


Putting things in perspective: the biggest gripe people have is a small electrical buzz, so things are going well I'd say

 

I will repeat this one more time. There is a built in type of 'deadzone' that prevents your thumb from causing the cursor from jumping around. I can keep my thumb on the botton over the 'swithes' and even move it around without it affecting the cursor movement I am doing with my finger, the feature was implemented several drivers back in place of there dead zone setup options...

 

Could someone let me know how long it takes to charge the standard battery from full drain? Thx

 

my temps for idling while plugged in with the radeon turned on

 

Yes there is a hiss hmmm anyone found out how to get rid of it yet? i have the 450m

 

So i did a little testing, seems to be the processor. It happens when its in use...it really doesn't bother me its VERY VERY faint


*edit* well it seems to be the wireless?? the hiss is more prominent when the wireless is on (bluetooth is off)

 

So is the electronic buzz only on the 520 or are other people reporting it too? I hope mine doesn't have any annoying sounds
Anybody with it called up to complain about it?

 

Please help
I am getting this message on my envy:

BTTray

! Error: Unable to start the Bluetooth stack service

 

It's going to be around 3.5hrs. A bit more than the E15, it's a striaght forward relationship of capacity vs. the charging curve of the Lithium ion polymer battery charge specs. E 15 = 53wh and ~3.25 hrs charge, E14 = 59Wh ~ 3.5 hrs charge....

 

I'm going to have to disagree with you. You may very well be correct that there are countermeasures in the drivers designed to eliminate thumb-resting issues, but they certainly don't work at least on my system.

Here's an experiment: Put a finger on the left-click button and another finger on the edge of the trackpad mid-way up the track pad (so its in the 'normal' tracking field). Move the finger not on the left-click button at a slow, controlled speed horizonatally across the pad. While doing that, move your other finger to the left.

I don't know what yours does when doing that little 'experiment', but my system immediately starts going into the pinch zoom functionality.

However, I havn't changed any touchpad settings yet, so these are just out-of-the box results.

 

Yep that one is perfect. Good choice on HDD too. I think the 500gb is fine for me, but I have been tempted to put one of the 1gb drives in

 

It seems that a few people with the i5-450M are reporting the sound also.

 

Ok. You can update the catalyst control center but you can't update the display driver, hdmi/dp audio driver, It says that they are up to date already.

whelp.

 

Well, this is small news but I just got the link sleeve.
The zipper is nothing to complain or worry about— there's a soft ridge covering it.

 

As I said there is no interference from the finger (or thumb) over the switch area when moving the cursor with my other finger. Maybe my palm check and sensistivity settings help with this but it is really not an issue at all for me.

You said you haven't adjusted your settings yet so quit complaining, I cleary stated that the out of the box settings suck! Also there will be a learning curve for this trackpad, I will wager that a week from now you will be loving it and rarely (if ever) reaching for a mouse.

 

in other news, hp quickweb booted up for me for some reason.

It looks like it uses a modified firefox or something.

no real control over what you can do with it but it does have tabbed browsing.

 

Have you actually checked out how HP terminates the DVD drive? HP is notoriuos for using non standard interface connectors or cables on the mobo side of their drives....

 

quick boot seems silly, especially since you can boot into windows or a full linux distribution in 20-45 seconds after bios. Can we really not spare 30s of our lives? Plus, IIRC it take an extra partition.

 

How fast does it boot up?
And where is it installed? (partition on the hard drive?)

I'm crossing my fingers! I want a drive that I can store everything I want to have with me and will never use on.

 

Oh I'm not complaining at all, and I do plan on going to town on the touchpad settings once I get a fresh install of W7 on it. Obviously with something like a touchpad, different people will have different opinions. I'm just letting people know that the buttons don't have pre-programmed deadzones or anything like that, and that there CAN be interference from your clicking-finger if you attempt to use this trackpad just like you would a traditional one with separate buttons.

 

I have no clue where it is installed.

It boots up within 10 seconds or so.

touchpad is sluggish in it.

It is booting up for me automatically for some reason.

I also don't get to see the post screen so I can't figure out what button to hit to get into the bios.

 

450m vs 520m cinebench anyone ? ^^

Also quickboots and such, I only use them when somebody goes "hey can I borrow your computer to check my mails ?"
Here goes your quickboot browsing without having you going through my awful desktop and files lol.

 

also when it boots into hp quick start automatically, there is a 10 second countdown before it goes onwards to windows 7 (you have to hit a button to stop it).

 

So I won't be getting my Envy for a good week or so as I ordered a bit late but I have a few quick questions?

What do I need to do a full reinstall of Windows 7. Does the laptop come with a disc that you can install with or do I need to have a windows 7 disc ready before it gets here.

Does anyone have a step by step process for getting it setup correctly?

Does whipping it like this allow you to return it in 21 days?

 

Hit esc. it will give you the option of lots of things.

As for the quick start crap, you can disable it in control panel. It has it's own configuration settings.

 

Regarding the ATI display drivers, AFAIK officially ATI does not support systems with switchable graphics despite the fact that the discrete mobile cards are supported.

 

you will need turn burn the recovery discs from windows 7. it has been mentioned how to get it set up correctly. Maybe 2.0 would be nice and add a quick re-install guide to the 1st post. Seems like a lot of people are finally getting sick of the bloat that comes with OEM machines.

 

Try tapping the 'esc' key as it boots and that should get ypou to BIOS. There is a setting there for how long to have it pause while booting to selct the IOS option. IMHO it is a useless feature, especially if you have SSD's. My boot time is 17 seconds and full restart is 24 seconds, so I have no use for it and never reinstalled the app..

 

<s>If you haven't yet gotten into the bios, try mashing del and f2 as it's booting.</s> Nevermind, it appears to be esc on the envys.

 

Believe it or not, there's a twenty-one page sticky thread that gives step-by-step instructions on this topic. Convenient, right?

 

in other news the newer synaptics drivers on HP's website won't install.

'cause apparently the 64-bit version is actually the 32-bit version.

*lets windows update install what it found instead*

 

Thank you very much for this! Any idea on the ability to disable the physical area of the touch pad where the buttons are?

 

My unboxing of the HP Envy 14.

Not really anything new to show, just thought I'd upload a video for the heck of it.

YouTube - Unboxing of the HP Envy 14

 

well let's see what happens now while the new ones are on.

Well it's still jumping around when I move my thumb but at least it isn't doing weird new page creating things anymore.

It'll do.

 

Thanks! Was that Michael J. Fox running the camera?