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

drivers? dunno.

Acer people got it to work by setting the bios to dedicated only, then installing the drivers.

you can't do that with the hp bios

 

Power Options > High Performance > Intel Burn Test > Show me the temperatures.

 

just downloaded battery meter and the estimated total time is 3:03 on power saver...

EDIT: maybe i need to give it more time as it just went up to 3:53

 

Oh by the way, I paired up my bluetooth DJ headphones with the E14.
It's beautiful. Absolutely orgasmic.

 

Thanks, ordered a pair of cx300 for under 30 from overstock.com.

 

My stupid crippled E14 )':

YouTube - Envy14 Problems!

If you want to see how lucky you guys really are.

 

bam.

also ..yeah saving it as a jpg kinda..killed the quality of that screenshot.

 

Where did you find the driver update?

 

windows update had one.

pretty sure it's the same as the new driver on hp...except it's the correct 64-bit driver (for some reason HP's was the 32-bit driver. pretty sure I picked 64-bit win 7...but who knows)

 

In the video, you proposed to HP that they send u a new e14 with same specs and once that arrives u send ur retarded one back and u get full refund? wth so u keep the money and the new e14?

 

Overall, this laptop is phenomenal.

Design wise, I think HP did a fairly good job. The metal is etched on top of the laptop which looks good, but it may not appeal to some people. The build quality is excellent, and is a great effort by HP but its not yet close to the Macbook Pro's quality. The aluminum chassis is very sturdy and not flimsy at all, while allowing the heat to spread evenly. The hinges are strong and you don't have to put a lot of force when pulling back the screen.There are vents in the back and to the right, which don't produce a lot of heat during light tasks. There are two other vents in front which draws in air. Edit: These are not vents, but the speakers...lmao

The Keyboard is very nice and it is a breeze to type on it. There is flex when you press the keys at the P area, but its little even when quite a bit of force is applied. You probably won't notice at all when typing. Its a con, but not a major one. Also I love the quick action keys. Just touch a button on top of the keyboard and you turn on the backlight and one button to turn off the wi-fi.

The trackpad is great and has texture that is neither rough or smooth, but needs time getting use to when using the multitouch gestures. This can be fixed through one of the guides on this thread.

What blew my mind was the screen's picture quality. This is top notch stuff guys. The bezel around the screen is flat and smooth. Around the screen's bezel is a rubber lining; The rubber lining's purpose is probably to protect the supposedly glass screen from making contact with the keyboard. So big points for HP for adding that.

Okay now to hardware. The webcam is very nice and picks up movement smoothly. It can only capture up to 640x480 resolution but again this is not a big deal. The optical drive is quite awesome. It is not like the PS3's slot load blu-ray drive where you have to put a little force to push the disc inside. For the envy, you have to put the disc almost fully in before the drive sucks it in. It makes noise when you put a disc in, but don't all slot load optical drives make noise? The 320 GB hard drive I have in my envy 14 is in fact a Toshiba. As for the ram, I never heard of a manufacturer called Eljia or something like that.


Ok, now the answers a lot of people have been looking for. The 450m arrandale cpu I have on my envy 14 does make that whine but its not noticeable until you put your ear to the keyboard to the left. When turning off the bluetooth it helps to lower the noise a bit.

The temperatures for the cpu cores hover around the lower 40s in 78 degrees F room temperature during light tasks, which is very good. As for the gpu core on the HD 5650 dedicated graphics core, the temperatures is below 50 F during light tasks, which is exceptional.

The bloatware software HP has installed on this laptop can be very annoying to some people. There's HP Stardock which is kind of like of a dock on OSX and Hulu Desktop. Most of these softwares are kinda useless so you may wanna remove them.

A great feature of this envy is the Quickweb feature which allows you to acess email and the internet in around 10 seconds max. This is useless for people who have solid state drives which boot windows in about 15 seconds but may be useful for people who have magnetic disk hard drives as their main.

Overall, I will recommend this laptop. This laptop deserves an 8.5 at most.

Edit: Sound quality from the speakers is average, but when you plug in earphones its great. Another con is that its pretty hard to plug and pull out a flash drive. Either HP shrunk the USB ports or its just me....haha

 

Well my configuration was i5-450M and upgrade to 160GB SSD, the rest I left standard. It cost roughly $1,600 after converting from US to AUS dollar, then shipping was another $200 so it came out to be about $1,800 (a little bit more). Yeh the only envy I have seen in australia is the old gen 1 Envy 15 with i5, 6GB RAM and it cost $2,700 which is ridiculous.

 

im really sorry man. you dont deserve all that.

 

Ok, well I fixed my keyboard problems and can fully enjoy the envy now. Turns out HP the rubber "spring" was broken and was not giving me the feedback the other key were.

 

btw.

You can get the webcam to work at full resolution with other webcam software (non HP stuff)

 

Sorry to hear about that. As I posted in the comments section, you got a straight out lemon.

 

holy ing dude! (sorry for the cursing).

thats RIDICULOUS

EDIT: nice way to bleep out cursing NBR

 

Some of the E 15's had the 'wiggling' problem and what was causing it is that one of the 4 rubber feet had not been stuck precisely in the slight recess cast into the base, it was slightly off which made it taller than the rest of the feet so it would not sit flat.... Not even sure if the E14 has the same type of feet but it is worth a close look. The E15 feet can be removed by gently prying off one corner and then reapplied in the correct spot.

 

Yes we were discussing getting it in Australia, not Austria lol. But yeh, the only way I could get the envy was thru ebay because the only envy the have in australia to offer is the e15 with i5, 6GB RAM and it costs $2700AUS so whats that? About $2,500US dollars? I'm also trying to avoid the tax office lol

 

Here's the video of the flexing on the left side of my keyboard. There's some on the right too but it's not quite as bad.

YouTube - Envy 14 keyboard flex!

Anyone else getting this? Tell me its normal! I might be able to live with that.

 

how much force are you pushing down with thanatos?

Mine flexes the same way if I push down hard but you know, regular typing it isn't an issue.

 

I wasn't using much force in the video. Maybe a little more that normal typing. It flexes when I type too. Even with light pressure you can see that whole section of the keyboard wobbling like a little wave.

 

yeah same. i can get it to flex if i push hard enough but i never do when regular typing so i dont see what the problem is.

 

I dont know if anyone already posted this but just in case:
YouTube - Unboxing of the HP Envy 14

 

Why yes, the person who uploaded it, informed us of it

I believe that he suggest HP charge him for another E14 with same specs and when he receives that E14, he'd return this one (with the scratches et al) for a full refund.

 

Christ HP fixes one issue and another crops up. The envy 15 keyboard is completely solid. Now we have wiggling and flexing keys? The acer folk fixed their flex with some tape on the underside.

Some of you could open it up, remove the keyboard and see if a simple mod might keep it tight. I'll try it when mine comes.

 

woot ya minnesota

 

Did you have an "inspected" sticker on the box? Was the item sealed (re-sealed)? It looks like customs dropped yours or like when inspecting a sample from the palet. They did something similar to my nephews PC when I sent that International (opened it up, didn't put the door back in right since they dropped and bent that). It would explain what looks to be dents and scratches.

 

TF2- the highest setting you can get, with an average of around 35-45 fps. lowest it goes is 30fps during a hectic fight. OH and I am playing it on a 22in LCD @ 1680x1050. So it should run even better if you were just using the envys screen

 

Ok, here's video number 2. I was lighter on the keys this time. Any thoughts are welcome.

YouTube - Envy 14 Keyboard Flex 2

 

Nice. Good to hear about bad company 2

 

This is exactly what mine does, but it doesn't bother me at all.... I dont push down really heavy when I type

 

Hey, I saw this a few posts back, but my i5-450M is making a "screechy" type sound. TBH I can't tell what it is...anyone else having this problem?

 

ok. that flexes more than mine.

they may not have seated the keyboard correctly or something.


if you want you can try to reseat it yourself.

you have to take the top cover off and stuff (there's directions in the maintenance manual that SHOULD be on the sd card you got).

 

Im kinda nervous to get mine now hearing about some problems. keyboard flex, possibility of an incredably F*cked up machine, cpu whine :S

 

The bottom right side of my touchpad is lifted a bit higher than the rest of the touchpad. It is not flush with the palm-rest. If I move my finger from the touchpad to the palm rest on the bottom right side I can feel a jump. Everywhere else, the touchpad is flush with the palm rest.

Also, my keyboard is lifted a bit higher on the top right. Everywhere else it is ok. I get a lot of flex on the keyboard if I push down hard enough just like Thanatos.

I think HP did a crappy job setting the keyboard and touchpad in place.

Actually, I think I know what happened with the keyboard. It only flexes a lot in certain places. Around the a key and around the p key. At the g key there is almost no flex. Same with the right side of the backspace key. If you go down the column near the g key, there is almost no flex on that whole column. I think that is a place where the bottom of the keyboard is attached to the chassis or whatever it is connected to down there. Then moving to the right, there are a few columns that are unattached. The worse being around the p key. Then there is another attachment around the right side of the backspace key, to the left of the delete key. THis is why my delete key is floating. In addition, there is also one near caps lock. This is all from me feeling around.

God, I hope that makes sense. This is driving me nuts. I can't decide if I should return the laptop over this and order another one. I wonder if it will have the same problems? Anyone else having these problems? It doesnt affect to drastically when I'm typing quickly. Maybe I'm just being obsessive, but I expected the build quality on this to be superb (and it is everywhere except for the keyboard and touchpad setting)

 

Seriously. If you can find a mod and make a video and/or snapshot guide for it, make sure to PM 2.0 so can he post it on OP.

 

Ah, crap. I was almost hoping this was normal.

Thanks for the help, though. Does the SD card tell me how to re-seat the keyboard, or just take the top off?


On the other hand, my CPU doesn't whine!

 

your touchpad may be messed up.

mine doesn't sit flush with the palm rest at all.

but that's because it's a clickpad I think.

then again. It may be set right and mine may not be. Either way it's not an issue for me so I don't care.

 

I was actually inquiring about BF:BC2 not TF2.

 

maintenance manual is detailed and has info for everything.

around page 62ish I think is how you take the top off.

farther along is how you undo the keyboard (need the top taken off first)


I'd give you the mediafire link to it or upload it again.

but..

well it's on my other computer and the sd card is in the computer box elsewhere in the house.

 

That person will be my hero.

 

I think Acer users with flex issues were fixing it using double-sided tape underneath the keyboard. I wonder if something like that would work for the ENVY 14 too.

 

So has anyone with a i5 450m done any benchmarks yet? There aren't any out in the wild (that I'm aware of), so this would be a first look.

 

Thanks man. +rep for that!


On a positive note, my Blade Runner BD rip looks great!

 

That really screwed up laptop must of been damaged in shipping, I once got a box delivered by ups soaking wet and falling apart, half full of water where you can actually pour water out of the box.

The only thing that bothers me is this squealing noise that nearly everyone is noticing, it must be one of the little caps on the motherboard doing it. every laptop has keyboard flex, its nothing.

 

So I forgot to copy the maintenance manual to the computer before wiping it. A rapidshare/mediafire would be greatly appreciated and should probably go on the first page.

Im going to take some pics of my keyboard and touchpad to show how they arent set right

 

maintenance manual should be on the sd card, not on the computer itself.

 

No. I use the retarded one for now.
Once my new laptop comes, I return the retarded one.

Once they receive the retarded one, they will refund me for the retarded one.

So in the end, I sell the retarded one back to them, and have a good one (hopefully)

 

Haha there's finally a "user" review on the hp website for the ENVY 14.

Pretty glowing huh.