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

lol, I was using the click buttons at the bottom just fine actually!

 

well..


but those are clicks not taps.

 

Zing! Hmm.. seems to have a valid point.

 

Well the problem I was talking about is when after you opened the lid and it automatically connects to your home wifi network. It shows that it is connected to the wifi network but it doesn't work at all (meaning going to any website would not load and would say your offline). However, that driver update had fixed that issue so it isn't a problem anymore.

 

ah.

well guess I'll wanna find those newer drivers. where'd you get them?

 

Here is the link, Intel® PRO/Wireless and WiFi Link Drivers-Only for Windows 7*[/QUOTE]

 

any idea why battery meter gives me an estimate of 5 hours total with the slice battery attached and 9:23 without it? and windows battery thing says battery 1 is at 100% and battery 2 is not present while its attached.

normal battery is at 100% right now and slice is around 95%

 

whelp.

it defaulted to region 2 as my dvd region after ejecting and re-entering a region 2 dvd 5 times.


oh well.

not region free after all.

 

the radiance screen is amazing. i turned it one step down from the brightest setting and told my roommate to bring his laptop to compare brightness side-by-side. i told him, "i bet my backlight is brighter than yours" and proceed to compare with mine 90% brightness. he wasnt impressed, they were the same. then i tapped the button to bring it to 100% (where radiance just shines) and he was blown away on how bright it was

 

*glances at the desktop*

wha?

why did two desktop.ini files appear when I made hidden stuff viewable.

didn't happen on my last computer with win 7.

...HP, is your fences cluttering my desktop (fences that I don't wanna use)

 

Out of curiosity, what has you following this thread so closely? You provide a lot of valuable information but I see you have the Envy 15 - are you possibly buying the envy 14?

 

desktop.ini is configuration for desktop settings, profiles & Stuff, and how the desktop folder behaves, it displayed on a lot of computers I had even with clean installs. You can delete them they are useless (cause they are stored elsewhere when windows needs them).

 

This is probably entirely obvious but I find the heat produced in the upper right hand side is entirely dependent on what surface the laptop is own.

On my glass covered kitchen table it's ice cold, but if I move it to my lap it warms up a bit.

 

Is it possible to change the region after this?

 

last time I had a dvd drive, I remember that there was an option to change the region on a drive, but only a very limited number of times or something

 

I find the envy 14 as a very good release by hp. I love its sturdiness and strength unlike the the T410 which feels plastic to me even though the t410 uses carbon fiber. Another plus is that the cpu and gpu maintain great temps under light and heavy load.

 

After unboxing last night after work I have a few things to say about my Envy.

The build quality is fantastic. I don’t have much if any extra height from the keyboard or touch pad. There is a feel able lip on the RLQ of the touchpad but after a few minutes of use I was unable to notice it. The keyboard is great and only has a squishy feeling around the O Key when above average pressure is applied. I have the 520 and cannot hear any strange noises from the computer. I was worried about the color, however with a quick peek in real life its darker then I have seen in some pictures. Also the strip of rubber around the fake glass screen is actually great for a tactile surface to grab and a protector of the screen.

My qualms with the machine
There is a huge drop in lighting with notched down once from 100%.
The laptop seemed to slow way down when hot.
The laptop got hot very quickly while on my lap, and the fans aren't quiet. (Compared to my roommates 13' macbook)
The volume controls kept kicking me out of full screen when watching a movie and trying to adjust the volume.
There was already a pixel missing, in the lower middle of the screen.

I'll be returning this at the end of the week as my 30% ssd drive laptop is being built. I can only hope the build quality minus a missing pixel is this good on my second laptop because this thing is awesome.

 

Clean install is the way to go. This thing ZIPS by without that nasty bloatware.

Does anyone know what happens if my laptop goes bust? Does intel still make 430 chips? wlll I be getting a 450 out of sympathy? My laptop hasn't gone bust but it'd be nice to know.

 

Maybe. I have 5 E15's for my photography business and am keeping an eye on the 14 for possible future use as I may need serveral more computers if a contract I'm working on comes through. The calibrated color gamut of the new screen and true battery life are the 2 things I'm most interested in, but it looks like it may be a while before any actual 'real world' info is available. Having gone through a very similar E 15 product launch, it seems prudent to keep tabs on the 14 during initial realease to see what issues come up....

My experience with all the E 15's issues seem to cross over to some of the problems people here seem to be having, so I'm just providing my 2 cents worth where applicable, I wish someone could have provided some of this info to us when the E 15 was first released.....

 

four times.

then it's locked out forever and/or until someone gets a autoreset back to 5.

or some hacked firmware to set it to region 0

 

seconded 10char

 

@JJB or anyone else who would know

How much extra battery life would you gain form going with the slice rather than a second 8cell standard? Just an estimate based on whr please.

Thanks!

 

FYI, New coupon code just recieved from ewiz for $10 off 4GB Samsung DDR3 1066Mhz P/N - M471B5273CH0-CF8 = $91.98 ea , expires 7/18, details in link below.

Also have 1333Mhz for $95.98

M471B5273CH0-CF8 Samsung DDR3-1066 SODIMM 4GB Original Notebook Memory - DDR3 SODIMM 200 Pin - SuperBiiz.com

 

If you do the math the slice would get about 2% longer battery life over using 2 8 cell batteries, and the slice is much heavier....

Edit: used a calculator and I was way off, LOL, it's actually 2.54% more life for an extra $125, IMHO not a good deal.

 

The slice only has 3 watt/hours more juice (62 compared to 59) than the base battery, so that'd be about 11-15 extra minutes of light use on an i3/i5.

 

Thanks JJB I think I'll take the two 8cells. Cheaper anyway.

Funny though that the slice is $200 but only $150 form hp parts. The 8cell is $75 but is like $175 from hp parts. real stupid

 

why cant i access hp.com? Have I been IP banned or something

 

...probably not.


Down for everyone or just me?

see here.

 

I don't have any cosmetic problems like some of the users are reporting(maybe little keyboard flex).
My problem is with the fans constantly running even after I disabled them in bios.
My room temperature is 75f
On idle:
core #0 37C (98F)
core #2 33C (91F)
GPU core 44C (110F)
Is this normal?


envy 14 520M

 

yes.

fans are set to run at apparently any threshold above 30c

*shrugs* not a big deal on my part since I don't realy hear them over other noises in the house

 

Someone said the fans went passive/off in idle after a clean windows install, so it looks like there's something hp installed in windows that makes the fan run 24/7 even at 35°C. Try removing that bloatware (kill any strange process, see if fan shuts down lol) or make a clean reinstall ?
But first go in power management advanced settings (by clicking on the battery icon in taskbar) and set for the normal use profile : cooling strategy to passive from active.

 

Tank You MagusDraco and derpderp for the info.
I don't have a copy of windows 7 home premium 64. Is there a way to download a free copy?

 

Can anyone confirm a SATA optical drive? I would very much like to replace the odd with a hdd

 

Keep the HP tools partition, its only 100MB probably. I think it being used by the BIOS to run some programs that test your memory, etc.

Do they give you the option to create a recovery disk/system image on external HD?

Joel, did you keep the current machine and they send you a new one (by creating a new order)? Or you need to send back the defective unit first?

Definitely you want clean install, the system will be faster too. This is a proven methods to get the best of your hardware for any computers.

 

yeah. microsoft has free isos online.

follow this guide (one of the steps is getting those isos): http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...-hp-laptop-out-box-guide-2-0-windows-7-a.html




in other news I got a 6878 3dmark06 score.


and broke aero til I restarted firefox. *shrugs*

 

In the other 3 envy's the fans are all BIOS controlled so a clean install should make no difference. In the BIOS default is 'fans always on' and they ramp up based on a temp curve and your CPU and GPU temp but always are running at 'low' at any temps. You change the setting to 'Disabled' which keeps them from always spinning but they will kick on at a preset CPU/GPU temp and run until they get below another preset temp, they will still max out if needed. The power plan fan settings on (passive) really does nothing on the i5 and i7's, it is designed to reduce the processor clocks before the fans increase speed, but with the BIOS controlled fans win7 can't change anything, and the CPU's already reduce their clocks to minimum when not needed so their is no advantage to the 'passive' setting...

Also the Processor settings in power plan make no difference on the new CPU's you can set min and max processor to 0% or 100% and there is no difference in CPU power uasge..

 

what power settings are people using for their laptops. Is everybody just sticking with the default hp recommended plan or are there some tweaks I should make to it?

 

I'm gonna eventually make the power button turn it off (not standby)

and gonna make closing the lid do nothing but turn the screen off

 

1st page of this thread has a link to direct free digital river downloads.

 

i have that enabled but i have noticed that the HDD shock protection turns on if you move your laptop while its on and closed which stops all hard drive activity until you open the lid again

 

hmmm....

well that's annoying.

 

I don't have the e14, but the pictures I have seem to show the connector isn't sata, maybe you could rig it to use the E-sata instead.

 

Hey, does HP Tools partition serve any real purpose?

 

Any i5-450m users want to answer the age old debate about the performance difference between the 450 and 520? Now's your chance!

CineBench 10 download from Guru3D.com

We'd be eternally grateful!

 

I second this motion.

 

I don't have my envy yet, but I am guessing that is for OS restore. My other hp had a similiar partition but I long ago wiped and don't recall exactly what it was called.

 

I can run cinebench later tonight or tomorrow with the 450m. My envy deliverd Wednesday and my friend pick it up, but I've been out of town so I couldn't do this sooner

 

Possibly a dumb question: will a clean install kill the Quick Web feature? And if so, can that be reinstalled?

 

yes it will kill it.

yes it is reinstallable (I think)


there's HP Quickweb stuff in the SW_Setup folder on the C drive

it's in the HPQWENVY folder.

it's a few hundred mb

 

it also appears to be in the HPQL folder...unless HPQuick Launch and HPQuick Web are two different things

edit: nvm. This is that stuff that pops up when you turn the touchpad on and off or up the volume or whatever