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

really mine reps have been super nice both times I called. Seemingly wanting to bend over backwards for me. I have to say I have been impressed by the customer service

 

I'm also VERY disappointed that someone commented that they thought maybe the edge to edge screen cover might be plastic, as opposed to glass.

Is there any new / definitive info on this issue yet?

 

You're kidding me!?! What did they say to you about the refund??
How dare they!

 

The whole reason that they are adjusting the pricing is because people are writing and calling and complaining, I wrote to them yesterday and someone on the forum here told me that wouldn't accomplish anything but yes it really did. The CPU pricing is still about $50 too high when you consider that it was supposed to come standard with an i5 at $999, and we all know the slice battery should only be $75 to $100... go complain and let them know whats up. Tell them how mad you are that its not on sale for the July 4th too.

This is the guy to send complaints to:
Garen Thatcher, [email protected]

 

$22 is $22 saved. Now go buy yourself a movie ticket and a burger.

 

How do you know it was because of your e-mail and not because of some decision-making from HP's management?

 

*shrug* They told me $45 on the phone. I will have to wait to see what it comes through as on my credit card statement. As with all things that you've heard after a conversation with HP customer service by phone, take this with a grain of salt.

And I agree with vladmoney- the reps on the phone seemed very eager to please.

 

If you want to add your voice to the complaints, but are too lazy to call or write a letter, just copy and paste this email to [email protected]

 

Idk about everyone else..but I was a little disappointed that the E14 came with an i3, but I am way more pleased about the final product. I am ok with paying that extra $100 to have a winning laptop. I am not going to nit pick everything wrong with this laptop, when in the end it looks like an amazing buy.

 

Because the guy I wrote to is in management, and I know I am not the only one who wrote to him, they use customer input to make decisions like this.

 

Yep, they got your email and called an emergency board meeting to discuss how they were going to survive after you enlightened them. :laugh:

I work in a large corporate environment, things don't happen that fast.

 

I second that. I think this computer is already a great value, has anyone seen macbook pro pricing recently? I'm waiting until tomorrow to see if there is a sale but regardless I'm buying one. I can't wait to get it.

 

You just saw them change the price, things do happen that fast, they didn't change it out of the goodness of their heart, if they did then they would credit all the money they took back to people automatically instead of having a secret price matching guarantee where you have to call in.

 

You don't need to wait. Look here:

If they change the price later, you can ask them to adjust your order price after the fact.

 

Thats only if "they" change the price, you wont be able to apply a coupon after the purchase.

Also anyone know what the wireless card is and if it can be upgraded? I am really looking for more specs, if someone could post a device manager screenshot or from msinfo32 that would be great

 

I don't necessarily agree with some of your points.

(1) The Envy 14, as much as I'd hate to admit it myself, is priced decently. But read on.

(2) The i3-370M is in all actuality actually just a variant of the i5 with an increased system bus speed and the turboboost left out. Most lay people think of an i3 as being inherently that much weaker than other processors out there. In all actuality, it competes with the i5-430M.


But what I do agree with:


(1) Misleading claims - We've seen this on Youtube interviews and elsewhere. No USB 3.0, no standard i5, no $999 standard pricing.

(2) Potentially incorrect info shown on Amazon Good luck sorting out the return claims on that one, HP. Unless their revised info is correct, that's definitely going to translate into thousands of dollars of lost profits. Have fun firing a few employees over that debacle.

(3) They need an introductory discount. I don't wish to sound contradictory. But while I said the pricing was so-so to maybe decent, it's not great. Let's face it. In these harsh economic times and especially in the midst of a looming back to school shopping season, it seems to me HP would benefit from offering a discount on this model. It doesn't need to be permanent and it doesn't have to be $450 off.

They're not going to lure any student buyers away from Apple with the current price. Your average dumb and poor college student is drooling at Apple's student promotion and the shiny iPod Touch and the prospect of a thin, light, and shiny Macbook. If they want to ensnare any potential switchers or even score a few conquest purchases, they'll have to do a coupon promotion. A BCB promotion would be too ambiguous for most laptop buyers for reasons I hope I don't need to state.

Students want a portable machine, and many will want a high-speced machine at a lower price point. The Envy 14 and 15 fill these sweet spots.

(4) No reviews Really, HP? Are you serious? You spend millions on advertising a "premium" notebook and spraying ooze all over your "MUSE" philosophy. You spam youtube with commercials that lead many to believe we're getting a free horse and kendo swords with an Envy purchase and interviews with rambling and stuttering PR spokesmen who were clearly reading memorized talking points. All that sounds fine and dandy as long as it doesn't stop there.

But what about the third party reviews? What about all those review units you sent out? Don't you think it's in the interest of your customers to know what they're getting before they buy? Why take pages from the Gestapo handbook by forcing websites like Engadget to sign non-disclosure agreements? Are you that afraid of standing behind your own product? I thought you guys were supposed to be one of the biggest electronics companies around!

 

I asked erath for that yesterday and he posted it you can search for it under his profile

 

whoo price cuts are for the win!

but for now, spain vs paraguay!

 

I really want to buy this laptop, but the bronzish color is a major turnoff. Why they can't offer a brushed black or silver casing is beyond me.

 

Not to be mean, but if color is that important to you, there are plenty of Black Macbook sellers on craigslist and silver Macbook Pro sellers on eBay.



I actually like that HP is choosing to distinguish themselves from their competition.

 

it's more silver or bronze depending on lighting conditions

 

I didn't want to sound mean, but Cory pretty much sums it up. When you're in meetings with the boss(s), a single complaint or even five doesn't mean much when your customer base is well into the thousands. As I stressed earlier, correlation doesn't posit causation.

 

I didn't say I wanted an Apple now did I? They could offer some more options, that's all I'm saying. The other HP notebooks have these options even though they're plastic.

 

I would love a black variant but the bronze might surprise me.

 

I think we need a separate thread for pricing talk, just so that we can keep this thread on topic with relevant information from the owners of the Envy 14...

Any updates from our friends in Germany?

 

Their busy celebrating.

Come back tomorrow.

 

This might be a dumb question but does this have built in speakers? How's the sound quality of these speakers?

 

Unfortunately, the other thread got locked, and I'm guessing 2.0 will be less inclined to allow us to start anymore Envy 14 threads.

 

Yea I know what you mean. I don't mind the colour so much, but I would prefer if there was an all black model. Maybe they will do a limited edition like the 15.

I don't see why people feel the need to tell you to buy a completely different product just because there is one thing you complain about. I'm sure if you wanted a Macbook you would get one.

 

You're not in law school yet, hold off on the legalese.

 

i wouldn't go so far as to call the color bronze...it's got a bronzish hue
Picasa-Webalben - Jonathan ??? - Envy 14

this pic shows the range of what it can look like haha
Picasa-Webalben - Jonathan ??? - Envy 14
left side grayish, right side bronzish

I still think it looks good either way

 

it's supposed to have really good audio, but we have no real proof at this point.
its got magical speakers endorsed by dr. dre or something. look up beats audio.

 

Bro, that's not legalese. Legalese=vague, Latin words spammed in each sentence.

 

Envy owners I enquire of you, how doth the speakers on envy 14 sound? Do they tickle the years with their tingly tangerine melody or has the melody been muffed by inaudible poor speakers?

Lend me thou knowledge and current experience with this matter pertaining to this laptop; whereof in our case is HP Envy 14

 

OK, let's put the quality of sound aside. Does the envy14 have built-in speakers? I don't want a laptop where I can only hear sound through earphones. I saw pictures of this laptop but I cannot find the speaker holes.

 

I agree with everything you said zeth, but I want to clarify where you disagreed with me.

In actual fact, the i3 370M even without the turbo probably is faster than the i5 430M, and they were charging us +$25 to upgrade to an i5 chip that is slower than an i3. My point here was that for a so called premium product promised with an i5, we should be getting performance better than an i3 class of CPU. That means they should be giving us a 450M as standard, because it is the slowest i5 that is above the i3 range. We are paying already $100 more than the forcasted base price, and they get these CPU's in bulk for dirt cheap, so this makes sense to me.

The prices still need work in my opinion, CPU upgrades are still about $50 too expensive, slice should be $75 to $100, they could offer a base config of i5 450M with a 1333x768 screen for $999, and charge +$100 for the radiance display. That would be acceptable I think.

 

to be fair, that e-mail didn't do a thing because it was written such that no important person will read it. i learned this the hard way when i started working -- if you want people to read what you write, make it concise.

anyway, i am really happy that some already have received theirs and it looks excellent. i shall be having my usa friend buying it for me next week (shame about canadian CCs..)

thanks a lot for the info everybody

 

I'm totally gonna send this email to him.

Thanks E14. You're the boss.

Who cares if it't not concise; just need to send an email just to say we did it.

 

The built in speakers are quite good, on standard settings a nice round sound, not very loud.. But when you boost up the equalizer it will become very loud and still not distorted, even though the quality degrades a litle bit...
But for Skype Calls its very welcome, you can talk from quite far away, noise cancelling is excellent, so you dont need headset but can walk in the room..

The webcam also has some nice features like face recognition and it pans and zooms to follow your movement in the room..

Only disappointment, I havent been able to get the full resolution output of the webcam, the driver cuts it down to vga resolution.

Does anyone know a good alternative webcam driver?


Off topic: What a game.. Germany : Argentinia 4:0!!! What were the odds? One could have made quite some money with bets..

Off topic again: Its very pleasant to sit in the garden in the shadow and do some light surfing.. No warm surfaces under or on the notebook, low temperatures on the CPU.. The screen on the lowest brightness is still readable, very pleasant experience...

 

Totally agree, for typical consumers who don't exactly have the tech background that most if not all of us have (even moderately) would almost certainly purchase a MBP over the Envy 14. I asked my sis a few weeks ago about which one she would prefer (she doesn't know much about computers) and she picked the MBP over E14.

Why? You not only get a decent (but ripoff IMO) laptop+student discount, but you also get a nice 8gb iPod Touch for free!!!

I am certainly a bit ticked off now that I think about it...convincing my parents to buy me a $1,000+ laptop wasn't easy....they're still trying to convince me to buy something from coscto just so I can return it within 90 days if I don't like it.

 

Not that warm? Nice.

 

does anyone know the max ram speeds supported by the motherboard?
im going to get the ocz vertex II 240GB and swap that out for the 320 gb and
i wanted to buy my own 8gb of ram so that i can be sure i get the best timings.
so is it 1066 max or can i go up to 1333?

 

Its metal, it reflects the light it gets and just adds a little hue..
I think the best illustration of how many hues it has depending on the surrounding is this picture:


The overall impression is even more premium than the silver colour of the Macbooks, at least I have the impression..

The people that have seen it so far all commented very positively on the material, color and touch...

 

Did the Envy 15 have the plastic Wi Fi bar along the top of the screen as well? I thought I had remembered the lid of that device being all metal.

 

For peeps asking what kinda ram HP uses in their laptops? My me and my ex-roommates (I have a dv2610us, and he had the dv6000series 16incher), both have ddr2 533 (pc2 4200) Patriot-branded ram. This is the same value-branded ram that they sell at Fry's.

So maybe they might use something similar in the envy's.

 

Envy maxes out at 1066 Mhz for i5.

1333 Mhz for i7 (it's what the chips support)

 

I am on battery, only surfing, it doesnt even reak a sweat..
Ambient temperatures are around 25°C, the processor runs at 41°, very acceptable in my opinion..

 

1333mhz works, get that if you have a quad core, otherwise either one will work. The bios probably won't let you adjust the timings, so you are wasting your money if you buy RAM with super good timings, that stuff is meant for overclockers who can adjust it in the bios.

 

no no no what you have is ddr2 ram

 

What is the resolution of the webcam anyways?

Also tell us more about the battery life when you have charged it one or two more times.