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

hahaha damn thanks micgoogle that just saved me a bunch specially since im orderin tomorrow!
seriously great suggestion thanks again

 

whats the difference between the OCZ and say an OEM Samsung drive?

 

damn, beat me to it! :laugh:

 

Wait, so let me get this one straight real quick? Everyone's saying "zzzomg 3.5 hours battery life" has anyone run a full 100% charge/discharge cycle on it yet, or is that just an extrapolation from the power use?

 

Compared to what im used to 3.5 hours would be amazing. But I'd still have to call shananigans on HP. Should be at least 4+ for web browsing if theyre gonna claim 7+...

 

The germans havent done proper testing on their batteries yet, and until they do, everyone needs to chill.

 

Yeah...I'm starting to think about the acer timelinex 14"...did that ever make it to the states? I google shopped it and found nothing....

+rep

 

Eh, $646 (w/shipping) - $565 = $81 difference. If you get 10% education discount or EPP discount, which many people do, that's about $138 difference.

Eh, show me anywhere battery life will increase by 25%+ even after a couple cycles.

 

the ocz uses a new, faster sandforce controller that makes it faster than other current drives and also has the best read/write speed for anything plugged into your i/o (ex. usb drives)

 

well its 600 on amazon and 620 on newegg with rebate so no not 81 dollars, 41-61 dollars. and this way you know youre gettin a quality ssd not some random one that could be from any manufacturer. if you want more space than the 160gb intel thats the one to get.

if youre already spendin $565 you might as well spend 600 and make sure what youre buyin is reliable and fast, ESPECIALLY when it comes to ssds.

 

I think the point is that we don't know what the baseline battery life is because they've not done a complete battery charge/recharge cycle with a stopwatch handy, so the 3.5 hours number is potentially too high or too low, though likely a reasonable ballpark.

 

are these speed differences even visible to the average user?

 

Where did this less than 4 hour battery life come from anyway? No one has done a battery rundown test and actually timed from battery full to battery drained. AFAIK we are all referring to and estimate on the battery estimator in Windows 7 which fluctuates alot depending on what's going on. If it gets 2:40 playing DVDs and the DV6tse gets 2:20 playing DVDs, and the DV6tse gets about 4.5 hours on battery, the Envy 14 should have no problem hitting at least 5 hours or getting close.

 

It's a program they were given about 10 pages back (I have my post/page set to 20, may be 20 pages for you)
I'm still waiting for a professionally done battery test.

 

iirc the DV6t has a smaller battery than the Envy 14 as well (in terms of whr capacity?) but i believe they found the power draw/second and extrapolated that out over the capacity of the battery. Its around page 290 I think.

 

AS4820TG-3195
$899.99
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium ; 64-bit version; Intel® Core™ i5-450M Mobile Processor (3MB Intel® Smart Cache, 2.4GHz); 4GB (2/2) DDR3 1066 SDRAM; 500GB hard drive; integrated Super-Multi drive; 5-in-1 card reader; Acer® CineCrystal 14.0" (1366 x 768) TFT display; ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5650 graphics; 802.11b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth®, gigabit LAN, webcam; six-cell battery; one-year limited warranty

AS4820TG-5637
$799.99
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium ; 64-bit version; Intel® Core™ i3-350M Mobile Processor (3MB Intel® Smart Cache, 2.26GHz); 4GB (2/2) DDR3 1066 SDRAM; 320GB hard drive; integrated Super-Multi drive; 5-in-1 card reader; Acer® CineCrystal 14.0" (1366 x 768) TFT display; ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5650 graphics; 802.11b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth®, gigabit LAN, webcam; six-cell battery; one-year limited warranty

 

For the people who want portability, do NOT get a netbook. Overall they are throw-away designs with cheap components designed to last maybe a year or two at best. They are a poor investment, by almost any standard.

I am sure that they are exceptions, but overall you have to remember the old adage that "cheap is expensive."

Don't throw money away for an ultra-portable, ultra-cheap netbook. There are good alternatives out there, you just have to look for them.

 

The asus eee series netbooks have had a fairly good record. (mine died last month not its fault though; I bought a cheap non-oem power brick)

 

That's why I spend time researching and I make sure I'm getting my money's worth. Though a warranty can help, it only goes so far as helping out for those once in a blue moon hardware failures that crop up. That's why I put my money toward good build materials and robust design.


That said, it's 10 minutes until midnight here in California. Happy 4th of July.

EDIT: And my post count says much about me!!! XD

 

Man, I hope they add the slice battery to their Computer Accessories store soon. I have $50 in HP coupons from delays to my Envy 15 order that need to be used up before the end of the month.

 

buy me that 14.5in hp sleeve please? k thanks

 

I've been using my Acer Aspire ONE ever since netbooks first entered into mainstream existence. Over the course of almost a year and a half, i've grown tired of doing almost everything (from giant excel spreadsheets to photoshop documents far larger than this poor atom processor was ever meant to handle) on such a small machine. But it has, and is, serving me well, and it does have extremely useful application at times...

But thank ALL-MIGHTY that my ENVY 14 will be arriving soon!
(don't worry, little ONE [pun] you won't be getting completely replaced, I promise)

 

btw, did any of you lucky ones in germany happen to order an i7? Was that even an option? If so, how do temps seem? The fact that there are 2 fans gives me hope!

 

A coupon will not magically appear on the 4th, you need to let them know you want it, and why. Happy 4th everyone

Garen Thatcher:
[email protected]
Garen Thatcher (GarenTatHP) on Twitter

 

I haven't been able to find much information about VT-d.
Running two virtual machines in VMware should be fine with the 450m, right?

oh, and:
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY

 

It's actually quiet this year. Pretty nice compared to previous years, when everyone went crazy with illegal fireworks. There seems to be a bust all the time now (Los Angeles county).

 

no coupons yet...come on HP

 

This is the config I think I'm going with, I might upgrade the RAM, and I'm probably not getting the warranty. (I'm planning on getting a +1 year warranty from my or my mom's credit card)

Anyone who has received one of the link-pattern sleeves: how is it?
I want an in-depth review of its gaming performance!

 

anyone notice in the new pictures under the hood that the copper tubes go to the GPU/CPU (i can't tell which is which) that is further away? I.E. say fan A is closer to circuit board unit A, and fan B is closer to circuit board unit B, but fan A is connected to unit B and fan B is connected to unit A.

(I am deeply sorry if this made no sense... perhaps an illustration in photoshop would have been better.)

While this setup causes the two copper pipes to travel next to each other, probably developing a more even heat distribution throughout the motherboard, I would think that the more direct paths would expel the most heat from the system.

link:
Picasa-Webalben - Jonathan ??? - Envy 14

opinions?

 

It looks like it was engineered well.
That should cool the processor better due to a higher surface area covered.

 

btw, i got my link sleeve yesterday I think. It's not the slimmest pouch ever; it's got kinda chunky feeling corners to it, and it does have an extra pouch in the front for a couple of wires i guess? The neoprene is on the thin side (i forget the grade in terms of wet suits, but prolly something like 3mil if i remember correctly), but the inside is super soft plush lining. It opens from the side which is a little strange for me, but i'm sure i'll get used to it. If I had to guess, i'd say it will contain the envy 14 quite fittingly without awkward gaps or spaces, as this case was probably designed for the 14. Well, that's my first look at the HP 14.5" Notebook Sleeve, link Pattern!


Oh, and i wouldn't game while your envy is in this bad boy. Neoprene is designed to be a good heat insulator, so unless your looking to fry your enemies as well as your motherboard, stay away! Besides, I'd imagine the screen would have to be closed anyway if you wanted it to fit in there >_<

 

Hey StefanHT and Erathostenes, you guys should post a Youtube video for us all to drool over!!!!!!!

 

Thanks!
I'm still deciding what sleeve to get for mine.

And I meant gaming with the sleeve, not in it.
My last laptop woke up inside of a sleeve (inside my backpack) for no apparent reason and the sleeve heated up until I felt it through my backpack.
ALWAYS disable wake timers in the BIOS on laptops... they shouldn't even have that option.

 

yo zeth not sure where this really started but I said I'm not ready to buy yet for a couple of reasons. Why does that seem to matter or bother you. It was a statement about my thoughts. I never said others should not. So I'm not exactly sure why this seems to be a an issue. Someone mentioned 21 day return policy to me, but so what. I have other laptops I'm looking at and my funds could go to any of them instead of order and then change my mind. I can peacefully wait. Notice I'm just talking about me not what others should do.

 

4th of July came, but no new coupons or anything...sad, really sad...

Also I found some interesting specification errors on HP.com: they claim, that the Envy 14 has a numeric pad on the right, and also state that the WiFi is an Intel card...as seen on erasthotenes' pictures both of these is false: there is no numeric pad, and the WiFi is Broadcom, not Intel...

 

Yeah, those errors seem to happen too often.

 

This is a bit of a longshot
But does anyone know if the UK will get any configuration options for the Envy 14? Or are they only releasing a specific spec that we have to live with? (and then buy it from somewhere like Curry's)

 

Happy to see some pics of this machine finally!! A 640 gig WD 5400RPM is and seems to be a lot faster than my a 500 gig seagate 7200RPM. The 640 is going at 40 mbs per second while transferring files, i am sold i think i might even buy another 640 or two of them. Huge difference i am so surprised even though its funny that it has 8mbs of cache compared to 16.

 

A word about heat: I just copied ~75GB data from my old laptop to the E14. The data was ~250.000 small files, so the 500GB 7.2k rpm hdd was stressed to the max. The system temperature went up to 70 degrees celsius at max and stabilized between 65 and 70 degrees celsius during the copy action. The fans engaged soon but did not "roar", it was a continuous blowing sound that did not distract from work - nicely done, HP! The right palm rest (where the hdd resides) got warm but was far from hot.
A little bit annoying was the heat blown out of the right exhaust, it I had to move the mouse 10-15cm away from the laptop until the heat did not feel uncomfortable any longer.

 

Thanks for the review! Can you post a youtube video of the e14? Also, what kind of ram does the E14 use? Thanks.

 

Linux compatibility
I installed a dualboot Linux today which will be my main system. I tried with openSUSE 11.3 RC1, here are the results:

What works flawlessly:

• discrete graphics card: free radeon works with desktop effects
• sound
• webcam
• clickpad
• media card reader
• standby/resume
• all hotkeys except screen brightness
• cable network

What works with manual adjustment:

• wireless needs manual Broadcom driver installation, then works as expected

What works with flaws:

• switching from discrete to builtin graphics without restarting X server does not work
• clickpad does not recognize multitouch, will try to apply te clickpad patches to the synaptics driver later. The clickpad should support all features after this.

What did not work:

• screen brightness adjustment does not work, but chances are high I will get this working when I found the reason.

 

Ok so I'm going to order my envy 14 any day now from the states. I just want to clarify that there aren't any mojor problems with it. Like overheating, bad screen etc. And has anyone tested the battery life on it? I need to take it to school so I need at least 4 hours out of it.
I will be getting the i5-520M because from what people have been saying it is the best for this laptop. Best battery life and performance.

 

Does it even matter? The only thing I care about are temps and thus far (from 2 ppl) they've mentioned it's good. The jury is still out and I'm still waiting to hear from others. Unless you're some engineer or chemist and can spot these things, why even bother with all the nit picky stuff? I only care about the bottom line, the temperature. I'll leave all the design stuff to the HP engineer because they know more about thermal design than me at this point. You could probably give yourself a headache if you look at every minutia in search of a flaw.

 

Hi envy 14 owners

Could you tell us how the font and readability of webpages looks on 1600x900 resolution?. is it good or does it strain your eyes while reading web content?

Regards
Raj

 

don't think the coupons will come today

 

Ugh. must ....wait..

 

I'm gonna wait till tomorrow since it seems like most coupons are released on mondays. if not, i'm just gonna buy it with student discount.

 

I don't plan on using the DVD drive ever. Do you think it is possible to internally disconnect the power to the DVD drive and increase the battery life this way?

Does the DVD drive even draw any significant amounts of power when it is not in use (i.e. no DVD physically in the drive)?

Just an idea.

 

I'm sure you can, I plan on replacing it with a hd caddy later.. though I don't think the dvd drive draws any noticeable power.

 

Thanks for the update on this. I really appreciate it. Do you plan on updating here with info about multi-touch and/or screen brightness adjustment? I'd be very interested in that.

As soon as I get mine I'll be loading Ubuntu on it and will post a similar update.