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

They will supply the 620M, it is considered a spare part for the DM4t, they don't mind if you put it into the envy as long as HP sold it to you then it doesn't void the warranty. But the 640M is coming out soon, might as well wait for that one.

 

Going to give up on this. If I am going to get a laptop this year, might as well go with the dm4t with a ssd, better battery life, worse screen, worse graphics, but only $950.
Or wait till next year when my current laptop decides to die again.

 

My laptop better be shipped on July 7!

 

mine isnt shipping til the 15th...ugh

 

Hey Stefan,

Did you happen to record how hot the gpu got while playing WoW?

Thanks

 

BOOO!!! Mine isn't until the 13th, but the HP rep that I spoke to said that they usually ship a couple days earlier....but idk if we should believe her.

 

i wouldnt believe anything an hp rep tells you

 

to get 5 hours, it needs to only pull 11.8 watts on average. battery is 59 whr (it's really 57 though)

59/11.8 = 5 hours

so far, i have seen a pull of 15 watts from the latest envy 14 screen shots but hopeful individuals are saying that turning down the brightness, reinstalling the OS/removing bloatware, etc., will decrease the wattage draw

 

Well, since the battery is INTERNAL, not sure how it could be like the one they show you on the configuration page. That extra bump is for external removable batteries. So one can assume it's the slice, although it would be nice to have confirmation.

At first I liked the idea of the splice battery, but then realizing it will bring my laptop weight close to my current machine, and cost $200 extra, forget it. If I find I need more battery time I'll just buy a second battery. But that might be a pain because you have to remove the bottom cover to swap them. Not a huge deal, but not as simple as a simple remove and replace from the back of a laptop.

 

i'd rather buy an 8 cell for 75 vs. a 6 cell "slice" for 200

it's not very hard to change batteries anyway...

 

Can someone tell me how I'm suppose to order this from Canada? I can alway ebay. But thats a little more costly,.

Lvivkse I see your also a canadian looking at this laptop, what are ur plans to get it?

 

Hmm... looks like my brother should go with the 450 since he wont be doing any VM. The extra turbo boost doesn't seem to warrant the $100 price increase.

Also, does anyone know if you could order from HP using two different credit cards? He wants to split it half/half between his debit and credit card.

edit: nevermind, found it out myself. Just went a little further into checkout and you could use more than one card

 

My order is still being 'verified' so until it's processed I can't really say how I plan to do this; I'm in the same boat as you right now

I'll elaborate if it works

 

Excellent thanks

 

No, that's unheard of.

Tell him to go onto his online banking and transfer half the value from his debit to his credit card; then pay the entirety on his credit

 

.

Thanks Lvivkse I was just about to ask if the 450 is worth the upgrade but you pretty much summed it up.

 

Hey I've been looking all over the place; can any of you answer these questions for me please?

1) Does the Envy 14's Radeon 5650 use GDDR5?

2) How much power/battery life (%?) can you save using a good SSD?

Thanks!

 

BTW guys, i can confirm that you CAN get $50 back if you have a similar configuration to i450/500GB/4GB ram, if you tell HP that you found a better config for cheaper on CDW.com

they might give you a hard time, i called twice about it...they will ask if you called before, jsut be honest and tell them that you feel that cdw is giving a better deal, and if you wait 2-6 minutes, they will offer you the $50 back since they cannot change the order. =D

 

5650 uses DDR3, and I doubt that you'll save hardly any battery with a SSD, it will be negligable.

 

So can you make a link to that deal on CDW.com? I can't seem to find the Envy 14 on it.

 

Maybe the issue is that he doesn't have the cash. I thought there was an option for multiple cards though. I wouldn't think it would be that uncommon with a large purchase like this.

2) I don't know that you'd save much.

7200RPM HDD typical power is 0.85W idle, 2.5W active
SSD typical power is 0.5W idle, 2W active.

Idle is probably your most important power number, so 0.35W difference. It might add a few minutes but nothing significant.

 

HP NV14-1010NR I5-450M 500GB 6GB W7P and other Notebook Computers at CDW.com

my advice is to play somewhat dumb....just say that it has better specs for cheaper, and they might ask you what you will be using the extra RAM for, just tell them you are a gamer. They will also tell you they do not have any relation with cdw...but again act dumb and pretend you never heard it...just say "uh huh" and just go on about the RAM again lol...they might put you on hold for a while, but just hang on there.

DONT MENTION THE SCREEN RESOLUTION!!!!

 

More fun with HP sales:
I called HP to ask them how the 7 hrs battery life was generated. I explained that users in Germany who have received their Envy(s) are showing ~3-4 hrs battery life with the stock battery life. I asked how the 7 hrs is arrived. She check and came back after a few minutes. She said that the 7 hrs is with both batteries attached the stock and the slice. I love having fun with customer service.

Well i definitely wont be getting the E14 with 3-4 hrs battery life with stock battery and especially to get the 7 hrs requires an additional $200. Unless there is some huge price break to get down to ~$900 for the e14 and slice. If it gets down to that level i would return my toshiba and get the e14.

 

I was checking out this ebayer he custom configures and sells for the same exact price as the hp-direct website(with no taxes or environmental/recycling fees) and he ships to Canada for less than $100(ships free in the US). Which kinda makes sense because he would probably get it for less using cash backs, coupons, or staff discounts. So check it out I think its a good bargain and it looks pretty legit to me

 

There totally is a dual credit card option on the website.


You have to use the same billing address for both cards though.

 

Its not because she's dumb that you have to take her word for it. Personally, given the unreliable testing we have seen, I think we could probably see 5h on normal and 10h on extended battery. Ideally, under max power saving, wifi off and all that I hope I can get 6h out of the regular battery.

 

But i doubt that even with proper testing the battery life will increase from the current estimate of 4 hrs to 5-6 hrs. I mean maybe with everything off battery life may approach the 7 hrs but that is not realistic since folks will want their wifi on.

 

haha thanks, I'll try this sometime tomorrow or Tuesday along with getting $25 for the processor change.

In actuality it is cheaper on the CDW website, the difference is $120 with the same specs. So if I try pushing the HP customer service people, I could essentially save $145?

 

I really dont know if that would work but you could try! I'm waiting for coupons before I call in anymore, by now they think I'm a stingy customer...but hey, a college student has to do what he has to do to save some $$ for books and tuition =D

 

havent read / dont have time to read the last 30 or so pages. i miss anything?

 

Nope. One of the reviewers is about to post a youtube vid, that's about it.

 

oh ok thanks zeth.

 

Too bad I didnt order with an i5-450 or else I would get a price match for sure.

 

The student price though for those same configs is actually basically the same price, I got mine with same specs for 1228 but I also got 4 years lojack for 50. But i did get 125 in discounts elsewhere =)

 

i agree. people who say "BUT the battery isn't even calibrated yet!" need to be realistic; an extra 1-2 hour of battery life is not going to spawn out of nowhere

 

none of the germans have said how long the battery lasts when doing light tasks, you guys are pulling these numbers out of your @55es! the only solid number was a dvd playback test, which drains battery faster than a $10 hooker can drain your balls. you are basing your buying decisions on emotion, not fact.

 

Exactly. This is pretty disappointing. I was expecting maybe 5 hours of internet browsing, but it's looking like 3:30~ or less.

 

So do we know for sure if it is a Broadcomm or Intel wireless card that comes with the ENVY 14

 

I'm still optimistic that with a clean install we are going to see ~5 maybe 6 hours. JJD was able to get 3hrs out of his 15 by doing a clean install of windows especially considering the 14 has a larger battery and smaller screen --

"Not very many changes to make. Mainly get rid of all the crapware that comes with the HP install and use Win 7 instead. This means don't reload all the HP junk like media, photo viewer, norton, support assistant etc.. I also used a command line to disable the Win 7 reserve battery level (in power plan options) which is locked at (IIRC) 12% and minimze the number of processes and services that run at startup. I currently have only 49 processes running at startup and stopped dozens of uneeded services from loading. The Envy out of the box has something like 78 processes running before you even load any programs of your own, some of their crap never allows the CPU to reach full idle which just kills battery life....

A simple test after your done setting things up is to test how quickly your CPU drops to 0% usage in task manager. Open and close several things and watch how long it takes to get back to 0% usage, it should be no longer than 2-3 seconds..." -- quoted from envy 15 thread.

 

Broadcomm
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-owners-lounge-forum/493715-official-hp-envy-14-owners-lounge-230.html#post6421144

 

Sorry, I haven't kept up with the Envy 15 (I really have only checked out the Envy 13 and Envy 14 as battery life is a big concern for me), but was this with switchable graphics on the Envy 15?

If I understand it right, the Envy 15 has a 52.9 watt hour battery, while the Envy 14 has a 59 watt hour battery. If those battery life numbers on an Envy 15 were with the discrete GPU on, then I might believe you. If not, then there's still no way the Envy 14 will pull 5 hours doing stuff like web browsing on WiFi. 6 watt hours won't result in 2 hours more runtime, even with a slightly smaller screen.

 

emotion? i simply looked at a screen shot provided and found the battery life that way. this was before the dvd battery life was posted. i am sure you can find it if you are motivated enough

 

You may be right... but I'm trying to stay optimistic

"I actually can get 3:20 (consistantly) on the 6 cell with wifi on, light browsing and 70% brightness. Max is just over 4 hrs with nothing open except a single app like Word and maximum power savings settings.

Note: the screen brightness has very little impact on battery life since the difference between min and max brighness is 2W vs. 4W"

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...15-2nd-gen-owners-lounge-525.html#post6347892

 

Were not basing it on emotion. Its based on the numbers available to us. The 59 wh battery and approximate 15 watt draw. To get to 5 hrs would mean a draw of around 11-12 watts which probably wont happen with wifi on, core i5 and 7200 rpm drive.

 

So when does the "official" Chrome OS get released?

 

We can hope for maybe 3:45 on average, I'd think.

I don't know why people would want to replace the optical drive with a SSD or HDD, I would want to replace it with another battery.

Fortunately, we could hit that if we went with a CULV processor, I would think. Unfortunately, Core i3/i5/i7 CULVs are not widely available, so it's no wonder HP did not offer them with the HP Envy 14.

 

Okay, I've been keeping up with the thread since it started, but now I finally decided to register. I'm almost ready to bite on this. One question though:

How much battery life differ between the i3-370M and the i5-450M? Or will the battery really be affected?

Thanks.

 

Yeah, but I don't think you can replace it with a battery. But you can do the hdd caddy. So the first isn't really an option.

 

Not much, if anything. Supposedly Turbo Boost ramping up when viewing Flash ads while web browsing has some effect. I use Adblock Plus, so it's not like I ever see Flash ads anyways. Plus Turbo Boost is very nice to have.

It's merely wishful thinking. Though in actuality I'm sure there are a few people out there that have the technical knowledge to do it.

 

So Guys, now my Youtube Video is online..
See some first impressions and explanations:
YouTube - HP Envy 14 - a first look.

I hope you have fun and if there are questions or anything, let me know..