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

the almighty eBay
Samsung 256GB 2.5" MLC SSD SATA MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB - eBay (item 110555592745 end time Jul-10-10 05:19:37 PDT)

 

Same

 

I hope you don't mind me asking, but do you live in the UK and have ordered from the US HP site or did you live in the UK and now you've moved across the pond?

 

Probably another "too good to be true" deals, even though the link is legit, I'm dying to see if it/they work properly. I would totally buy one if A. I had the money and B. If I had a spare laptop-or a laptop to begin with.

 

Im from the UK but i live in Berlin. I didn't know you could have a UK CC with a Germany billing address. Anyway i have changed it and put through the second order. I just think its harsh that the first order is "cancelled" but they still put a hold on the money of upto 5 days.

 

I'm not talking about the physical process of changing the battery, I'm saying if you need to change the battery you have to drop what you're doing and shut down, replace the batteries, then restart. The slice alleviates this problem since you can just attach it if you need more battery life, but at the moment it's expensive, and unfortunately rather heavy.

I'm not sure why OEMs don't include a tiny secondary battery that can last for ~10 minutes, so you can swap batteries without shutting down. I know a couple laptops have this feature, but it's far from widely adopted.

 

59200mWh/14800mV = 4Ah = 4000 mAh

 

well in general samsung drives have been going for 350-400 on ebay so the price isnt totally out of wack, the guy has good feedback...

ill post up some benches and reports once i get everything in, i doubt there will be complications

 

Heh...no...

59200mWhr / 15000mW where 15000mW is the laptop's power draw that someone saw somewhere. Though the power draw won't be constant and I don't know if anyone ever said under what conditions that draw was observed.

 

Ohhhhhhhhh, it calculates mAh, something I do understand.

 

so i cant really figure out how to view the manual?..any help?

 

Have any of the germans done a legit battery cycle with real life situation, wifi one, internet?

 

click on the link, and on the side it should said loading, wait until it loads then you have to type in a anti spammer 4 letter/number code, directs you to another page. Then wait 1 min until the counter is down to 0 and it will show you a download link. Its like megaupload for free members. opens as pdf, so you need adobe or something that opens pdfs

 

it'd be nice if someone mirrored it on media fire or something (where there's no countdown timer)


eh. 60 seconds isn't that bad but bodango can time out (the timer) and force you to wait 60 more seconds.

 

on the download page there's a captcha box on the right. fill that out, hit enter, and wait for white button at the next page to load.

edit: too late, darn!

 

I think by today he can give us a good estimate.

 

ask and you shall receive

en-US_manual_595071-001a.pdf

 

Do anyone of you know whether the Intel i7 640LM is somewhere to be found in notebooks?

I mean it has a TDP of only 25W and is clocked between 2130-2933Mhz !

Shouldn't this one here be the superior mobile CPU with yet massive power?

 

thanks alot

 

thanks (10char)

 

I also uploaded to Media Fire: ENVY 14 - Manual etc.

BTW, interesting fact: The Radiance display has different planes of polarisation for the different colors of the RGB subpixels..

Makes for a very interesting Rainbow effect when viewing it with polarizing Sunglasses:



For those requesting a battery estimate, my current using pattern (work, travel from hometown to workplace etc) does not allow for full battery cycles.
But the BIOS has a Diagnostics tool which I will have running over night.. Maybe that will give more informations.

 

Nobody has yet mentioned how long the laptop actually lasts on battery, except for the dvd playback test that stefan did on the very first day, everyone has been doing shady math and taking wild guesses in lieu of any firsthand reports.

The power draw number is not real, it was invented by a forum user, he created the number as an estimate based on a screenshot of eraths uncalibrated battery meter.

 

polarized pictures are kinda cool

 

@e14, I totally agree. I tried to let my skepticism regarding that number shine through...

 

Refurb'd with no warranty. That's one component i wouldn't skimp out on.

 

I think quite a few of us are dying to know an accurate number on battery life.

 

Ahh I got it, I'll keep that in mind. Also doesn' the ENVY 14 come with the additional 9 cell battery that can be attached to the bottom just like the ENVY 15?

 

Apparently there are some issues with the firmware on older models, and you can't know what you're buying.

 

meh, i'm sure i'll find the proper firmware for it

worst case scenario i put it back on ebay for $400 and buy something else

 

I don't want to create a new thread for this so I figured I'd ask here.

I've never created Recovery discs, and the manual said it would take up to 20 discs using CD's to create them. So I just wanted to ask, on average, on many gigs would I need to create a backup? Are CDs/DVDs the only means of doing so? DVD-R or DVD+R? How many of them?

 

Definitely. That's gonna be a big part of whether I opt for selling my MBP and returning to Windows 7 (on a native machine).

 

You will want the recovery discs. It'll allow you to return the machine to factory state if you ever need to install a new hard drive, or decide to sell it later. It will probably only take 4 DVD's (DVD+R, -R, whatever doesn't matter).

 

Out of curiosity.. what MBP do you have and why are you considering the envy 14 over it?

I'm leaning towards a envy 14 right but am also considering a i5 MBP 15.

 

Kind of a tangent here, but:

What would be considered a good case for this one? It's gonna be carried around college, most likely in my backpack. Maybe I'll carry it if I have to. Would a sleeve be best? If so, is the 14.5" chain-link design one on the ENVY14 customization page decent/strong?

 

No, the slice battery for Envy 14 is a 6 cell (62 Whr). The standard primary battery is a 8 cell (59 Whr).

As you can see from these figures, you can't determine how good a battery is based on the number of cells alone.

I think the 9-Cell for the Envy 15 is around 80 Whr

 

yea i would like to know to if u dont mind

..about the mbp vs envy

 

So, that being 1 DVD+/-R=4.7 GB's each. Therefore 4 DVDs=18.8 GB?

 

I've got a mid-2009 15", C2D @ 2.53. It's really a nice machine -- I have had absolutely no problems with it, and I've come to appreciate a few things about OS X even though I was always one of those guys who never had any issues with Windows in the first place. The tested/proven ~7-hour battery life on this refresh of the MBP was a big draw in the first place, as I'm in medical school and thought it'd be nice to have a notebook I could take with me, carry only a slim sleeve with just the laptop, and leave the power cord/adapter at home. And then there's the Time Capsule, which automatically handles wireless backups for me -- also a big perk when the idea of losing stuff on my machine makes me cringe.

I'm not at all averse to throwing together my own NAS and scheduling backups on a Windows laptop, but these days, simplicity is good.

It's really just a preference thing for me. I could just as well use Boot Camp and dual-boot Windows 7, but there are a couple of usability quirks with the MBP that bother me and are still unfixed with Boot Camp 3.1. The Envy 14 takes a couple of the things I like the most about the MBP that aren't in many "PC" laptops, like the aesthetic appeal and giant touchpad, and puts them into a Windows-centric machine that was expected to have solid battery life.

The software side of it evens out; Apple Mail is the best of the many email clients I've used, and Preview.app is great since I spend a lot of time with PDFs and appreciate the easy annotating, but I much prefer Office 2010 on the Windows side to Office 2008 on the Mac side (2011 is better, but still in beta), and I very much like Windows 7 itself.

Although to be fair, I'm not entirely opposed to picking up a new 15" MBP either.

 

Well if you have the ability to wait until next year, I would. Hopefully Apple will see their competition and up their game when it comes to processor, graphics, and possibly a higher resolution display, with USB 3.0 to put a cherry on top. If they could bundle all this within a 13'' or 15'' for about $1200-$1500 (w/o discount) I would almost certainly buy it.

Although no one can be sure when Apple will decide to upgrade their MBP's, we can assume they will do so on a yearly basis (April 2010) so maybe next year during the Summer.

Despite knowing the E14 is great, and possibly above the league of MBP's, I can't help but wonder what I'll see myself doing mostly in college. My mindset right now is that I probably won't be gaming at all-which would beat the purpose of buying E14, or any laptop with such an expensive price tag...God help me.

 

why did they remove some of the cpu options for the envy14... i was going to potentially order mines with the core i 5 430 but now that isn't an option anymore.

 

im having the same issue i can get a dm4t for 300 less and i know i will not be doing much gaming at all in college but idk there is something telling me to just get the envy14... frak

 

The i5-450M dropped $25 in price, so it's only $50 more than the i3. In my opinion, you should definitely go with the i5-450M anyways.

 

Yes I will

 

The Build Quality, the dm4t isnt as high a standard of materials as the Envy14.
Build quality is something that is majorly lacking in every department of laptops outside of Macs and Envys. And there is no way in hell im becoming a mac fan-boy.

 

Lol @ "C.R.E.A.M!". But I will be calling for a refund if the Envy 14 doesn't come with the Intel wireless card because the Intel card is not only better than but also at least $25 more expensive than the Broadcom card

 

not only the quality but the style of the laptop, the macbooks are very sleek and i have just been waiting for other computer manufactures to make a laptop that looks similar and compares in-terms of build quality and construction for an affordable price. i wish they would have upgraded the internals in the dell adamo because that thing is just lovely looking. but oh well i am pretty sure i will pull the trigger on the envy i am just waiting to see if with in this week or the next a coupon will come out.

 

Just curious: why is that?

 

You need 4 single layer DVD+/- for the recovery discs of Envy 14. The last disc is not fully used.
You can also use a lot of CD-Rs but you can't use -RW or dual layer discs (that's what the program says).

 

I know, Im holding out for a coupon. But im getting really antsy. Im sure to pull the trigger by tonight or tomorrow.

 

I'm also holdin out for a coupon. My VAIO FZ 160 has ever-increasing colorful vertical lines all over its screen. I really need a new laptop, but I'll be moving to Oregon in a couple of month and even if there aren't any coupons by then I'll still be keeping the $50 or so that I'd be paying for tax.

I'm hoping that there will be some great coupon before then though
I don't think I'll be able to wait two month. I almost ordered it last week.