*HP ENVY 14 SPECTRE (3XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Cla5h, no problem on the response timing. I didn't really have any burning questions. I have not yet purchased the Crucial M500 simply because I haven't needed to and many other projects taking precedence. Plus, more than any other purchase, delaying this one can only result in substantial savings! I think I will get one for my wife's machine soon, though, as she is using 75% of the available space on her SSD and I can't find the recovery flash drive I made for her machine and thus can't free up the 15GB on the recovery segment of the base SSD. NOTE: Do you know of any way to make another recovery drive after you've made one and the machine won't let you make a second one? Well, best bet is to get the second drive, and thanks to your trail blazing and simple instructions, adding the second SSD is as easy as a one-touch purchase on Amazon and removing a few screws on the Spectre!

I haven't had any post-purchase remorse either - though I paid so little I'd have to be crazy to feel I could have made a better choice. I do still have more fan whine than I would prefer, even with the BIOS update. It does seem to come and go more quickly now, though, and if I'm not doing anything at all taxing I set the maximum processor performance at 25% in the power profile and it keeps the heat down and hence the need for fan cycles seems to be reduced noticeably.

I know I will not ever be brave (stupid, in my case!) enough to attempt the RAM upgrade, but I am on the lookout for a local whiz who will do it for me for something around $100. When I have my accustomed 15+ browser windows opened I get a little warning from Norton that Firefox is using a lot of memory, and find that there 3-3.25 GB in use, which is not much head room. I haven't noticed things slowing down, but if I remove the cpu throttle from power settings it does cause the whiny fan to run more often and for longer.

Once I've added the second SSD and the RAM, the Spectre will take care of nearly all my laptop needs and I'm thinking the build quality should ensure at least another 2 years of no-compromise use. The only attributes that give me momentary pause are battery life and screen quality/resolution. On the screen, just a year ago it would have seemed ridiculous to complain, but as beautiful as this Radiance screen is, it is not terribly bright and has pretty high black levels and, also being glossy and 900p it definitely puts it in the bottom 25% of 2013 premium ultrabook screens., which are a rarefied group and require a $1,200-$1,500 investment just to be at parity and the Radiance is still in the upper 25% of all Ultrabooks, including the 2012 models and, taken on its own, it's a lovely screen with excellent color accuracy and saturation. I have long been a screen fanatic, though, and the Radiance is inferior to even the one on my Sony Z13 (2010) in terms of brightness, contrast and matte vs. glossy (though the glossy is marveridiculously gorgeous with a FHD movie with the ambient lighting turned down!) and it really takes a punch compared to, say, the FHD IPS screen on the Asus UX31A which measures about 500 lux, 100% sRGB color gamut, 1,200:1 contrast, matte finish and infinite viewing angles. It's only side-by-side that the difference can seem dramatic.

As for the new crop of FHD+ displays on everything from 7" tablets to 11" - 13" laptops, I think this is total overkill and is something of a bizarre over-reaction to the years of frustration we had over 1366x768 screen with washed out colors, gray for black and barely enough brightness to be seen clearly in a dark room. Until Windows - and even OSX - can make full use of the insane resolutions now easily attained relatively inexpensively, anything beyond FHD in 13" and under displays is just a spec for the sake of a spec. And they do consume a great deal more power, thus requiring a bigger battery and thus more weight. Then again, with Haswell silicon and especially with the "IGZO" technology displays by Sharp (ultra high resolution, extremely low power consumption), in a year or two we'll be seeing these fabulous displays which, combined with Haswell engines, should make a QHD, 100% Adobe RGB, 500+ lux 13" screen in a 2.5 lb laptop that gets 12-14+ hrs of battery life (truly! even the current Haswell MBA running OSX gets 12 hrs and that's with power-hungry TN screen!) all possible in a laptop that could sell for as little as $1,200 (pure guess).

And that's when I will retire the Spectre 14 from active duty! After that, I'll probably keep it as a cocktail table accoutrement/must have device to settle disagreements over movie trivia, make a reservation to go to Yellowstone after seeing a documentary about it on TV, etc! It's just too gorgeous to put away or give to a kid, and it will long outclass - aesthetically and in performance - any tablet, which would otherwise occupy the same space and purpose.

Thanks for letting me share the obsessions!

 

I'm neither a screen fanatic nor a game fanatic, and I don't work with image editing software or stuff like that, so the 1600x900 Radiance is good enough for me. When I want to watch HD contents, I put it on a usb drive and watch it with my Samsung 40" FullHD TV

If you should ever have a 8gb ram installed by a professional, please let me know the result!

To make another recovery drive after you've already used your one possibility with HP Recovery Manager, the best solution would be a disk-cloning program.
The one I personally use is Clonezilla. I saved the whole disk image in an external usb hard-disk just after purchase, but in your case I guess you want to save just the Recovery partition. You can do it with Clonezilla, just follow these instructions to make a Clonezilla bootable usb, and then these instructions to save a disk image (or just some partitions) on an external USB drive. NB: If you don't need to save the whole disk into an image but just want to save one or more partitions, in STEP 9 (right after you select Beginner mode) you have to choose saveparts instead of savedisk. Then you can choose which partition(s) you want to save by pressing the space bar next to the partition(s).
The only doubt I have is whether in your case you need to save just the Recovery partition or also some other partition. I'll be more clear: our Envy 14 Spectre SSD drive is partitioned as follows (more or less should be the same in all models with Windows 7):



I think that saving only the Recovery partition you'll be fine, but just to be sure, try saving also the SYSTEM and HP_TOOLS ones, in case they are used during recovery.

 

IT_consultant, I don't know what is causing your problem. Just try to look in the Beats options or in the Sound options in control panel. If you can't find anything, you could try a system recovery through Windows, taking your system back to how it was some days before you experienced the problem for the first time. I'm sorry I can't give you much input

 

When my Envy was new, the HP Support Assistant urged me to back up my system, so I did and used a USB drive as a back-up media. But now the thing has had its motherboard replaced, so is it still possible to use that drive for system recovery? I had a similar case with my old dv2000 and the back-up DVD's that I had created became useless.

 

If the motherboard model is the same, I think you can use that drive. If it's not, I think you should be allowed to do another back up...
Did you send it to HP to have the motherboard replaced? If so, you could ask them, just to be sure.

 

Cla5h, as usual you have provided a timely and comprehensive solution to my posted dilemma. Better stop doing this or we'll all come to expect it from you every time! In this case I'm especially grateful for your recommendation of a image cloning program that you consider entirely reliable, as I have had problems at times with all of the major commercial products - Ghost, Acronis, etc - as well as several of the freeware solutions. I will in fact use Clonezilla to image my entire drive, recovery partition included, because I do think it's a better recovery solution anyway and, if for some reason in the future I do want to use just the tools in the HP recovery partition(s) (and thanks too for pointing out that they have possibly spread the functionality across more than one location), it will be as accessible as it is now. One question: given that my Spectre seems to be performing very well in its present configuration, is there any reason that a Clonezilla image of the entire stock mSATA SSD is any less "safe" as a restore option than had I, like you, taken the image when the computer was new? I could always restore it to factory-delivered status, take an image, then re-restore it to the image of it at present. Thoughts?

Oh, one thing that everyone should keep in mind regarding this infernal limitation on making recovery "disks"/flash drive, etc: At worst you can purchase the recovery partition on a flash drive for $16 from HP. I had decided that it's really not worth spending valuable time and gnashing teeth over their irritating policy over $16. But it's even better: when I called HP to order a flash recovery drive, I made one attempt at convincing them that charging for such a vital resource which is free to anyone who was smart/lucky enough to have made the one-only copy allowed and not had it become damaged, lost, etc. What followed would be best described as maddeningly obnoxious and time consuming, had I actually cared much about the whole thing or had use of my computer or a significant amount of money been at stake. But since at that point I had already decided to pay the damn $16 and it was more comical than even annoying. Suffice to say my call was bounced from agent to manager, to manager's manager and after about 10 minutes of goings-on that I couldn't hear the original agent returned to the call to proudly announce to me that he had "good news!" They were going to send me the recovery drive on a usb flash drive at NO CHARGE FOR SHIPPING! After I picked myself up from the floor I told the agent I was very grateful but I didn't think the shipping cost was likely to be material in all of this. "Oh no," he insisted, "the entire $16 charge for the additional recovery drive is the shipping charage!" In other words, the copy of the recovery partition is free - the only thing they charge for is "shipping and handling," which in the case of this product amounts to $16!!

I know I could have reported this far more succinctly, but the entertainment value was in the recreation of the story, not just the end result!

Again, thanks Cla5h for the tremendously useful and comprehensive instructions. They are far more useful to me than the "free" recovery flash drive I'm getting - by Fedex!! - from HP today.

 

If your Spectre is performing fine at the moment, the SSD image you will save will be perfectly safe... Anyway, it is always advisable to have a factory-delivered status image, also for warranty issues. Yes, you could restore your Spectre, save the image, and then restore it to the image of it at present, but in your case it's unnecessary since you're having the recovery flash drive delivered by HP, right?

 

Thanks for the clarification. My flash drive was delivered from HP via Fedex today!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

Dear HP Envy 14 Spectre users, here is a great teardown guide of our beloved ultrabook. I think it is going to be enormously useful to those of us who feel bold enough to try to replace the 4gb RAM with an 8gb one. I don't know if this has been already posted before, sorry if it has! :hi2:

ARTICLE + VIDEO:
HP Spectre Teardown: Eye-catching, but overpriced ultrabook - TechRepublic

VIDEO on YouTube:
Cracking Open: HP Envy 14 Spectre - YouTube

GALLERY (more useful I think):
Cracking Open the HP Envy 14 Spectre - TechRepublic

 

Thank you so much for doing that, cla5h. I only wish it gave me the guts to try and put another 4g RAM in it. Have you done so? Presently my touchpad has gone totally wonky and I keep changing drivers - literally, tried 4 different versions - just to hopefully "shock" it into behaving, but so far no luck so I guess it's back to HP. Any other thoughts?

Still lovin my Envy 14 Spectre but have since acquired an HP Spectre 13t-3000, another one of their diamond in the rough products that is an exceptional piece of kit, as well designed and made as anything out there, as the Envy 14 Spectre is. In this case HP priced it aggressively and had 20% off coupons for the first 3 mos. it was out, so a machine with Haswell i7-4500U, 8GB, 256GB, QHD IPS display cost $1,100!! If you have any interest pm me and I'll tell you how I think you could get them to honor the discount even though it's not currently up.

Thanks again and let me know if you have any ideas about the 14's suddenly wonky trackpad.

 

Recently, I noticed that the display on my Envy had suddenly started to flicker. It would go almost completely white and show horizontal lines moving about. There was also some bubbling at the bottom of the display, right where the panel itself begins. So I brought the thing to HP and I just got it back - they had replaced the entire screen assembly. Now I'm trying to build up courage to see if she works...

The bubbling alone wasn't severe enough to bother me, but now it's been taken care of anyway, so I'm happy.

 

Bugger. Now the power adapter is on the blink. The leads are intact but I still don't get any juice.

So far the thing has had its motherboard, fan assembly as well as the entire display panel replaced and the party just doesn't stop

EDIT: just received new adapter in the mail, so we are back in business.

 

Another problem has now began to manifest itself, namely the touchpad. The area for the left button no longer registers clicks as it should; the pad just flexes with no audible "click". The right button area as well as the centre of the touchpad work fine, tho. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

This is the fourth time I have to contact HP in the course of 19 months of ownership. Fortunately the local HP hardware support has so far been outstanding.

 

Looking to add a second SSD to this machine... anyone know the specs I need to find one that is compatible? Heard the Crucial ones screw up but some people have had success with Samsung SSDs. I have no idea where to start looking or what specs it needs to be the fit the laptop though... anyone have an idea?

 

Sorry for the late reply!
I have had a Crucial M500 240GB mSATA for almost 2 years and it still works perfectly. For more details read posts from #385 onward
If you have already bought something else, please share the details!

 

Does anyone know where I can get a new charger for 3090CA model of this ultrabook? I've tried looking everywhere and just can't find one, I only need the wire that connects from the laptop to the adapter so if anyone has a used one I'll buy it.

 

Does anyone know where I can get informaiton for modification hidden BIOS informatio or unlock Whitelist? I want to replace WiFi module from existing one N-6230 to N-7260 to use 802.11ac.
Any Ideas?

 

Hey guys,

I'd like to replace the original SSD of my Envy 14-3100 with one of similar size that offers hardware encryption. The Samsung 850 EVO in mSATA form factor would seem to fit the bill, but how likely would it work with my Spectre?

In other news, the Spectre is currently out of warranty and yet performing flawlessly, bar some minor bubbling in the edges of the display panel and some wear to the battery.