*HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Yes. just an unnecessary part for me. I'll just get a slim external or something...but it's rare that I need an external DVD drive these days. I can't think of the last time I used an optical disc for anything other than installing a program. when I had my Vaio with the BD drive, I think I used it maybe 1x/month to watch a movie.

.MKV video files = win. which means HDD = win.

Windows 7 and OSX startup speed with the SSD = awesomesauce.

 

I'm not sure what you're doing here. What does screen name have to do with anything?

 

Probably nothing. But "Full HD HP Ultra BrightView Infinity LED Display" is a comically long name for a laptop display (or screenName).

 

Well my 8730w just got:

11173
5308
4837
2670

And that's with almost a 2 year older video card.
Try running the new Futuremark Vantage to see what score you can get.

 

Just received my replacement unit and guess what, it's got problems...there is a high pitched buzzing sound only when windows has loaded, doesn't occur when in the BIOS. Sound comes from under the "I" key or there abouts. Happens with power plugged in or on battery. Ran hdd and mem tests and they passed, did a power drain. Looks like another DOA for me lol, third time lucky maybe?

 

You realize you've gotten two Envy17s before most people have received their first, right?

 

Make that "two bad Envy 17s". Hope this isn't a repeat of the Envy 15 Gen 1 scenario.

 

You guys will laugh at this... my unit has been shipped off to the repair centre! Nothing wrong with its performance.. the problem was it wasn't sitting balanced on a flat surface. What I mean is it was wobbly on the front right side like the rubber legs wern't balanced properly or something. If you put pressure on the front right panel it would sort of wobble a bit.
In the design they have raised the back up from the front in order to provide better air flow from underneath. This could be a problem, but you wouldn't think so.
So it's at the HP repair centre and they are waiting to hear back from HP in Australia. They have said most likely it will be replaced. And if that happens then I just go back to the shop and get another box!
But everything was going swell with it until that point, I was happy with performance.

 

So does anyone have a working Envy17?

 

Software and hardware wise, mine was absolutely fine. But it had a very small wobble, not going to put up with that when paid all that money. So took it down to the service centre which is 5mins from my house so that's a bonus. Hopefully it will be easy as getting a new unit as I don't see how they can fix a balance issue without advanced equipment. The technician I spoke to said it will most likely be that, they have to wait for authorisation before they can dish out another one.

 

hehe, a wobbly laptop is kinda funny How much off the table is that corner? I wouldn't put up with it either. Is it a warped case or is the rubber feet just too small or something?

Hopefully you get a new one without too much hassle, just make sure it has no buzzing noise or slow ram!

 

Glad you find it amusing ! Like I could just see the front right rubber foot wasn't touching the desk. So when I put my hand on that side it would touch down on the desk with a soft *CLUNK* haha. Took me a few days to notice it, as it was really small but still not having that.
But there was no noises and it was running fast as.

 

Gota feel sorry for our American friends with all the delays. Good thing all the pre-built stock was shipped to this part of the world early! Although as jaxxy and myself have had units with problems, who's to know what's going on with the stock we've got either.

 

I just got a email from HP Hong Kong - they said that the HP Envy 17 will be launched in late June there.

 

This sounds awfully similar to the high pitch whirring/beeping problem coming from the Envy15 as well. Did the sound make patterns similar to high pitch morse code when it was operating? I never got to solve where the sound was coming from, but someone from this forum once told a group of us experiencing this sound that it could be coming from the motherboard itself due to the microscopic imperfections in the jointing process of parts that was vibrating an causing the high pitch read/write sounds. I hope I'm wrong though, and that the Envy17 doesn't have this strange defect as some of the Envy15 did..

 

YES! High pitched morse code is a great description of what I am experiencing. It's not there if I am just in the BIOS or in Windows Safe Mode. It's there in HP QuickWeb and if booting Windows normally.

My first Envy 17 did not have this issue though so it is definitely a fault that they should be rectifying.

 

I will not be getting mine as well on time.

You are going to here about this HP!
6-3-10 8am Fed Ex tracking reads=
Ship date Jun 1, 2010
Estimated delivery Jun 4, 2010 by 4:30 PM

9am revised now reads=
Ship date Jun 3, 2010
Estimated delivery Jun 9, 2010 by 4:30 PM

Date/TimeActivityLocationDetails=Jun 3, 2010 8:53PM Picked upSHANGHAI CN Package received after FedEx cutoff Jun 1, 2010 3:31AM Shipment information sent to FedEx

Looks like they sent out PHONY Shipping info to go with the build date they promised.

 

Sorry to hear that -- but you have shipping info, which is more than most of us have rec'd. When did you order? I doubt there's a pattern but just curious.

I still suspect the source of their delay may be screens from a sub supplier (like Lenovo) but unless you ordered with an FHD screen that may not be accurate.

 

Ouch! Has HP learned anything from the Envy 15 issues? Doesn't sound very promising does it!

 

I ordered on 5-19 at 11AM. Build date 6-1
If there was a delay! I would not have a problem with that had they notified me on 6-1. Instead of stating in production on 5-30 and sending tracking info on 6-1.

 

Someone! Anyone! Battery life? Switchable graphics?

 

Exactly same dates on my FedEx tracking page as of just now, but at least we made it pretty close to the June 1 estimate, and the rest is just FedEx from China. I have had a similar HP notebook order arrive a day or two early when going over a weekend, so we might get them Tuesday, maybe. On the other hand, I also ordered a DV6se with TouchSmart Edge2Edge screen with SSD, and that one got a 10 day delay with the $25 coupon yesterday. It was ordered 5/19 with 25% Bing, but that delay could be either the SSD or the Touch screen I guess.

 

Just ordered!!!
HP Envy 17
Intel Core i7-820QM
8GB Memory
2x 320GB HD
Full HD
Blu-ray
(also ordered 80GB Intel SSD from Newegg!)

estimated ship date June 15.

 

I hope my Envy 17 doesn't have any problems. If it does, I'm returning it and purchasing an Alienware M17x. This laptop is wayy too expensive to settle for anything less.

 

Nice specs! I wonder what kind of SSD the 160 GB drive is? That is the main reason why I bought the Envy 17.

 

If these shipments are coming from Shanghai. We could get the shipments "faster" if they shipped it to the east coast through Europe. I mean they are shipping it a day behind us by going through Alaska, etc. No wonder why all the shipments are delayed. I know it may cost more fuel on FedEx's part, but if they were really concerned about these 2-day shipments, they would go back in time, not catch up to time. lol

 

Argh, I was hoping that was a problem only pertaining to the Envy15... As far as I call recall, there was no personal fix you could apply to it. It may go away by chance, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Are you going to try and exchange your second one too? I'm not sure if I'll have the energy to deal with making an official complaint about it, and then by bad luck, receive another noisy one after weeks of waiting. At this point, I'll just be glad to even get mine within next week.

 

HP actually tried this for a while but then the volcano eruption in Iceland closed all the airports and packages sat in Kazakhstan for days. Not pretty.

 

I remember something like this from the Envy 15 forum. Turned out that the rubber feet were not properly seated and that removing/reapplying fixed it. May be a different issue in the 17 tho.

 

That's what happened with my envy 15 actually... took someones advice from the 2nd gen envy 15 thread and just took them all out and then screwed em back in.

 

The SSD in the Envy is the Intel X-25M I believe, I ordered the same model just with half the space as the 160 GB is over $400!

 

Just received my delayed order email. I ordered at 10am on 5/20 with a ship date of 6/2. It's been moved back to ship date of 6/5. Hope it actually mails out on Saturday. Tired of waiting! lol

 

If you don't mind, what was the config you ordered WVU_JPeazy?

 

ordered mine on 5/27 with the $300 coupon. Ship date was set for June7, hope its not getting pushed back too.

 

• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-720QM Quad Core processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.8 GHz
• 4GB DDR3 System Memory (1 Dimm)
• 160GB (Solid State Drive Flash Module)
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5850 Graphics
• 17.3" diagonal Full HD HP Ultra BrightView Infinity LED Display (1920x1080)
• Blu-ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam
• Intel Wireless-N Card with Bluetooth
• Full-size island-style backlit keyboard
• 50% OFF! One 6 Cell (standard) and One 9 Cell (over-sized) Lithium Ion Battery
• No Productivity Software
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

 

5850 uses GDDR5 vram and 5830 uses DDR3, there is a huge difference in performance. The rank on the notebookcheck is for DDR3 only.

 

Notebookreview did an analysis of a notebook a couple months back with the 5850 but it had DDR3, said its performance was underwhelming.

I may need to put my Envy Limited Edition up for sale sooner than later. I've already forked out money for a 160GB Gen 2 SSD and a 1TB WD 12mm hard drive... Already have an 820qm and 8GB RAM to go with the notebook when it arrives.

 

Sorry, it was notebookcheck who did a write-up on a 5850 w/ DDR3, for the Acer Aspire 5745G.

 

Damn right I'm exchanging it again. I already logged a call yesterday, but he wanted me to run the hdd tests in the BIOS which took 2 hours per drive, so they were closed by the time the tests were finished. I am calling them this morning and reporting a negative result for the tests and hopefully they will declare DOA again and send ANOTHER one. They're not charging for shipping so this is just costing me time and headaches.

 

Wow, I was really anxious to hear about this laptop. Hope you guys can actually get them soon.

 

Ok, since the majority of us are still waiting for our laptops to arrive, I propose we open some interesting discussions on how we each plan to 'personalize' our laptops when they arrive?

For example, For me, when my laptop arrives, I plan to install a 1TB WD 12.5mm drive in the secondary bay, and add 4 more GBs of RAM. I aslo plan to do a clean install of the OS, but at this moment am not too certain what steps to go about accomplishing the fresh OS install.

I have looked at some other threads where they teach you how to back up the windows activation key and create a Win 7 install disk. I plan to follow accordingly.

Since I have never owned an SSD before, and my laptop will be coming with a 160GB SSD with the Windows 7 OS already pre-installed on it, do I treat the SSD like an ordinary mechanical HDD and reformat it before I do a clean Windows install? I am assuming I would be given the option to do the reformat of the SSD during the install process of windows 7. Is it safe to do a reformat of a SSD? I thought I read somewhere that it is not advisable to do a format for an SSD, or maybe I read wrong.

After I do the re-install of the Win 7 OS, I will go ahead and install all programs on the SSD. I also plan to move/point the 'My Documents' system folder to the secondary HDD. This way, all pictures, music, data files, movies and storage stuff would be saved by default into the secondary HDD. However, I have never moved the 'My Documents' system folder to a different drive other than the default C drive before and am alittle uncertain how to do it. I think it should not be too difficult.

These are the first few immediate things I will be doing for my ENVY 17 setup, not sure how the rest of you plan to do it.

If you have ay advise regarding any of my questions/uncertainties mentioned above, do feel free to chime in. Thanks!

 

i've been purhcasing laptops and pcs for a very long time and generally the plan is the install a clean OS. having said that, i don't plan to do that with this envy 17. reasons:
1. bloatware is relatively small nowadays and easily removed (my beats limited edition envy had just a little bloatware)
2. the benefit from clean isnstall is small, the hope is that you have less programs running and that damage from having removed programs is not an issue. modern OSes do an excellent job of removing programs without damaging things like registry or dependencies. also, in the past, memory was a huge issue and we did everything to avoid programs taking memory...today that is not a big problem - CPUs are strong, memory is available.
3. most manufacturer's tweak system settings to optimzie user experience on systems. my touchpad on envy beats limited edition was better out of the box then after a clean install, for instance. battery saving configuration was almost perfect out of the box. things like that.
4. sometimes, finding drivers can be a problem during a clean install (i'm sure most of you have run into this problem) and "settling" for a less than perfect driver is not optimal. most manufacturers provide relatively up to date drivers that have been tested for stability. maybe people complaining about weird sounds from their speakers, or weird flickering have brought this on themselves by getting ahead of themselves with newer drivers which are not always better or more stable. out of the box, you are at least guaranteed to have what the manufacturer tested on.

most users don't have any business doing "clean installs" and get themselves into bigger trouble by taking the advice of "veteran" users. enjoy your laptop as is, remove what you don't like and do yourself a favor...enjoy what a $1500+ laptop is...enjoy it the way the manufacturer inteded you to enjoy it and if you don't like it then....go ahead and do what you want but come on...day 1: clean install. give me a break. most of you get "clean isntalls" from torrents anyway - great way to start off a clean install.

i'm not against personalizing your pc but it seems, from my experience, that many people who have problems with laptops right away are the very people who are making all these suggestions about tweaking, replacing, reformatting, etc. im' sure it works out for a lot of you, it does for me, but don't suggest it to people, don't recommend it above taking a laptop "out of the box"

personally, i have an SSD that i used with beats limited edition...i'm going to put it in my envy 17. do i recommend you do it? not unless you've done it before and know what you're doing. i'm sticking another 4gb of ram in the envy, do i reocmmend you do it? no, not unless you've done it before. do i recommend you keep your envy as is out of the box? yes, initially, i think you should experience your laptop out of the box the way it was intended to and you remove the features you do not like as soon as you relalize you don't like them.

i'm sorry if i sound angry...i read through the envy 15 beats owner's lounge and it seems a lot of people just got themselves into trouble and then blamed HP.


i'm also pissed my laptop got delayed, oh well.


nevian

 

btw, i dug up an old post about deliver time on a laptop from CN...it went like this:


Jun 29, 2007

9:14 AM
Delivered
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, CA

7:49 AM
On FedEx vehicle for delivery
ONTARIO, CA

6:56 AM
At local FedEx facility
ONTARIO, CA


Jun 28, 2007
4:41 PM
Departed FedEx location
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

4:00 AM
Int'l shipment release
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

3:08 AM
In transit
INDIANAPOLIS, IN

12:09 AM
Arrived at FedEx location
INDIANAPOLIS, IN




Jun 27, 2007

2:15 PM
Departed FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

1:29 PM
Arrived at FedEx location
ANCHORAGE, AK

9:27 PM
In transit
SHANGHAI CN



Jun 26, 2007
11:32 AM
Left origin
SHANGHAI CN

11:31 AM
Picked up
SHANGHAI CN

 

I would do a clean install too but I don't have the original windows discs (Envy17 doesn't come with them). I agree that turning stuff off that you don't need is almost the same as a clean install. For example, disabling HP QuickWeb and the HP auto updating software.) Some of the bloatware is actually good software, e.g. the HP Webcam software comes with a plethora of effects and features, Corel PaintShopPro and VideoStudio are preinstalled and are good enough programs for general stuff, it's not Photoshop but it does the job.

Regarding my current high pitched morsecode/noise issue. HP are sending a tech out to my house to confirm the issue...seems they don't trust my diagnosis over the phone. I have discovered that I can reproduce the issue, if I open up my browser the noise is mostly gone, if I close browser and just have desktop open the sound comes back. Pretty weird, can anyone explain it???

 

@mobilezila Good idea. I am planning on a clean install too and a 500gb second drive, among other things. The drive might have to wait depending on the bracket issue...

As far as the clean Win7 install goes, I think it's safe to do a reformat. I think what someone said NOT to do though was to defragment the drive as that is specifically for HDD tech and not SSD. This will be the first time I'm using a SSD as well, and I want to start off using it correctly too. If anyone has any procedures to follow for me to optimize SSD usage, please let us know.

Redirecting the My Documents folder is pretty easy ( link), and Win7 also lets you link folders containing specific media with the respective Videos, Music, Documents folders (..forgot the name of this feature), so that'll make file cataloging between two drives easier to manage as well.

I never got that noise to go away on my Envy15. I think it depends on our hearing tolerance as well. The tech who is going to come to your place, depending on his age and hearing acuity, might not be able to hear the sound even when you can clearly hear it. For all we know, we might have super sensitive ears while others aren't as much. Just so you can raise your chances of getting maintenance/replacement, you should isolate a pattern that will make the noise sound the highest. Do whatever it takes to make them believe you, because I know this problem exists. Good luck jaxxy.

 

nevian's post reminds me of people I've met who's function keys, wifi and native resolution(among other things) aren't working like they should be. I later find out that "some guy" fixed it for them by doing a clean install of the OS and didn't install the proper drivers. Usually this is a result of those friends of mine not creating recovery cds when they should have. I love/hate the look I get from people when I ask them "Where are your recovery discs?" I don't even bother asking people where their back-up is, that's just a waste of breath. Having said that, I've done a clean install on all of my computers at some point (specifically when Windows 7 came out, which I got for free for taking computer science courses at my University thank you very much) and have had little to no problems. My advice for those who haven't done it before is to do your research before you start. I'd also advise waiting until a few people have already mucked it up and began useful forum threads so that you can learn from their mistakes. Just make those recovery discs (5 DVDs I think Jaxxy said) and don't delete the back-up partition just in case you need to get back to something that works.

 

Thanks nohm. I didn't consider the age of the tech and their auditory acuity...hopefully they are young and have good hearing...my wife can't hear it and is getting sick of me making her try, lol. I am glad I have found a way to reproduce it, it will increase my chances. I will also try to get the kids out of the house when the tech gets here...any other suggestions?

 

Jaxxy, because you mentioned that the web browser causes the noise to stop I would guess that it has something to do with your wifi card. I wonder if turning off wifi or just bluetooth or using a wired internet connection could isolate the problem. I had a similar issue with my HP tx2510us and it only happened when the screen was not at full brightness and the wifi was on or something weird. But because I almost always use full brightness it doesn't bother me much.

 

Oh really. Well the service centre have said HP have instructed them to replace the entire bottom case, so they're waiting on the part to arrive. So they say it won't be back until Tuesday. At least I can go down the road and get it instead of waiting for a courier.

 

That's so true. Most people just don't know what they're doing with their PC. It's always a good thing to try and learn from mistakes though... so long as people keep it real and take responsibility for the consequences (ever tried baking f-ed up nvidia GPUs, or reballing a BGA? ;]). I realized that there's no sense in talking down on people that don't use their computers properly or know anything about troubleshooting. Computer skills and "common sense" are relative to exposure and usage habits. Something most of use here can do comfortably might be rocket science for many others. I doubt we'll be edified much from the simple users, but at the same time, we should be nice about it and try to help out with what we learned from our own troubling experiences. But yeah, "some guy" will never touch my computer. I don't let anyone use my computers unless I acknowledge their skills as on par or higher than mine.

Anyway, back on topic...

Yeah, I also had a phase where I was trying to make everyone hear the noise too, without success. What a way to look like a nut . Just make sure to have a quiet workstation with very minimal ambient noise. I think you should first have the guy sit down and put his ear close to the notebook. Have him listen to the entire boot process, samples of idle and loading activity, and then shutdown. You'll definitely know when the noise kicks in, so cue him when it starts and describe how the pattern sounds at the time. You can also try comparing the noise level in different rooms, with the notebook on vs off. YOU will hear the difference, so if you found a room that makes it particularly obvious, try to demonstrate that to the tech. The bathroom would be the most obvious place IMO, but you just might get strange looks from the guy if he can't hear it there, haha.