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

I'll upload some pictures and put this through its paces later, but for now I thought I'd put down some initial thoughts.

First, the computer was unusable speed wise the first time I booted it up. Everything was at a crawl. A restart fixed it completely, but just a heads up for anyone else who boots up the first time and is worried like I was.

HP put a lot of crap on this. If I decide to keep it, I'll definitely do a clean wipe. The only thing worth keeping imo is the HP Quick startup thing, that lets you boot into their basic UI before the OS loads, if you just want to do simple stuff like browse the web.

The sound is fantastic. It won't replace your X.1 sound system, but it defintely beats most 2 speaker setups.

The keyboard is pretty good for an island. The backlit part really isn't visible, even in low light. I'll see later tonight how good it is in the dark. Aside from the arrow keys, they got the layout right. CTRL on the left side, big shift/enter/backspace keys. I like it.

I don't understand this touchpad. Right now, the size actually detracts from it for me, because I'd rather have less area to move. The button area is what really bugs me. It actually has a click which is nice, but the mouse sensitivity extends to the buttons, so when you click and unclick, there's a high chance that you'll move the mouse. I checked the Synaptics driver briefly and didn't see anything to change the zone, but I'll try again later.

The build construction seems good. Definitely not Apple unibody level, but it beats most all-plastic frames so far.

About the screen: It's bright and big and pretty. I'll try it out with some HD stuff or gaming later, but I like it. The glare is fairly minimal compared to other glossy screens. Viewing angles aren't great, though. About the E2E, it's a little bit disappointing. There's a ridge around the entire screen, meaning that you can't just wipe the screen quickly. It seems to nullify some of the advantages of having E2E over a bezel. I guess you can more easily push dust and other stuff outside of the viewing area, but it'll still be on the black border of the screen, and I'm sure it'll still be a fingerprint magnet. I'll post screenshots later to show what I mean.

I never saw the envy 15 power brick, but this one seems ok. It's smaller than my Gateway 6860FX power brick. The 9 cell battery is a little bit weird. Its cross-section shaped like a bell, so the laptop is propped up quite a bit when it's in there.

Fan is pretty audible, but it's not in an ideal situation right now. I'll see what it's like under load later. Only the top left is hot, the rest is slightly warm or even cold.

The size on this thing is decieving. When I first saw it, I thought it was bigger than my current laptop (the 6860.) It's definitely not. A tad wider, but over an inch shorter, moreso since the battery doesn't stick out.

 

For those just receiving their Envy 17 systems, how long was it was from the time that the status showed "Order in Production" until it actually shipped? In your experience does it just go to "Order in Production" soon after you placed your order or actually near the time it was really being built?

 

Interesting, thanks for the reviews. I'm interested to hear more opinions about noise, heat (comfort-wise), and battery life. In the end these are probably the issues that will make or break it for me.

I'm starting to eye the G73 now that I'm hearing bad stuff about noise and heat. Definitely waiting to try it myself (damn you shipping delay, should have been tomorrow!) but it's nice to hear other's thoughts in the mean time.

 

I'll do battery as soon as I can. I'll just be doing web browsing/music at full brightness. It seems like the handled heat very well for a laptop like this.

 

Mine is estimated to ship today, but still no tracking info or any delay info. GRRRR!

When I called, they said that it was in production and that once shipped I'll receive tracking info. This really doesn't help since my order has been in production for a week now!

 

It's kind of useless, but someone posted this non-English language video that shows the Envy 17 at some sort of convention or something.

YouTube - Tinhte.vn - Tre?n tay HP Envy 17 ta?i Computex

 

Well, coming from a previous G73 owner, at least issues like 'noise' and 'heat' will not stop your laptop from 'proper' functioning. And I know most of the time, these two factors are really subjective.

The G73 has common issues like GSOD, Boot issues, backlit failures that cause the basic functioning of the laptop to be agonizing. I had two units that had one of either issues, and I had to return them. RMAing was out of the question due to the horrendous Asus repair timelines. In fact, read the many stories about double RMAs...

On top of it all, the laptop comes pre-installed with some drivers that do not even work well with the laptop that cause it to hang...a.k.a the creative drivers. Why market creative enabled bass sound when you cant even support the claim? If you read the forum threads, you will see that uninstalling those drivers are the first thing on most people's agenda.

I guess you can pick your poison.

 

Yay my first post

Anyways, I'm very interested in getting this 17" beast so keep the reviews coming

And @InOverMyHead
You're right, the video is quite pointless. Some vietnamese guy talks about the 7.0 score, that's basically it.

 

Thanks for the advice. As far as the Envy 17, heat and noise are subjective, but they are really important to me as far as a laptop goes. I know for some people running it as a desktop replacement they may be non-issues, but I have a desktop for that. I need this to be a) not hot enough to be uncomfortable for either gaming handrests, or web browsing on my lap, and b) not noisy enough to be annoying. Battery life comes third, but id definitely a consideration.

I realize I want the best of both worlds which I guess points me to switchable graphics, but I can't think of something powerful enough to satiate at the moment. Truly I'd like the M11x mirrored in a 14 in body. Hell, maybe the envy 14 will be that, and I can return the 17 inch when it releases. ;D

 

FYI there's been a delay for most of us who ordered. From my experience, as soon as the order was made and processed, the status switched immediately to "Order in Production" and showed an estimate ship date. Even with the shipping delay set to 6/5, my status still shows estimated ship date as 6/1. Some people had later shipping estimate days, but had theirs shipped before others. Basically, you need to make the order and wait in the lotto line.

 

Mine actually showed during a three day process;

Verifying order
then
Order accepted
then
Order dropped to factory
then
Order in production

i hope there are no other "thens" before it shows "order shipped"!!

 

Oh well. I'll just have to be patient. I placed my order on June 2 (just 2 days ago) and have an estmated build date of June 11. Last night I noticed that if you were to order one now the estimated build date jumped to June 21.

 

@Itarmstrong3 & HannesS

It looks like they skipped a few steps for me.

Congrats. The initial boot for the Envy15 was also slooow as well, but like you said, it got better from the next boot on. It's most likely due to the first-time startup bloatware.

The E2E could have been flush and also compensated the lid dampers with a better, non screen-scratching closing mechanism, but I doubt HP cared to figure that one out (hence, the bordered dampers around the screen )

If you got a single drive config, could you do me a favor and check your secondary drive bay to see if they might have included the mount for it? Thanks!

 

Looks like the complaints worked, they have added %50 to the build time and not to the production line!

 

It looks like bing cash back will soon be gone:

Bing's Cashback Dies of Neglect, Microsoft Says | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

 

Crapola... and I just started using it too! Looks like my plans for purchasing a plane and an island in the Pacific using BCB has been pushed forward to before July 30

 

That blows...

Guess the 25% BCB some of us scored with this laptop will not likely happen again unless HP decides to bring it back one last time within the next two months.

I would assume that sales figures using BCB will rise dramatically now going forward as people who have put off making some purchases thinking that BCB will always 'be there' will start cashing in on good BCB deals now. For example, nohm will be expecting a visit from me on his island soon.

 

Oh well, I got about $600 back to date,not counting the Envy 17 25% if that ever comes thru....I think there's an upper limit of $2500 or somesuch.

 

@mobilezila

If so, then I also have a bridge to sell you once we get there...

 

You're a legend! This seems to have fixed it. I enabled "listening" to the mic and then muted it, so far so good, I will be able to confirm 100% tonight when it's quieter around here. If anyone else has this 'tweating/morse code' issue and wants details, I can post. Also see this Sony thread where I got the answers from: LINK

Now to decide whether it's worth trying to get another new replacement unit (with possibly more flaws) or live with this 'fixed' one. I'm leaning towards the latter. At least I have a fix, now I don't have to stress about how I am going to convince the tech who is coming out next week that there is a sound!

 

My completely unscientific run with the 9 cell battery got about 2.5 hours with web browsing, music, Youtube and max brightness. I'll do it a few more times to make sure everything is calibrated though.

 

So I just got my laptop. Here are some photos:

photos

Thoughts:

1. This SSD makes this thing screaming fast!!!!

2. I love the keyboard; it types well and feels good. The back light serves its purpose; that is seeing the keys in the dark.

3. OMG HP put a lot on this thing. HPs Media Smart Folder takes up about 4 gigabytes. What happened to the days when coders tried to be efficient?

4. The QuickWeb features is a neat idea. You can get directly to your files and web instantly. I don't think I will ever use this feature, especially since I have an SSD.

5. The Revo installer approach isn't helping me. Imma about to wipe this baby and start over.

6. The software would be neat for a grand ma or something but I'm a software developer this stuff will just get in the way.

7. The touch pad feels nice. However it kept doing some funky horizontal scrolling thing. I went to Synaptics and you can turn it off by unchecking the 2 button scrolling thing.

8. The screen looks good. BUT! There are certain colors of gray where you can see the "noise" in the screen. It looks weird. I'm hoping its normal.

9. Overall, I'm pretty impressed.

10. I'm upset, I bought on May 19 and they had this stupid Docking station available; i want one for my external monitor so I bought it. After doing further research I found out that it wasn't compatible. I called HP and asked them about it being compatible and wanted to return it. After speaking to 3 reps, the last one said it was compatible. So I said we'll see when the laptop comes. Of course it's not compatible, and now I have to return it (i threw away the box). But now it's not even available on the site--luckily I took a screen shot as proof.

 

Sorry for asking so many times but can you run crystalmark to see if your ssd have a low 4k read/write?

 

So, has anyone actually tried eyefinity on the Hp Envy 17?

How have the framerates been? thanks!

 

i hope this is what ur looking for

Picasa Web Albums - J

 

Close, I was looking for something like:
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/images/CrystalDiskMark30-en.png

Envy 15 suffers from a bad controller with poor 4k read/write and I was wondering if they fixed that in the new generation.

Thanks a lot for taking your time on this.

edit: seems like all the other ones are where they should be though.

 

@Jaerb4

Could you post some profile pictures with the 9 cell battery.Wanted to see the amount of clearance from the table top.

@pedromartinez
Congrats and thanks for the pictures.

 

So I'm guessing no on switchable graphics.

Did ANYONE get the i5 versions?

 

This is the i5 version, and I'm nearly positive there's no option for switchable. There's no switch like you'd find on other ATI laptops with switchable and nothing in Catalyst or any of the HP stuff. HP would have to enable it, correct?

 

Oh wow. I didn't know. That's quite unfortunate. We got a downgrade in motherboard for no reason then : (

 

OP updated, congratulation to Jaerb and Pedro on receiving their laptops.

 

Jaxxy, believe me, I am every bit as excited to have just been able to click on that old piece of knowledge gathering dust in my brain and make it useful to you As for getting a replacement unit, I think I made my views clear about the hazards of having the first run of a new model (though I do it every time myself as well, cuz what fun is there in waiting 90 days for them to get the bugs worked out?), but with HP's 21 day rule for returns, you're on a pretty short fuse if you think you may have a "lemon." So, yeah, I'd take stock of your machine, noises and all, and consider returning it this time and resetting the 21 day clock with a replacement. You can usually get them to send the replacement out before you send yours in so you don't have to be without one (I think they may need a credit card authorization so they can charge you if you don't return the bad one by a certain date.)

That said, without looking back at all your posts, I don't seem to recall any other major problems. The temperatures you posted did not look out of line for that machine while idling. They were a bit higher than my dv8, but it has a much bigger chassis for air circulation and a much cooler running GPU, and I believe the ambient temps under the hood help raise the reading on specific components, eg cpu cores. Anyway, idling in the high 40s low 50s on max power plan seems fine.

Today was my "midas touch" day! I seemed to be hitting the right note all day long, the two posts of yours being just, well, part of my magical day. Glad to help.

Please keep posting on impressions of the 17. I'm really torn because I do want a new, sleek machine, but I swore to myself that I would not buy another high power DTR that lacked switchable graphics, nor for that matter, that got horrible battery efficiency. What kind of battery life are you getting? Mind running a test with wifi on, bluetooth off, 6-10 browser windows open + an app or two and maybe some streaming video and see what your drain time is? If you want to do it via sampling, a much better way than using Windows 7 Power Controls is a freebie called Battery Bar BatteryBar - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com, which will give you more data and a more accurate read on actual wattage used, not just an opaque algorithm for measuring % available.

Whew, that'll do it for now.

(BTW, "Lovelaptops" is not my real name; it's: "like to hang out with computer nerds on NBR Forums", but that violated the naming conventions, so I came up with the pseudonym, aka Jeff

 

Sorry they're a bit blurry. My Droid isn't great up close.









Here's the rim I was talking about.



Here's the HD bay for nohm. No second bracket, and is the 2nd a 1.8" bay? :|




I'm not sure what I think of it up to this point. With the BCB, it's definitely a good deal if you're in the market for a desktop replacement. If you actually plan on moving it, which I do, I'm not sure. The 9 cell battery's performance was underwhelming, and I'm really not a fan of the touchpad. The screen is still quite beautiful, I don't think people need to worry about nits or anything.

 

Thanks for all the pictures, though I think you should post smaller ones .

I must say, the laptop does really look sleek. Much more professional looking and slimmer than the G73 I used to own. I am so glad I returned that laptop.

I guess it is confirmed that HP does not provide the hardware to mount the secondary HDD if you did not purchase it with that option.

With regards to your question if the secondary HDD bay was for a 1.8 inch HDD, no, it is also for a 2.5inch HDD. I think it looks smaller because part of the secondary HDD is slid under the edge. That is why, in the instructions, you have to lift up one edge with the provided tab, and than slide it out at an angle. For those who do have the laptop on hand, do confirm what I just wrote.

 

Dang, my hopes for a free bracket are dashed. Thanks for the photo confirmation.

 

yep, I learned the lesson about ordering 2 hard drives from my envy 15 purchase (had to buy the 2xmounting bracket later). I bought 2x320GB, but have a 160gb SSD and 1TB HD ready to replace them with...

 

Oh, and it was a relief seeing that the laptop does come with the G2 intel SSD with TRIM support and not the G1. This was from the screen shot by Pedro that showed the serial # of the SSD as INTEL SSDSA2M160G2HP.

I am glad that I took the plunge and ordered the 160GB SSD from HP as I was worried that the G1 would be used instead. I am stoked that it came at the price of $280(after BCB) instead of close to $400 had I wanted to get it in retail.

 

That's what I was thinking of doing. I wanted to wait for reviews before buying, but now the ssd config is gone, and don't want to wait any longer. (Besides, reviews already sound good, as no one has even reported it crashing yet, unlike the envy 15 and g73 where all they seem to do is crash right out of the box)
Can you tell me what is the model/brand SSD you got (intel?) Or what do I need to know to make sure I am buying drives that are comparable with this envy 17?
Actually, I think all i really need is 80gb for the ssd anyway so that + a 1tb hdd is probably what I'm looking for.
I have never installed a laptop hard drive before, but I can't imagine it could be that much hard than on a desktop, but I want to make sure I get the right stuff.

 

I got an Intel 160GB Gen 2 SSD from ewiiz. It was $375 with free shipping (coupon applied). Got the 1TB drive from Dell, had a coupon and my preferred account. Next purchase from dell: The 5" Streak!

 

I got to 1 hour 5 mins before Windows gave me a 12% battery left warning. I was running browser with 7 open tabs, watched 5x2min videos on Steam, installed a 50MB program from DVD, had Picasa open in the background not doing anything. Brightness on full, sound on around 25%, BT-off, Wifi-on but ethernet plugged in so I wasn't using the wifi I don't think. I was active the whole time so no power management kicked in.

 

To the people taking the 2x320gb to add a 160 ssd and 1tb later: what will you do with the 2 320 left?

 

I'm guessing ebay or something similar

 

the conclusion rests on the reason being that the majority who have their laptops and were awaiting its arrival on these forums have had major flaws in its design/hardware.

 

Jaerb4 & pedromartinez,
have you had major flaws on your factory direct custom builds? The reason I ask is I only see jaxxy have a small ram problem and some minor buzzing that was fixed and kiwi style only had a teetering rubber foot and these systems were pre-configured early production line machines, I would like a concensus on later pruduction factory direct custom builds.

Anyone else who has received their systems direct from Shanghai please chime in your overall satisfaction rating also.
Thanks!

 

Listen, I don't know how many laptops you have bought yourself lately or your personal experiences, but the problems reported so far with the envy 17 by the "majority who have their laptops and were awaiting..." are relatively minor problems, and definitely not major flaws at all. And that's comparing it to all other major consumer laptops, (not including the fruit company products). My envy 15 wouldn't even turn on. The envy 15 had major design flaws. The g73 has tons of hardware/design flaws. The xps 16 has tons of hardware/design flaws. Don't get me wrong, I am the first person to bash hp- they have terrible quality control, and terrible customer service, but the problems reported so far on the envy 17 are relatively quick fixes, and not major design/hardware flaws, unless you are talking about he heat. But even the heat, while it sounds like a potential problem, seems like it is handled better/no worse than on most any other comparable powerhouse laptop machines.

 

Even though you weren't using it, the WiFi modules are constantly looking for wireless signals and refreshing the list.

If you turn the modules you don't use off (BT, WiFi mostly) you'll see a significant difference in battery endurance.

 

Please keep it civil in this thread - thanks. If you have problems with another member, make sure you report it to a moderator and we will handle it.

 

Just got a shipment notification!

Ordered on 5/19 (afternoon), delayed once, and it just went out the door. *Supposed* to have it by Thursday. Woohoo!

 

Bad news guys.

I love this laptop but it's been crashing on me major.

After uninstalling a lot of junk, I started running into problems.

----------------------------------------------------

hp envy 17 failurs


1. once 8:35 pm. Installing logitech 64 bit drivers. I got a blue screen at this point and the computer cut off and restarted.

2. 9:35 windows stopped working. This point i was using google chrome and the computer cutoff and restarted.

3. not sure 10:35 just cut off. I was surfing lifehacker with google chrome and the screen went blank cut off and restarted.

4. blue screen and cut off and restart at 11:36.

------------------------

I figured it was because I uninstalled a lot stock hardware with revo uninstaller so I did a minimal recovery. (by the way I advise everyone to do this as soon as they get it. It installs your system without all the other BS and you can just install what you need.)

Everything seemed to work fine.
--------------------

5. I turned on my computer this morning and it said windows has recoverd from a serious error. Crashed when i work up this morning.

I hope this doesnt continue. I'm going to record data throughout the day. If it keeps it up. This is going back!

 

My 5-19 order has shipped as of today as well. Estimated delivery is going to be 5-10. Hoping that gets moved up, it usually does with even their standard shipping!

@Pedro have you thought about doing a complete clean install?