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

envy arrived about 15 minutes ago. it was a bit heavy but it's because it contained an extra charger and the 9cell battery.

it's hooked up right now and just finished installing chrome.

will take pics at home.

whoever said earlier that the system comes preloaded with loads of bloatware is (bleep bleep). <---

no time for too many comments since i'm at work. i can tell you right now though, the trackpad is a lot better than the one on the envy 15 limited edition

 

My Envy finally got to AK. I'm hoping customs won't take too long with the clearance check (they should be used to the steady flow of black-boxed HP shipments by now). Here's hoping it hitches an early flight to the states tonight!

BTW, anyone know what caused the forums to go down this morning?

Oops, I meant 60 days. Sorry. And people got the $300 coupon through a deal that was open for a while a weekend ago. Not sure if it still works.

Yeah, I asked if you board because of your anti-banana avatar. I find nothing wrong with btx technology, but I gotta admit- that "Hitler got fooled by a banana" video on youtube was a hilarious dub. What setup do you ride? My current ones are Ride DH2 + K2 Formula, Gnu Rider's Choice BTX + Flux S.Titans, K2 WWW Rocker + Flux Titan R.K., and my boots are Nitro Team TLS. My home mts were Bear and Mt. High up until this past season, but I'm probably not going to have time to ride as much in the coming two seasons due to location and school. Anyway, good to see a fellow boarder + Envy 17 fan here.

 

If you could comment on laptop parts (e.g. screen, speakers, keyboard), then heat, temperatures idle/ load (HWMonitor) and etc, it would be great.

I know people have commented on these before, but the more comments, the more precise is the info about this laptop.

PS: We're all waiting for a full review if anyone has time/ will to make one

 

i'll test eyefinity too, looks like my dells arrived today too.....

 

Could someone please test the HD webcam? Is it still have the same issues as the HP Envy 15?

 

The Envy 17 Beats Audio, I read a review for the Envy 15 about the signal strength when you plug in headphones being exceptionally powerful. I currently have Bose Quietcomfort 2's as a gift and I'm wondering if they're up to snuff audio-wise. I considered getting the Beats headphones (carpet matching the drapes and so forth) and I still might, but the Leakage from those headphones is a big turnoff, although I heard they fared well paired with the Envy 15. Basically what I'm wondering is, since this laptop touts such a premium audio system and audio out signal, are my ~6 year old Bose headphones good enough?

 

I don't know, but with my UE superfi 5s in the Envy 15, I had to use volume 5 or less out of 100 or I'd hurt my ears.

 

Looks like our computers are on the same plane.

And btw, AK is part of "the states." So is Hawaii.

I HATE it when tourists in Hawaii say "I'm flying back to the states in two days" or something like that. I point to the flag and say "I see 50 stars there, don't you?"

 

Haha, I know. I'm just lazy to type "contiguous" between THE and STATES (people know what I mean though). I didn't think anyone here would make a fuss, but I guess not. Anyway, I'll be watching my tracking closely to see when it'll start shipping out to the contiguous states

 

"The states" is slang for "the United States of America." It's a short way of saying "the US" (states is shorter in speech, 1 syllable vs 2). When something is in a State in the Union and people say it's not in "The States," people from there take offense. It's like you think we're not a part of your country.

You could say CONUS, the DoD term for contiguous united states. Alaskans call y'all the "lower 48" and Hawaiians (like me) call you the "mainland."

 

Good, TBH though I have not seen the performance increase that supposedly comes with a clean install a opposed to uninstalling all the bloatware, mind you this is not according to any solid benchmarks, just my subjective view of the speed from using the laptop.

 

I think mine is keeping yours (Koshinn and nohm) company because it is in Alaska also! It's sort of like 3 men and a baby...except I don't know if you are men or women...and we don't know each other...and there are three babies(maybe 6 if you count the laptops). But, we are three people waiting for something that we will probably treat gently, at least physically.

 

Yes sir, I'll make sure not to use misinformed phrases the next time I meet Hawaiians and Alaskans.

Haha, whatever you say man (I'm a guy, so at least that makes it a confirmed 2 men situation ).

I just checked my tracking, and it seems the shipment is in transit again from the FedEx station. Are customs checks done at a different location, or does this mean it's already been cleared and on route here to the CONUS?

 

my custom configured (i7, 1 4GB DIMM, 1920, SSD) envy 17 was just delivered by fedex.

ordered on 5/22 with a build date of June 3rd. It shipped on the 3rd, so no delays there.

However, on 5/27, I found this forum and the $300 coupon. I called HP and they said they would only credit me $100, and couldn't cancel my order. They told me to just order again and return my first one. I don't get that logic, but I did that and added the 2 day shipping.

My second one had a build date of June 7th. Last saturday, I got the "shipped" email, but the tracking # doesn't even show up as a valid number in Fedex's system yet. I just called HP to ask what was going on with my second order, and they said there are no delays and it probably shipped yesterday and will arrive tomorrow, although I doubt it.

So, I have a box with a nice laptop in it that I can't open, and I have to cross my fingers for the box I can. Or, I can try this again with 25% BCB?

 

What was the battery life people got with the HP Envy 15 + the battery slice (with an i7 processor)? I want the HP Envy 17 or the 14, but I like the 14 more since it has the slice battery. For the 14, I want an i7 processor, so I was wondering the battery life with the slice + main battery on an i7 processor.

HP says the 14 gets something like 14 hours (I assume that is with the i5). So can I assume I would get about 7 hours with the two batteries?

 

You can open your current laptop and play with it, you just have to repack it and send it back to HP within 21 days (and make sure you get the RMA # first).

I'm somewhat annoyed you ordered days later than me and got yours days earlier.

 

haha thats a funny vid but they removed my avatar cause apparently I can't "display political figures, especially fascists and such" dam you have some nice stuff. i just sold 2 of mine and a Burton Custom ICS + Raiden Bindings 0
and i have black burton poacher boots. I tried to get a trip to somewhere in Tahoe and later Bear but this season didnt work out. I grew up in rado on cop. mountain, Veil, Aspen, Brek. and all those.

oh and another question. what would be the difference in battery life between i5 and i7? 45-60 mins?

 

Yea about 6-7 hours tops sounds about right for an Envy 14 configuration with a quad core i7

 

Just checked the status of my shipping, and I see that my laptop is sitting next to nohm's, koshinn's, and InOverMyHead. Looks like it's an Alaskan bake event today! Cake anyone?

 

Yes, while I didn't get an email from Bing. I found my cashback pending on my bing account. Apparently I have two bing accounts and I found it on the second one. I didn't realize I had two.

Now I am part of the mass delusion of people who believe I will have a superior laptop experience by purchasing the state of the art in pc computing.

I guess I have mixed feelings. On the one hand my ego and my desire for imaginary pleasure and the great hypothetical deal with the 25% bing cashback are all being stroked. Yet, my rational self knows I could have purchased a much less expensive 17 inch laptop; and it probably would have satisfied me as much in reality.

Now I can officially join the cult of those "waiting for the pc to come." Will it come on time, maybe earlier. hopefully not later than expected. Will I be one of the ones who has a flawless laptop. I'm not very picky, easy to satisfy so long as it doesn't lock up and I have to do the hated reboot or worst still a blinking cursor or error message consisting of 20 numbers.

While I don't have the laptop credentials or expertise to warrant this high tech laptop, I guess I am now part of the elite.

Let the waiting commence!

Nevertheless I truly admire those on this board who consistantly share their knowledge of laptops. I must admit I have learned alot from reading these posts. This is a great website.

 

Welcome to the waiting room then neilk47! Perhaps we'll get ours around the same time as I just ordered last night. The estimated shipping date for mine is the 23rd, which as I noted earlier seems a bit unreasonable considering the only thing I upgraded was the processor. Since I went with standard shipping, if that estimate is true I have about 3 weeks of waiting ahead of me .

 

Welcome to the soon-to-be-owners club. Yeah, for most of us, the waiting time has been about 3 weeks. Your estimated ship time does not really depend on how much upgrades you do if you selected the custom build option as your specification build for the laptop would have to start from scratch, and put in queue. The only way to jump the waiting queue is to purchase a pre-configured laptop.

 

Has anyone gotten theirs from Amazon yet? Or even an email that it has been shipped? Thanks

 

Amazon.com: This item has not yet been released.

So I doubt it.

 

Gonna ask again cause I think it got missed.

Does anyone have experience with BCB and HP's "Bill me Later"? If BCB goes to check if the payment is complete in 60 days, but I haven't payed it off via Bill me Later thinking I can hold out for a full 6 months, will the BCB be denied?

 

No worries- your current avatar is funny as well. You have a legit setup yourself. My friend also has that same board from the previous season with Raiden bindings as well (the Andreas Wiig). And yeah, I'd rather board at CO (Vail, Aspen, etc) than any SoCal mountains on any given day.

Bake event? Cake? Let me give GLaDOS a call and let her know you're interested...

 

You guys don't mind if I join you right? Gotta play catch up. Mine is due out to AK in a couple more hours. I'll get the booze. You guys can hold out till I get there right?

 

That's a good question. I'm in the same boat as you are. From what other people said in this thread you should be good. I have already checked my billmelater account and the amount I paid has already shown up on my billmelater account. In my estimation HP would consider the sale complete like it would any other credit card and now I just have to pay off billmelater within 6 months to avoid any interest. Anyone think differently here?

 

So I'm looking at buying one of these. But I'm not sure if I should go with an i5 or an i7? I do play games frequently enough. But I'd also like battery life of 3 hours plus for classes and work. Unfortunately, I need my gaming power in a notebook that can do all these things as space is at a premium in my apartment and I *really* can't get a desktop.

 

No, you're right. I have experience with BML, and that's exactly how it's done. Once you make a purchase using BML, the retailer receives the payment from BML immediately, while you're left with having to pay BML afterwards (and w/ no interest during the promotional period). Considering HP would've already received their money, Bing will acknowledge the transaction as a done deal. What you still owe BML is an isolated issue between you and BML, and not with HP and Bing.

If you're not sure about this, then go ahead and give BML a call regarding the transaction process. I doubt HP and even Bing will know what to tell you. Then again, you might as well call Bing and ask about their verification process for your cashback.

 

Then the i5 is your best option. Those that have the i7 here indicated their battery life was less than stellar and didn't come close to what you are looking for. i5 people seemed to indicate almost getting to 3 hours and I'm sure if you use it for class and work you could probably stretch it out no problem.

 

Ok. Which of the i5s would be best? I couldn't find any solid numbers on what gaming performance would be like.

 

all of the i5 processors available for the envy 17 are rated at a max of 35 W power consumption. The i5-450 is the best of them performance wise hands down. Here are the specs and it should answer all of your questions
Intel® Core™ i5 Mobile Processor - Specifications

 

haha!! i'll have to apologize to the guy who heard the high pitched noise...i guess we're all gonna have it...my envy has it too. i'll have to read what you did to fix it.

i've heard it twice.

just added in the extra 4gb of memory and now have 8gb.

next, i'm going to create my restore disks and restore this windows to an ssd drive. looks like the envy doesn't come with mounting bracket for adding in the 2nd drive. from the looks of it it's going to be different than the standard bracket that's used for disk 1 since it looks as though the 2nd drive needs to be tucked under the bottom cover. bracket will need to accommodate this.

i've just now come back from watching the lakers beat the celtics and so i'm playing with my toy now...not sure how much i'll get done as far as reviewing it. so i'm going to give you my initial impressions from the 2 hours or so i've had it on at work and at home.

as i'm typing, i'm sitting on the crapper and i noticed right away that the screen does not fold back as far as the beats limited edition. i don't like this but i'll live with it. it looks almost vertical...not exactly 90 degrees ...maybe 100. i have both the 6 and 9 cell battery and the 9 cell has something of a little stand so that the laptop inclines. at this angle right now, it would actually hinder my line of sight to the laptop even more. it looks as if the best viewing angle will be from a high desk...which luckily my office desk is.

the laptop is NOT burning my thigh as my limited edition did...that LE got REALLY hot on the front and back. this one is warm underneath. does not bother me. the palm rest is not hot...and while the right side palm rest is COOL the left side is WARM - not hot.

i mentioned earlier that the trackpad is better than the LE...the two finger scrolling was more sensitive on the LE but this could be because i tweaked it on the LE...i don't remember.

i was pleasantly surprised that when i left the laptop on in the bathroom and then left to take my dog out and then i came back that the keyboard was brightly lit. the bathroom lights were off. this is exactly how i think backlit keyboards should work...you shouldn't notice them until they're needed.

it looks as though the envy 17 still takes a long time to get to the windows splash screen...this always bothered me in the LE and it looks like it's going to continue on the envy 17. i'll have to turn off the instant on in the BIOS but in the LE this didn't make much of a difference and i have the suspicion that it won't make much of a difference in the 17.

i used the control arrow button just now which always messed me up on the LE becasue the left side of the keyboard had hotkeys...since these were removed in the 17 this is not an issue. thanks for listening hp.

just put in a bluray...let's see what happens.

 

Must have been good, seeings how you didnt come back

 

bluray is phenomenal. screen looks great - glad i paid extra for the upgraded screen. not sure what bluray was doing but it got the laptop a bit warmer while the palmrest is still tolerable it is a bit warmer.

the sound is underwhelming. now...i need to preface this by saying that headphones + envy is incredible. the sound comes from all around and is very, very loud. this was true with the LE as well... while the sound is definitely louder on the 17 than on the LE it is still, nonetheless, not acceptable in my opinion. as a comparison, i'm using the asus g73jh which my friend owns...it is LOUD and it is CLEAR. i was playing on the highest setting and was fearing for the subwoofer...it did not sound crisp or loud enough. HP defnitely needs to work on this... i do understand that this is a laptop...and that the need for loud sound is only really an issue if the majority of laptop users intend to watch their laptops from far away which most won't

***update**** the screen folds back..A LOT...in fact more than the LE. i guess the screen was just tight and i didn't want to force it. sorry about the confusion earlier (this is what i mean, by the way, by early reviewers ruining it for other users)

we should try concentrating on the pluses. the screen is fantastic! i love the brightness...it is really bright.

just connected a bluetooth mouse and it worked right off the bat, no issues.

the envy looks fantastic. the packaging is great. it was a real treat unpacking the envy in front of the co-workers. it looked like quality through and through. the pouch is nice!

i wanted to reserve performance thoughts until after i ran benchmarks but initial impressions are great. very, very snappy.

i'll have more thoughts later. going to try and make a backup.

 

the Fences app rocks! perfect for me!

for those who did a clean install. you're missing out. useful little app

 

the high pitched noise is ANNOYING hahahaha!!!!

gonna fix this now.

 

hd webcam looks really good...great detail. i used the webcam in a completely dark room with just the brightness from the laptop on and it looked great. everything behind me was pitch black though...but my face had color and it had a lot of detail. i lowered the screen brightness and it looked good until about 60%

 

Even though it's an annoying flaw, I'm glad me and jaxxy weren't the only ones noticing this and going insane. That noise will be the first thing I'll fix if it's on my copy. It's just too bad I didn't know about the fix while I had my 15G2...

Good job with the hands on review.

 

I assume you meant the 430? This is the chip with switchable graphics right?

 

Thanks for the info nevian. I'm very glad to hear that the screen goes past 100 degrees! I'm switching to the Envy 17 from an hp convertible laptop, and that screen goes all the way back so 100 degrees would have been painful!

 

I'm considering getting this laptop on amazon. Has anyone actually received it yet from them? If not, do you know when they plan to ship them?

 

Amazon has shipped my Envy 17 and it is already in my hands.....joking.

I called Amazon, and the reps do not know. It is a pre-order item. Someone in this thread mentioned pre-ordering before May 28th and has a ship date of Jun 17 to 24, so wait and see if it is true.

 

Hey nevian, Thanks for your great first impressions.

I liked how you related your impressions with performing actual tasks and tests. Looks like a winner to me! Seems like HP did listen to some of the previous feedbacks for the Envy's and improved on the webcam, heat management, and the fact that the lid can be opened wider.

By the way, what brand/manufacturer 4 GB RAM did you add to the laptop? Could you let give us the manufacturer part # for the RAM that came with it?

Thanks

 

Well I placed an order on Amazon for the ENVY 17-1011NR and I am canceling my dell order for the xps 16.

 

Definatly keen for this lappy but want to play with one in person before making the plunge.

One things thats making me think twice is the size, I know its a 17" so i don't expect it to be super portable but for those who have it is it still easy enough to use say sitting on the couch and on your lap, etc?

I really like the screen realestate and the num pad on the 17 which is making it my preference currently over the yet to be released 14...

 

So the amazon spec sheet states that it has a blu-ray drive while the actual page for it states a dvd writer. Also the spec sheet claims a 6 cell and 9 cell while the site says only lithium for battery type.

 

What you are saying about "that it has a blu-ray drive while the actual page for it states a dvd writer" is that from the manufacturer specs are different than what is listed under product features and technical details.
I am looking at the amazon.com page, and it specifically says:

Product Description
From the Manufacturer

Processor
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM processor 1.60GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.80GHz


Operating System
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Display
17.3" diagonal Full HD HP Ultra BrightView Infinity LED Display (1920 x 1080)

Memory (RAM)
8GB DDR3

Hard Drive
640GB (7200RPM) Dual HDD - 320GB + 320GB SATA with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection

Weight & Dimensions (w x d x h)
7.51 lbs; 16.38" x 10.83" x 1.25"/2.15"

Battery Life
Up to 5.75 hours

Wireless
Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n WLAN & Bluetooth®

Optical Drive
Slot-loading Blu-ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support

Video Graphics
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5850 Graphics with up to 4091MB total graphics memory with 1GB dedicated

------------------------------------
Now this is what it says in the amazon description, above the part where it says description from the manufacturer:
Product Features and Technical Details
Product Features
Intel Core i7-720QM processor 1.60GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.80 GHz; 8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 DIMM) - Max supported = 8GB; 640GB (7200RPM) Hard Drive - Dual 320GB (SATA); Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Laser-etched aluminum finish in carbon relic; HP TrueVision HD Webcam with integrated microphone; 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader
Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 connector); Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n WLAN & Bluetooth
1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0: Three USB 2.0, 3rd port shared with eSATA; mini-Display port; 1 HDMI; 1 VGA (15-pin); 1 RJ -45 (LAN); 1 Headphone-out/Microphone-in combo jack (compatible with 3.5mm 4-conductor jack with stereo audio and mono mic)
17.3 inch diagonal Full HD Ultra BrightView Infinity LED Display (1920 x 1080); ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 Graphics with up to 4091MB total graphics memory with 1GB dedicated; SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support; Beats Audio and HP Triple Bas

Conclusion:
I am inclined to believe that some idiot peon over at Amazon.com just quickly typed the product description and didn't even bother to read it over, so who knows how accurate it is. And I am basing that on the fact that the line in the product features after the part about the dvd player says that it also includes "Beats Audio and HP Triple Bas". I don't know what "Triple Bas" is, but hopefully it is similar to "Triple Bass". In other words it's a typo, and not including that it also has blu-ray could have been a typo left out by accident, or not. Who ever typed that probably wasn't paying much attention/looks like maybe no one read it over, so some/alot of it could be wrong. We will just have to wait and see.

 

Try test the webcam in sunlight?