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

I know - that's the problem. The number keypad stopped displaying numbers a few days ago. I tried the registry hack to enable it, but it resets upon reboot.

 

Speaking of cooling pads, will it fit with the Zalman NC2000?

 

we need confirmation on this.

i just got off a 2 hour convo with hp tech support.

he seemed to think that so long as the monitors each show up individually that they should all work to become part of a "group" ... i only saw the 1x2 and 2x1 option when creating a gruop and he seemed to think there is an issue in that regard with it not displaying 1x3 and 3x1 options.

he said he's going to research it further and get back to me.

on a side note.... after years of ordering and receiving laptops and computers and what not...i spoke too soon....i said earlier on this thread that all my laptops and computers from oems had always arrived working with zero issues as far as hardware was concerned. i guess the envy 17 broke that streak...the directional arrow keys are afu. probably a piece of trash of some sort under the keys. not sure i'll return it or try to get it working myself.

i'll keep you guys posted on the eyefinity thing

 

someone mentioned something about quality control on these envys...definitely agree with you. there are some areas around the chassis surrounding the keyboard where if you put pressure on you can actually hear a little pop as it tries to sit to the rest of the laptop. definitely not good on a "high end" laptop. people are supposed to envy these laptops!

 

Early Touchpad and Battery Issues:

Have there been significant touchpad issues with others? I remember at least one comment a few days ago.

My touchpad "wheel" works a couple times, but then ceases to respond. This pattern occurs regardless of whether I am using a browser or Windows explorer.

The pinch seems to work, but the tap for mouse button works rarely.

The two-fingered scroll has never worked.

I've reset the sensitivity in the Synaptics interface, but it hasn't helped so far.

I intend to keep experimenting, but all this is interfering with my planned temperature tests.

I can say that the left palm rest reached 100 deg F with the laptop at idle (1% - 2% cpu) with Speedfan reporting cpu temps of 115 deg F. The palm rest then dropped to 92 deg F after about 20 minutes (still, all idle) and the cpu dropped to 105 deg F.

I feel the heat around 100 deg F, but it is neither too hot nor lightly warm. Until I load the cpu, however, these numbers don't mean much. I wasn't tracking the fan(s?) speed, so I can't say for sure whether that early left palm rest heat was a quick purge by starting fans followed by a steady lower temperature or what.

This is with the i7 and a single hard drive. I also was using the 9 cell battery on a table (more air space). I was busy with errands, so the laptop was doing nothing except interact with the wireless router and collect Norton and Windows updates.

I need to evaluate the touchpad before I load any more software.

Battery: the 6 cell battery had 20 hours to charge with the laptop off, but upon boot, it was only 48% charged. With the laptop on, the battery completed to 100%. This seems similar to one prior comment, as I remember.

 

Second day review with a little more use (only light, no gaming).

Heat: I think the people who are having cooler results are running i5s in ideal environments. I was in a much cooler place (70F) and even web browsing this thing will creep up to hot. Fortunately the palm rest area wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday, but the left side and upper portion of top are still significantly hot (while doing nothing); enough to hurt should you leave your hand there more than a few seconds. The heat is HOT along the left bezel down to about the caps lock key. Below that it is uncomfortably to noticably warm, with the very bottom (inline with the bottom of the trackpad) being about slightly above room temperature. This is in an ideal cool environment; I don't see myself being anywhere much cooler than here.

Trackpad: Sucks, sorry to say. Maybe I've been spoiled working off a macbook (ol' whitey) the last few years, but this thing is endless frustration. It is nearly impossible to "click" accurately, as the mouse will jump as you try to do so. Forcing myself to learn to take all fingers off the trackpad when I want to click has helped, but a good 50% of the time it will still jump as my single finger tries for a flawless click. Somewhat a relief: "tapping" does seem to work pretty well in place of clicking, but it's not 100%. 2 finger scrolling sucks, but I'll try to tinker with it tomorrow. All in all, I'm bummed that I'll be forced to use my mouse more than I'd care to so that I don't punch something. I do love that I can double click the top left to lock the trackpad easily.

Build quality: As others have noticed, I am also seeing a gap in spots along the edge. Mine is fairly modest, so I don't see it as a big issue. A solid piece of metal a la MBP would have payed off here.


Everything said and done, I'm pretty happy with this thing. While the heat is a big issue for me, I'm starting to resign myself that to achieve the power I'm enjoying, I'm going to suffer heat, or noise, or both, and at least here I get something that's a bit more presentable. I'm a little more forgiving today now that I've got my eye on a G13 gaming pad. Let the F'er heat up all it wants, I'll stick my mit on something else.

Accoustics: Sound is nice. Subwoofer and whatever else they threw in is leaps above my old macbook in sound quality. Now that I'm in a pindrop room, the fan is definitely more noticable, especially when it decides to power up, but it's not overwhelming, and especially if you have turned up the sound to enjoy the niceness.

I'm gonna try to do some of the indepth testing I wanted over the rest of this week, then I'll throw up a review if anyone cares to read. If not, at least it will help solidify in my mind where this laptop sits, and if I want to keep it.


Final notes for people still waiting and wondering about things I was:
- it's darker in person than in all the pictures (the inside mainly, what I'm looking at 90% of the time) a pleasant suprise
- the bell 9-cell isn't bad at all. Very small bump, in fact, I wish it was larger so I'd get more life out of it. extending the width of the laptop would have been nice
-pattern isn't that bad, and doesn't stand out
- I don't see much in the way of bloatware, and am running great without a fresh install. revo uninstalled a few things and am plenty fine with the result

 

This is the same problem I have had with the two models I received. Both had issue with the front-right foot, ie the foot closest to the user (I'm assuming his is the foot your talking about as well?). If you pressed down on this corner the laptop would 'touch down' with a thud well that's an exageration but yea...

So HP are investigating it now, they suspect there's been an entire bad batch shipped here. Bummer. Still waiting on replacement and HP are looking into how they can compensate me, considering my original purchase was now 2 weeks ago.

Interesting there may be other units out there that have this same cosmetic problem. Bad news about all the other physical defects such as marks and gaps.

 

Yes, it fits. It hangs over just a tad on the sides, but it's not really obnoxious or a problem. Does a great job cooling it...

 

I've never had a laptop with fingerprint reader before. Can anyone advise why it is not on the ENVY but included on Pavilions?

What other security does ENVY have, perhaps face recognition through web cam? Or is it plain old keyboard entry of passwords?

 

My Envy 17 is sitting on the Zalman NC2000. It fits, but don't expect too much cooling.

 

Why is that?

 

The laptop hangs over the sides, so the vents are not lined up properly.

Anyone who has their Envy 17 still in its factory state, could you post a picture of your Beats Audio control panel and taskbar icon? I'm trying to identify the right IDT Audio driver to use because it seems that the one listed in the drivers page does not properly work with beats.

 

My guess is that the fingerprint readers are mainly for business-use, and normal business-men dont spend over 1000 usd for a laptop.

 

same here.

 

kiwi,
if i push down on the corner closest to MY right it does rock. sadly, if i apply pressure on the corner away from me to MY left the chassis clicks...as if it doesn't sit right with the rest of the laptop. it's a small sharp click.

 

On the hp site under envy 17, it shows yellow symbol which when highlighted say 1 year of premium service. Is this better service reps or faster service or is this just a marketing ploy?

Would the extended contract extend the premium service?

 

guys, my notebook is shipping on the 18th and my shipment method is standard 5-7 business days...but i'll be leaving to shanghai for the expo for two weeks on the 25th(ironic isnt it?) do you guys think my notebook will get here before i leave? CS said this time my notebook is definitely ship on the 18th, but does that mean fedex will pick it up on that friday and fly it over here to the us? they dont work on saturdays and sundays right? i live in nyc, so does anyone have an idea of how long that might take? these reviews of the faulty/defected/flawed envy17s people are making me more and more anxious. during this entire month of wait hp's putting me through, i'm learning of how unstable the envy17 is(or HP in general). im already super frustrated with the wait..imagine how much anger i'll be in if my envy17 comes defected after an entire month of wait?

 

ok everyone...it's confirmed. you may have to use an ACTIVE miniDisplayPort to XXX cable to use eyefinity.

i could not get the 3 monitors to work together yesterday. today i went to the apple store and bought one of the $100 active mini displayport to dvi cables and hooked it up just now. eyefinity immediately allowed me to select the 1x3 or 3x1 option which was not allowed before.

i want to test whether or not the cable is needed at all if we're using a native displayport monitor rather than using a minidisplay port to DVI/HDMI cable.

going to try some gaming now

 

FWIW, my Envy 17 was "shipped" on Jun 7, picked up by FedEx on Jun 8 and delivered to my home in Westchester (30 mi N of NYC) on Jun 14. After two previous shipping delays, they managed to miss my departure to London by one day, so the laptop is sitting there waiting for my return.

 

I just swapped out the i5 for an i7, can someone with an i7-820 or even the 720 tell me there temps with hwmonitor? want to see if the heatsink is identical to the i5 one (think it is, like with the envy 15 which only had an extra piece of plastic on the heatsink).

 

I'm confused with the conflicting heat reports. Some are saying the palmrest gets to hot to touch on idle, while others say even under load it's simply warm [excepting the top left vent] Such a discrepancy cannot only be related to ambient temperature. Maybe improper heatsink seating or thermal paste? I know some people had that on some of their Envy 15 and once they applied paste properly temps decreased significantly.

 

left side and bottom definitley gets a good bit hotter, but no worse than with an envy 15 running an i7. pretty impressed with the single fan for cooling, it does a good job. my temps idling with an 820qm are 53 degrees, and maxes out at 80 degrees after futuremark vantage. fan runs louder to keep cool. I also installed my blu ray drive. will play with this notebook a few more days before I make a decision b/w it and my envy 15. 3dmark with envy 15: 9600 (overclocked). 3dmark with envy 17: 12605 (overclocked)

 

Please keep us posted. It'll be interesting to see which you choose.

 

The "heat issue" is really the only thing holding me back from buying this thing. Well and the poor build quality problems some people seem to have.

 

Does anyone know if they have any Hp envy 17's at any retail stores in Nyc? I am flying into Nyc for the weekend very last minute so did not have time to order one in time.
I have read 50 pages of posts on how bad the delays are for ordering from Hp so I know it is a super long shot.
I have read the posts about gaps on the edges and the build quality. I would open it in store and return exchange it if there are similar gaps and buid quality issues.

 

The build quality issues are hardly noticable IMO. Maybe a few people have gotten some bad luck, but my minor gaps are barely worth mentioning in the grand scheme.

With heat, keep in mind some people are reporting from i5s, some i7s. I personally have an i7, and the heat IS an issue. It's not the whole laptop though. For a breakdown:

- the left "side" (vertical plane) where the fan exhaust is, gets extremely hot. Placing a finger on or near the vent will begin to hurt after approximately 3 seconds (assuming your laptop has been on for an hour or more)

- the left portion of the top plane (where the keyboard rests) has a huge variance in temperature. If the point above where the fan exhaust is the epicenter (about where the escape key is) the first inch radius is extremely hot, the next 2 inches radius is uncomfortably hot (about down to the caps lock button) the following 2 inches are hot (down to the ctrl button and the palm rest), and the remaining palm rest goes from warm to slightly above room temperature

- where your palm rests in a typical gaming aswd configuration your palm will be quite warm; think resting your hand on an electric heating pad. Hot enough to make my palm sweat after prolonged use. While the metal between the keys is hotter still, the keys themselves are above it, so your fingers don't feel it.


I'm thinking I might try to fenagle a downgrade to the i5 to avoid the heat, or get a g13 gamepad so I have something else to rest my palm on while gaming. I'm kind of worried that the long term effects of such heat could cause problems with the parts/casing... At the very least I wish they would have put the heat blasting on the top right side where no one is likely to actually be resting their hand. SIGH.

 

Is this what you bought?
Link

 

Haven't received my envy or any word of it having shipped yet (2nd ship delay) but I have purchased this configurable notebook cooler that can put the adjustable fans right under the vents on the envy and it's an open architecture to promote better cooling. Be sure to click the FLASH player on the link, use the FLASH menu and tell me what you think.

Vizo Technology Corp

 

Is there any word on when amazon will be shipping the envy 17? do you think i have anything to worry about, because I need this laptop before I go back to college at the end of august.

 

with the i5 the heat is really a non-issue. get the envy 17 with an i5 if you don't like heat. the i7 is definitely hotter, you can feel the heat slowly spread from the top left corner to the bottom left of the palm rest, and you can also feel some real heat on the base of the notebook. I really don't mind the heat, b/c again, I have an Envy 15 which got pretty hot too. At some point in the fall, I will definltey buy an i5-580m which will take care of the heat. for now the 820qm is the fastest cpu and that's what I want.

Oh, I have some pics of the system board, will post them later.

 

my temps seem to fall right in line with jaxy, meaning the heatsinks assembly for the i5 and i7 versions are identical except the i5 version has a lame piece of (pointless) plastic covering it. so then, if you would like to upgrade to an i7 or switch over to an i5, no need to buy a new heatsink for your gpu/cpu

 

Can anyone recommend a linux distro suitable for this laptop?

 

hey, nice find. but if i were to really cool the laptop, i would just get the hp notebook stand and put a 10$ fan behind it.

 

Ha! I agree, I would even get a mini air conditioner behind it if I weren't worried about condensation!

 

What is the maximum resolution I can get from the minidisplayport with the Envy 17? Want to use this laptop with a 27 or 30" monitor.

 

Any idea of a company or something to make the envy come to canada?
Dont have any relatives in the us. :'(

 

Is the touchpad manageable on the Envy 17? Some of you said that it was fine, some said terrible, others said it's second only to the MBP. I am hoping that it is the latter of those opinions.

Also, if anybody has used a MBP in BootCamp, is the touchpad on the Envy 17 better than the touchpad of the MBP when in Boot Camp?

 

I was a recent touchpad complainer. I poked about the settings and found that the one touch scroll was off (unchecked). I checked the boxes (H & V) and I am now less concerned. The two finger scroll still doesn't work dependably (scroll down works, but not up, then neither).

For now, I am satisfied enough to continue to load software and data.

 

No. Been using old macbook with windows only for the last 2 years. MBP touchpad is better. BUT I revise my older statement of envy 17 trackpad being horrible. It's more horrible at default settings, but you can customize it to be more palatable. For example the default 2 finger scroll sucks IMO, but you can enable scrolling via the edges of the pad to make up for it. Unfortunately I don't see a way to replicate right click with taps, so while I can tap to left click, I have to still click the button to right click (which causes jumping and fail).

In short, default sucks, customization is fairly indepth to bring it up to usable. I haven't tried other laptops in recent years besides MBP, so I can't say if it's second to them alone. I am catching myself using older nicer MBP movements and being sad when nothing happens. Namely 2 finger scrolling, and 2 finger right clicking on tap.

 

Here's someone who used a $20 Monoprice cable on a Desktop 5850 Eyefinity setup: eyefinity setup - Page 2 - [H]ard|Forum

$20 < $105

 

Sorry you have to go through this. I hope Amazon's batch won't have the same problems.

 

thanks for your input. i tried finding an envy 15 at best buy to try but they took them off display just a month ago.

from your statements, you are saying 2 finger scroll doesn't work at all? i know with the mbp, you can 2 finger scroll anytime as long as there are 2 points on the touchpad; they can be close together or far apart as possible. for 2-finger scroll on other laptops, they require more precision (ie, the 2 fingers must be leveled together and the distance between the 2 fingers must be exact in order for 2 finger scrolling to occur)

 

If it was just a bad batch then that's better than it being a design flaw. I predict as more orders are shipped the occurrence of defects will decrease.

 

Did HP mention the gaps between the metal plates as a defect?

 

Did we forget the 3D screen?? Who have tested it??

 

There is no 3D screen.

 

No my last two didn't have any gaps or other noticeable defects other than the right-side 'rocking'. But it is alarming that nevian and metril are saying heir units have this same problem. I would have thought it might have just been the ones that arrived here in early May.
The service centre guys here in Auckland are talking to some HP big-wig technicians in Australia to see what is going on.
I've been pretty patient up to this point and my case manager is very nice and helpful but, as I said on the phone today, my patients isn't going to last much longer. He just said quality control at the factory has been let down and they are looking into it.
But I continue to wait and get daily updates on wether they can fix the current one just down the round at the service centre or another brand new unit from China will be sent to me.

Nevian and Metril, there's no way you should put up with rocking, send it back. You pais good money and it has to sit properly on the desk, c'mon.

The sad thing is at the moment HP seems stumped as to what the problem is, after replacing the entire bottom case, the thing still wobbles.

Hmmmmmmmm....... ZzzzzzZ

 

kiwi,

i think the engineering was defective on the bottom of the envy. my envy is also not completely flat on all four corners and, consequently, wobbles if i push down with one finger on the corner closest to me and to the right. doesn't bother me much though....it is a tiny, tiny wobble. i think most wouldn't notice it

 

i have bad news. earlier i posted i had eyefinity running. i'm using the $100 cable from apple to connect mini displayport cable to dvi. after running the envy a couple of hours and running left for dead 2 in eyefinity...i'm sad to say that the screen with the apple cable occasionally goes out and comes back. very annoying.

i'm thinking the best solution is to get a displayport native monitor.

 

additionally, i had Real Temp 3.40 running in the background while playing left for dead 2... maximum temps from 1-4 on all cores was 91C, 89C, 96C and 92C

that is f'ing hot.