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

@kiwi_style

I don't think I ever mentioned having any defects on my Envy 17. All I noticed so far were an ESC key that seems to have a slight right tilt to it and a minor cosmetic scuff on the aluminum near the top right of the keyboard.

I have the i7 820QM. The top left vent does get pretty hot. Also, I only have 1 500GB drive. The palm rest right above the drive does get warm. Then again, it is 82 deg F in my room.

I'll post a more detailed review with temps when I get a chance.

I do not see any gap problems with my Envy.


When I ran the Envy factory default, I was able to play a ripped blueray and play Guildwars fully maxed out at 1920x1080, both at the same time with no stutter. If I recall, the core temps never went past 73C and the GPU was around 65C. This was from HWMonitor. By the way, for those who care, the factory default had over 95 processes running after startup. A clean install as brought this to 61.

I will be posting a clean install guide and list exactly which drivers are required (version is important) because it took me 2 days of experimenting to figure out what the things in the SwSetup folder each do. Hopefully I fall asleep soon.

 

Nevian, make sure the cables are secured soundly on each end. If that problem still occurs, maybe you have a defective cable.

Also Nevian, there is something wrong with your Envy, those temps are a full 20 C above what others are getting.

 

For consensus sake, mine has wobble as well on the front right side with the 9-cell.

 

switching back to the i5-430m for now, the 820 gets the palmrest too hot for playing games comfortably. may be ordering an i5-540 sooner than later. you can do low intensive stuff on the notebook, but playing oblivion for more than 10 minutes, palmrest was too warm for my tastes.

 

Sorry Metril I meant Koshinn with regard to his wobble.

Nevian, well it isn't good enough for me. If I pay such I high price (and let me tell you much more than what you guys have paid in the US) then I'll be damned if it sits wobbly. It wasn't a huge wobble but certainly annoying.

I mean it is ridiculous, you can buy a DVD player, PS3, DVR or whatever and they will all sit flat on their rubber feet on a flat surface. This is the first time I've ever come across this.

My previous two pavillions were perfect, what's going on now?

 

I sent mine back yesterday. Looking at the 8740w again.

 

Isn't the 8740w a hell of a lot more expensive? Here anyway you're looking at 3k more than the E7 for one of those .

 

Most likely the factory making the Envy is a sweat shop. And their workers formerly farmers or ignorant folk.

 

You can get a 25% discount if you order through a sales rep. But yes it still is more expensive because you only get 1HDD and the bluray upgrade is more expensive.

 

Can you tell us a list of reasons for this hopeless returning ?

What so desperate fail that a repair/replace of the item can't resolve ???

And so why not moved to the Envy's enemy Asus G73JH ?

 

He posted the reasons w/ pics a few pages back.

 

ops... sorry, but in that post he doesn't answered my second (ok, power plug can't change...) and third question ... so, I'll wait about it.

 

How much WAS the upgrade to 8 GB of RAM? I just went on there and its $200, but i could swear i paid $400 for it!!! Im going to call every day till its here now, tired of this. Got the $25 coupon email and yesterday CS said the same old copy and paste story thats been posted all over these pages.

 

And that's with the Zalman cooler eh?

 

I have had no problems with two finger scrolling. Took me a minute to figure out my fingers couldn't be together because the pad wouldn't recognize both of them. Seperating my fingers worked like a charm, no issues now. Haven't even messed with the settings. Pinch and such also work without issue.

 

It works, but not well. It's very testy on what it wants to accept as sufficient to initiate the 2 finger scroll. On top of that, the resolution is very low on the scroll; it's not smooth at all and quite jumpy for most things. Where on the MBP windows I could 2 finger scroll a sizable portion, on this it takes like half the scroll to initiate a scroll, then I run out of trackpad real estate before anything useful gets accomplished, or I've stutter jumped over the content.

Edge scrolling works quite a bit better, but no, MBP was far better, sorry to say.


Has anyone yet switched from an i7 to the i5-540? If so, how was the heat difference?

 

That is with the Zalman cooler.

 

Okay. In any case, I am looking forward to that clean install guide!

 

i read online that many people were having issues with that cable hooked up to their monitors ...the screen would go black and come back on. i'll have to research it but it's looking more and more like i'll have to get a displayport native monitor.

those temps are high, yes... i'm not sure they're abnormal though. obviously, anything over 90 degrees is way too hot for an i7 but with the videocard pumping signal to 3 monitors and the i7 working full speed...im pretty sure it gets way hot.

i would VERY MUCH appreciate it if someone could do the same test:
1. set up envy 17 with 3 monitors in a group (eyefinity)
2. run Real Temp 3.40
3. run Left for Dead 2 for about an hour
4. exit the game
5. check Real Temp for Max temperature reached

actually feel free to do this without eyefinity as well to compare.

 

I switched back and forth b/w an i5-430m and an i7-820qm (temps b/w other variants of the i5 and i7 are about the exact same). The i5 makes a world of difference when it comes to heat. The heatsink has 2 copper lines connected to the CPU heatplate, and only one for the GPU, so most of the heat is drawn out from the CPU. The palmrest is much cooler (still can get a little warm, but not bad at all). I strongly recommend an i5 CPU. can't wait for the i5-580m this fall.

 

Anyone know the old pricing for upgrading RAM to 8GB??? its $200 now but i thought it was $400. chatting with hp to figure it out.

 

I'm going through pages and there is so much pages that is impossible for me to go through. I'm considering the envy17 over SONY F series, what issues that envy 17 have?From what I read, it has a Morse code and overheating issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

check first page, it has the most important info. people are complaining a bit of the chassis, but not everyone

 

Anyone who ordered the 8GB of RAM upgrade!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Just called HP and they are crediting me the $200 difference in price. The 8GB upgrade is now only $200 instead of the $400 i paid. If you did this call to get a refund!!!!!

 

Thanks much, that's exactly the information I was looking for. I'm wondering if I can barrage HP with all the issues and coerce a processor swap as reparation.

 

hows the heat for those of you running on i5 540?

 

I checked my order and repriced it today. It is exactly $200 less than when I purchased it. I ordered the 8gb of ram. So you are correct.

The question is will HP refund me $200 for the lower price since they have not built my unit yet?

However I purchased it with the bcb 25% discount and I don't want to lost that since it worth way more than $200 dollar. How do I get the $200 back and keep my bcb credit?

anybody have direct knowledge of have to do this?

 

Well, just make sure you are respectful to that phone rep. Don't try to break their will and browbeat them into giving you what you want. They're just trying to do a job.

 

You will not lose BCB. It will be adjusted to reflect the net price you end up paying.

 

im returning mine

 

thanks I will call them today about the $200.

while I don't game, I am concerned about all the problems I have heard. Hope this doesn't turn out to be a bummer. I t was reallly expensive.

 

Nah would never do that. Hoping to simply reason with him and get some part exchanges with the consideration that everyone here including myself has put up with a good deal till now, and deserve some quality for our money. I want to be satisfied with my purchase, that's all.

 

really tried to like the laptop, the backlit keys were nice, the edge to edge was nice, but my envy 15 is lighter, cooler, and only about 10 percent less powerful in terms of graphics.

 

1) Listed reasons before
2) Design faults in the cooling system an power cord placement mean that a replacement won't change anything
3) G73JH doesn't have eSATA or USB 3.0 or expresscard slots. It's also a bit too gaudy for me.

 

horray, yes they guarantee 21 day price protection from date of purchase.

$200 less minus the loss of $25 of bcb because of reduced price

many thanks for this info. this is the getest web site. I wondered about the value of reading hundreds of posts but I guess I earned money from it in the form of discounts I might have not known about.

 

What made you choose the 15 over 17, if I may ask?

 

Sorry to hear about all these returns, HP is stupid. You guys were the future noise makers for HP. NOw they created enemies instead of friends. Most purchase pcs and go about their business . You guys were promoting the product by getting everyone excited. I hope but dought HP will have their act together by the end of June when I get mine.

I wonder what they wil do with your laptops. Will they just put them on the market again as used and sell them as is or will they trash them for components

 

Remember, this was 2 people. Out of thousands that received the laptop. I'm fairly sure a good majority of the laptops worked perfectly out of the box with no quibbles. The discontent people's voices will always be the loudest.

 

All of these complaints are coming from a decent ratio of people who were expecting the laptop on this forum. I dont see one happy person with this laptop in who actually anticipated its release which is sad. Sure there might be a thousand others out there who dont have problems.. but how do you know? This board already tells me, from the actual people who promoted this laptop the most, failed them.

 

... A lot of the issues aren't % based defects but flaws in design. If you get an i7, it WILL be very hot. For some people this is a deal breaker. There's also nothing "wrong" with the track-pad, it just isn't that good. The wobble and cracks... I think those are person to person, but I know I have them and so do others, so I would not be surprised if this was again a flaw in design/manufacturing, not a defect. The way the pieces are fitted, there are going to be gaps here and there; I'll be surprised when someone turns up a laptop with zero gaps.

 

Did anyone have problems with the E17 locking up and freezing or malfunctions that require reformating the hard drive? I want to just use it and not fiddle with a lot of restructuring of the pc

Hopefully the problems mentioned here are Ok for me. I am not a gamer and always use wireless mouse. I don't think the heat will be a problem for me since this will be a desktop replacement. Not something to sit on my lap.

Of course I might want to watch some onlline website shows such as pbs etc. or work with common software etc, list to music on yourtube. take online free course

I want a screen that looks good and is large because of my age.

Hopefully this will match my needs even though it wasn't for the gamers.

I will miss your comments and ranting and raving over every nuance and constantly bickering about making it better out of the box including tearing it apart. I felt you guys were like hot rod fanatics with souped up pc's instead of cars. Maybe someday I will take a course in taking apart and tinkering with pc's. For now I want something dependable with on site service when problems occur.

If you guys know of more very reliable, great large display, laptops let me know. I will keep them in the back of my mind in case this turns out to do be shame pc instead of envy.

 

No freezing issues for me, worked fine without a fresh install, just removed a few programs I didn't care to keep. As for heat, the issue is not it sitting in your lap. All my heat complaints happened while it was sitting on a desk with plenty of ventilation. It's the palm rest that's the issue. i5 seems to be fine, i7... it becomes up to the user as to what is tolerable.

 

i7 will get very hot, uncomforably so near the palmrest. sorry to say even with the i5 my palmrest was a little too warm for my tastes. My Envy 15 with an i7 has a cooler palmrest and that is saying something.

My reasons for returning the 17:
1. My Envy Beats Limited edition looks reall polished (literally), just nicer looking
2. Graphics-wise, 10500 or so on 3dmark didn't justify keeping it with my 15 getting 9500 overclocked. Still runs games great.
3. Weight-wise, the 17" display is fanastic, but I really like having a 5.2 lb notebook, even makes some of my macbook pro friends jealous.

 

my dilemma:
1. a brand new 160GB Intel Gen 2 SSD I don't need
2. a brand new 1TB WD 12" notebook drive I don't need
3. a slot-loading blu-ray drive I don't need

ebay sale once again I guess.

 

I wouldn't be too quick to pass judgement. It seems some of the people in this thread are overly critical for the sake of it (I mean, look at how many notebooks they've returned over time!), but IMO my copy has been running just fine- no poorly glued parts, no overheating, no crashes/freezes, and the list of problems other people seem to be having. Granted, I haven't had a lot of time to spend on my 17 due to a busy work schedule which required me to be away from my computer for this past week, but whenever I got to use my 17 for productivity work (rendering, rendering, rendering), it has given me a very smooth and stable experience that I would expect from a $2000+ notebook.

Like L3vi has been saying- it's the discontent people who voice their opinions the most. With the popularity of the Envy 17 and only 20 somewhat people who actively post here, I highly doubt we are a true representation of the larger, observing crowd. Anyway, I'll try to return within the next week or two and try to come up with a comprehensive review of my experience so far (like I said, I haven't been able to park my arse here for a while ). I'll be back.

 

Hello everyone !!!

This forum and thread is great! I'm in the market to get an HP Envy 17 and saw Amazon.com has a great deal on it. Here is the link....

Amazon.com: HP ENVY 17-1011NR 17.3-Inch Laptop: Electronics

I was wondering does anyone know when this would be available? I have been checking this amazon webpage daily and it keeps saying "This item has not yet been released."

I'm sorry and sure this question has been asked before...my apologies.

Any help would be great. Thanks a lot.......

 

If anyone has an SSD can you share what brand it is? Intel? OCZ? Corsair? Thanks.

 

HP is using Intel

 

Reminds me of that Whitesnake song! Just kidding & welcome.

 

if you sell on ebay can you let us know the auctionid? I for one normally don't buy from non-"power" sellers but would gladly buy both hard drives off of you...