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

Did you upgrade the screen? And anybody know where they sell cheap SSDs (can be a little bit used )

 

Check the Marketplace on the forum. Theres a bunch on there. (Including one I'm selling lol )

 

I did a battery run-down test on my E17 yesterday. The specs of the system are: i7/720, 4GB single stick, 160GB SSD+ 500GB HDD, 1080p screen, BuRay disk, Win 7 Home premium.

For this test, which I repeated twice, I used the optional 9 cell battery starting at 100% charge. I turned Bluetooth off and performed a mix of moderate tasks, including browsing in IE over a wireless n connection with multiple tabs, together with editing and occasionally compiling small source files in VS2010. Nothing here that would access the HDD that I am aware of.

The results of the two runs were very close. It took exactly 2 hours to get the intial warning message at 12% remaining battery charge and 2:10/2:08 until Windows 7 automatically hibernated the machine. There was no problem coming out of hibernation.

I intend to perform the same test tonight with the base 6 cell battery. Assuming linearity, I expect to see a little over 1:20 before the warning and 1:25 before hibernation.

Edit: screen brightness was ~ 80%

 

in my light testing with the 6-cell, I got about 1 hour 10 minutes.

i7-820 w/SSD

As a desktop replacement, I can live with that. The laptop is big enough already, what's another pound or so carrying the power brick. It's not as big as the M17x. My colleague lugs that thing around daily and makes me appreciate the relative mobility of my Envy 17 even more.

 

Well guys, I got the Envy 17 that is supposed to replace my original. It wobbles. However, unlike my original, the rubber foot under the touchpad area actually touches down. The right bottom foot doesn't touch down.

Waiting on the new order that I placed that is supposed to ship this Friday. Sending this one back.

 

This does not bode well for my hopes of keeping the first Envy they ship my way.

 

Anyone else have problems with the screen. Mine flickers. No rhyme or reason. May not happen for a couple hours, then it will start flickering. I don't have any other accessories attached. Have the 1920 screen.

 

Mine does not flicker nor wobble... but over heats... guess we have to pick our poison.

 

Question for those who already received: How long from the ship date per the website to arrival at your front step? Ballpark.

 

HP shipped my Envy 17 replacement with 2 day shipping. It was said to have shipped last Tuesday. 2-day shipping my . It took Fedex over 4 business days (7 days including holiday and weekend) to deliver the replacement.

 

I've had no problems with my screen either. Have you updated your ATI drivers?

 

No, I didn't want to update the drivers. Heard the Envy 17 drivers were specific and the general ATI drivers would make the screen not work right.

 

ATI's drivers work just fine.

 

My 3rd E17 arrived this morning! Took it out of the box and straight into the desk... DEAD FLAT - NO WOBBLE! Thank goodness.
I haven't actually got around to turning it on yet but touch wood it powers on!

 

Any news on the newer E17 and modifications?

I am in the last week of my 3 week trial.

I don't want to speak too soon but everything seems fine so far. flat, great screen, everthing works and yes NO excessive heat.

While I don't game or do CAD, I leave the laptop on all day with the zalman cooler on in 60-70 degree basement. I go about all my pc activities including downloading songs and it runs smoothlu.

I have I7-720, 2x500gb drive, better screen [costs 100 more], 8 gb ram.

While I upgraded the Bios, the laptop has the stock hp configuration.

I need to make a decision soon so please let me know about a better machine as soon as anyone has the details.

 

Anyone try running the GPU and CPU (quadcore i7), both at max load?

I noticed that if I run the GPU at max load, the CPU clocks down to a 10x multiplier. Thus CPU speed at 1.333 GHz.

 

Who here can really give me a good, enlightening answer about a decent SSD?

I know it's been discussed a fair bit in the last few pages and the consensus is that Intel is king. And that the 4k stat is what's most important.

But I've been looking at the Crucial RealSSD C300 64GB which has the newer and faster S-ATA 6GB / s interface. So wouldn't this push it ahead of the Intel G2 drives?

 

Congratulations --- finally you got one that is perfect.

 

@kiwi_style

There are no 6Gb/s SATA controllers in the Envy series yet. So, you're not going to see any advantage.

 

We don't know that yet: " I haven't actually got around to turning it on".

 

Be sure the first thing you do is check to make sure it's got the latest bios to tame that oven box!

 

Ive actually run into a real issue with the E17. I cannot install Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers without it going into infinite BSOD on Win7 yet the notebook runs fine on the stock 500GB drive it comes with. The same 160GB SSD I was upgrading to works fine on other machines.

 

Well, well, well, my 3rd Envy also arrived...the wobble is worse than the last one (not that this matters to me as I am using it on a stand) but the morsecode noise is there but quieter, still needs to be muted with the mic fix but hey, this is not the thing I"m worried about here! The thing crashes every time I play games for more than a few minutes! It either bluescreens or the power just resets lol (I got to laugh at this stage).

On a brighter note, I received my miniDisplay port to VGA adapter and I am happy to report that I can now use 3 screens at once (including the laptop display). I can also group them for some huge POV gaming goodness! Although it looks a bit crap with my 2 x 19" 4:3 LCDs that are old and losing brightness/color, but I still enjoy it for the immersiveness! My wife checked it out and said "you're gonna be gone, I won't be able to reach you" hehe. The trick to getting this working, as others have mentioned I think, is you must use the minidisplay port in your combination of outputs. If you will be using an adapter, it must be a VGA one, not a DVI one, I found out the hard way.

I will be posting a youtube of how it looks as soon as I can.

 

So sorry to hear about your experience Jaxxy. I am so fearful now that the Envy 17 I ordered from Amazon will also have a wobble.

 

I should be receving my ENVY in a three weeks time or so.

So far, from reading the posts the first few steps I need to take is:

1. Check for wobble
2. Check for morse code/ beeping
3. Install new BIOS to improve cooling
4. Uninstall bloatware etc

Is there anything I'm missing?

I will also write up a proper full - review when I will have some free time. I thought of including a side-by-side comparison of the ENVY and an MBP 17.

 

So did anyone try to fully load the GPU and CPU at the same time?

I did this and I noticed that the CPU downclocked itself to 1333 MHz. Can anyone confirm? I have the i7-840QM.

 

Sorry to hear that so many have been having difficulties. I couldn't be more pleased with mine.

It shipped ahead of the estimated ship date

Once shipped it made the trip from China to my door in about 36 hours

No wobble

No odd noises (except that I hear some sound when the battery is charging, even when it's powered off - I can deal with that)

Fit and finish is flawless, no creaks, no gaps, etc.

Performed clean install and that works flawlessly as well.

Even replaced one HD with an OCZ Vertex 2 - holy smoke - what a difference in performance!

Finally, the price dropped rather considerably since I ordered mine so I received a $675 adjustment from HP. I just barely within the 21 days. Sweet!

Next step is to try some serious stress testing.

 

So is there still no official review from a site like CNET, laptopmag, NBR,...?

 

I have an Envy 17 on the way and spent a fair amount of time trying to answer this same question. I ordered it when some of the stars had aligned (the 840QM had just surfaced and the BCB 25% discount was active), but there was still no option to get an SSD/mechanical drive pair. I configured a machine with two 320GB drives so I wouldn't have to buy an overpriced extra bracket and started reading up on SSDs.

I found two places with very useful information: Home - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News (in particular, articles like this one, as well as the ones it references) and the reviews on newegg.com from customers who had bought and used various SSDs (their customers tend to be quite vocal and fairly knowledgeable).

Given how incredibly flaky a lot of SSDs have been in the past (failures after a few weeks or months of usage, painful firmware updates, speed degradation, etc.), it looked to me like Intel was the way to go if I wanted to settle for 160GB. It's been around long enough that we know how incredibly solid it is on the reliability and speed fronts (yet not too long to have been replaced by another clear winner).

Since you're looking at fairly small SSDs, I would go with Intel if I were you.

At my end, I decided I didn't want to worry about what programs went on what drive, so I was really searching for something bigger. The new SandForce controllers haven't been around very long, but everything I read about them sounds promising. When Amazon dropped their price for the OCZ 240GB Vertex 2 to $579 (including a $20 rebate; free shipping; no tax), I couldn't resist.

Now if only that twice-delayed Envy would show up, I'd have somewhere to stick the spiffy new SSD (after doing some tests with the mechanical drives, of course, for comparison purposes)!

Some notes on the Envy order itself:

• Specs:
  
  Windows 7 Professional 64-bit​
  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-840QM processor​
  8GB DDR3 System Memory​
  640GB 7200RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (320GB x 2)​
  Full HD HP Ultra BrightView Infinity LED Display​
  Blu-ray ROM​
  50% OFF! One 6 Cell (standard) and One 9 Cell (over-sized) Lithium Ion Battery​
  50% OFF! HP Pavilion additional 120W AC Adapter​
  Microsoft(R) Office Home and Student 2010​
• Original Price: $2,834
• Order Date: 21-Jun
• Initial Ship Date: 30-Jun
• Second Ship Date: 2-Jul (with a $25 coupon offered in compensation)
• Adjustment once prices dropped: -$275
• Third Ship Date: 16-Jul
• Discount due to second delay: 10%
• Bing Cash Back: 25%
• Expected total after discounts and adjustments: $1,727

 

I also have problems with my Envy 17 crashing often when playing games. Locks up, pink or blue screen, then nothing. Also having problems with the screen flickering (mentioned this before). My fan is on almost constantly and it really is NOT quiet. This was before and after the update. Despite the fan running all the time it still runs hot. CPUs in the 80s and GPU also in the 80's. The area by the fan is too hot to touch for more than a second. I have the i7-720 and the computer is on a desk. I was hoping to be able to use this as an actual laptop, but I'm afraid my pants will start on fire... Oh, the trackpad sucks too. Why have buttons that also move the cursor? Can't really see a good reason.

I really wanted to like this machine, but sadly it's going back. Hopefully HP will make some changes to address these issues.

 

Thanks for your answer Photodiver.

Metril, so what's stopping the Envy from using a S-ATA 6GB / s interface? A hardware or software thing?

 

Hardware: chipset

 

So guys, when I fully loaded the GPU (with Furmark) and all 4 cores (hyperthreaded with OCCT), the CPU speed dropped to 1333 MHz.

The temperature of the GPU is 97C and the CPU temp is around 87-90C (among all cores). CPU with all 4 cores active and fully loaded at 1330 MHz is only pulling 23.45 watts.

Why the heck is it downclocking to a 10x multiplier? Shouldn't the lowest for plugged in be the 1860 MHz (i7-840QM)?

It's been at 1330 MHz since the CPU temps were around 70C.

 

Ok just a quick note and a good review.
I just received my Envy 17 from Amazon and after doing some basic setup I started right off using it for some work (running multiple VMWare images, using email, powerpoint, watching streaming video of world cup, all simultaneously), I can say that my primary criteria is more than satisfied and I am actually very pleased with my Envy 17.

Background: I'm comparing this Envy 17 to my Gen 1 Envy 15.
Overall I liked my Envy 15 but there where some drawbacks, all of which the Envy 17 actually addresses:
1) Gen 1 Envy 15 fan noise was too much for a business setting. The Envy 17 in a business environment is much quieter. I assume when gaming it will get loud and hot but when gaming I don't care so much so i can live with that (especially since I'm used to the gen 1 15)
2) Envy 15 sometimes got worryingly hot even in a business setting (When runnign VMs for instance). Envy 17 seems to do a much better job here
3) hated the Envy 15 keyboard layout. I like the 17's keypad --> but only after I downloaded the KeyTweak utility so I can remap the dedicated pgdn key to be a numlock key, thus allowing me to switch the keypad to an "old school" arrowpad at will. For those of us with the finger memory of that oldstyle layout it is a godsend in business apps. If KeyTweak did not work on this laptop I would have been sorely upset. (For those who need it, just google KeyTweak, it's a free utility that lets you remap the keys on your keyboard)
4) On the Envy 15, I hated to be at the mercy of the HDMI -> VGA adapter in a business context. What this meant was if I was away on business I had to be absoulutely sure I had that dongle if I wanted to hook up to a standard projector. Envy 17 has a real VGA port so that problem is solved
5) original Envy 15 had a gigantic power brick. Envy 17's is smaller

As for the reported issues on this forum, I seem to be lucky or have a higher threshold:
1) No wobble
2) Heat and noise are fine for what I'm doing
3) For "Fit and Finish", including keyboard flex, I can kind of see what some people have reported but from what I see the build quality remains higher than Asus/Dell/Acer/MSI.

I was extremely worried after all the posts on this forum but now that I've played with it myself it actually IS what I was hoping it to be.

 

Hi, I am still on the fence as to whether or not I should get this but on the envy 17, did they remove the rubber padding from the front of the monitor? Would you mind posting a photo of yours (even if its just the screen)? Also did you happen to find any coupons for amazon

 

Yes they did, there are already closeup photos of the screens somewhere in this thread.

But if you are familiar with the Envy 15, yes those rubber pads that easily become unglued are gone but... in it's place is an edge to edge screen which wuold be nice and flat EXCEPT that all along the rim of the screen there is an unbroken rubberized raised edge.

So if you were hoping for a completely flat screen you will be dissapointed, but if you were more concerned about those "cheap" rubber feet that the the envy 15 had, the edging on the 17 is of much better quality and seems to be secured within the screen's shell (so it won't come off). Looks-wise it is not a distraction. (I think pics are linked directly on the first post of this thread)

 

Thanks for letting me know I just started from the beginning and found the photos on page 30 if anyone else wants to know.

 

As for coupons, none when I ordered but as you know the preconfigured model that Amazon sells (talking about the i7 model and not their i5) remains cheaper than the HP store's price...

I have an SSD and a 750 gb hard drive on the way from newegg to replace the 2 320gb hard drives the amazon model came with...

 

Thats very true about the price. Just curious, with the extra battery was that the flat one? Which ssd did you get? How long did you have to wait from the time you ordered to when it came?

 

Did your Envy 17 come with Blue Ray and extra battery?

I am keeping my fingers crossed that my Envy 17 will be like yours.

 

For the Amazon related questions:

I believe I ordered on 5 June, when it was still listed as a pre-order. The status on Amazon changed on 30 June to "shipping between 8 July-14 July". it was actually delivered to my door on 7 July.

I can confirm that the Amazon i7 preconfigured model came with both the flat 6 cell battery and the humped 9 cell battery. It also came with the blu-ray drive (and for a sanity check I just successfully played back a blu ray disc)

I can also now confirm that as far as gaming goes, the fan noise is lower and of a less annoying quality than the gen 1 envy 15, so I'm pretty happy with that.

For kicks, I ran futuremark vantage and got slightly worse scores than what has already been posted for the i7-720 Envy 17 (about 3% lower so no biggie). I probably had stuff still running in the background so I'll retest and post once I clean up my environment over the weekend.

 

My latest one, 3rd replacement is running perfectly so far.

There are no heat concerns so far - remember I have th i7 820QM. I have just been doing light use so far, internet browsing ect. But the 4 cores don't go above 65 degrees celcius. The GPU hasn't gone above 68 degrees celcius. Everything is warm to the touch, left palm rest and the left vent. Nothing like some users were saying they couldn't hold their hand over the vent for more than a second.

The full HD screen is superb.

There is keyboard flex for sure but it really doesn't bother me. The most important thing - no wobble.

I have installed the BIOS and several other drivers with no issues.

 

Thanks for answering sgtpokey (lol) greatly appreciated!

 

Great news Kiwi!

Thank you for the info - sgtpokey. I can now rest assured that the price at Amazon is indeed cheaper than the hp.com store and no tax.

My envy is suppose to be delivered on July 21. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Could you run benchmarks under heavy usage like BennyPac's Envy_17 Heat Tests using the same utilities? Just data with the notebook flat on a desk idle vs. under stress would be cool (or not?).

 

Just a random problem I seem to have with this site. When typing sometimes the characters don't display - what I mean is I have to hit the keys twice sometimes to get the letters to show. Seems to only be on this site. Anyone else notice anything like this?

 

With 25% BCB, you'll get the same built for 15xx with tax.

 

Yes I'll try and post something in the next few days.

 

By the way my idle temp numbers (using Hardware Monitor) are as follows... they seem pretty low which may point to uneven build quality since other folks have reported higher temps.

Envy 17 i7-720, 8gb ram, 2 WD 320 gb hard drives, Radeon 5850 (on battery saving profile)
System On Battery, using the power saving profile

Usage: internet browsing (multiple windows) + internet video stream. Temps taken 30 minutes into usage:
All temps in C:
Core Temps:
51
46
46
46

GPU:
49

Hard Drives:
35
34

As you may guess from the temps, the laptop is actually surprisingly quiet and not hot. I'll report on heavy game use temps later in the week.

 

There is no more 25% BCB and you have to wait 2 months to get your cash back.