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

you could use software raid in win7 but the performance wouldnt be as good as a hardware based solution

 

After reading the seller name, my bet is that it is somebody who bought some envy 17s, and upgraded the processor, ram, and hard drives themselves. Its probably real, but you likely wont have an HP warranty.

 

So you're saying that the 1TB (500MBx2 @ 7200RPM) is two logical drives as well? What would be the point then?

I'm very confused by this and why they would show it as 1TB if no RAID0 option is available.

 

No, its not a typo. It's the core i7 820 @ 1.73 ghz with turbo to 3.06 ghz.

 

I wonder how fast the envy chassis will take before it melts under that kind of heat? I just don't see how they can be stable when some people with i7s are having heat problems. If it's even true.

 

Yukstin,
I noticed you have the same specs as me. Did you ever check your temperatures during general light duty use? Just wanted to get an idea of the ballpark temps you're seeing.

Thanks.

 

@angryundead

Manufacturers do not expect the general public to know much or anything about computers. Manufacturers will always post big numbers and advertise gimmicks rather than actual functionality. Best example of this is the Beats Audio that HP shows in all its commercials. Beats Audio is nothing but increased bass. What HP should advertise is that the trace for the audio subsystem is better than that of other laptops. Thus, the analog jacks give a cleaner sound. Can't say better, but you can say cleaner.

HP always posts the total storage capacity. They post the SSD and hard drive combo as a single hard drive at 5400 RPM. You'll see this if you go to the more information link under the hard drive selection.

I know I am not wrong because I actually looked up the specifications for the HM55 chipset. It does not support RAID.

 

I just spoke to customer support at HP. I asked if the Seagate Momentus XT is compatible with the E17 mobo/bios combo. I was told, after a long moment on hold, that "Sir, your Envy does not have any user replaceable parts...... It's not an ordinary notebook, but you already know that since you bought one. The keyboard alone has 60 screws! Did you open your Envy to put this drive in?"

Of course I said no, I wanted to hang up right then and there but I entertained her for another minute and then just ended the call.

This is by far the most misinformed customer service rep I have ever spoken to. She kept repeating "the keyboard alone has sixty screws, sir" After the third mention I just wanted to beat her over the head with my handset...

Anyhow, the Momentus XT does not require any drivers so I may be looking at a DOA from Seagate. Yay, Seagate. Same ish, different decade.

 

I guess I'll just be getting the 500gb then. I really don't want to mess with two drives. I've been putting my own computers together since I was 10... and I'm 27 now. I don't have the patience to install some things to C: and some things to D: anymore. I just want it to work... especially since I went to a 4x320 setup on my home machine. Sad, but, what can you do. Saves some $$$ in any case.

 

@angryundead

Why don't you just install all your programs to your C: partition and then create a system image of that partition. That way, if anything gets screwed up, you can be up and running with all your programs in under 10 minutes. Of course you need to backup your documents, music, etc. to another hard drive.

 

OMG! I swapped my batteries! Did I void the warranty?

This is hilarious, especially in light of the announcement day videos featuring HP Envy tech mgrs saying how user replaceable disks was a major design point of the ENvy 17.

 

Later on during the call she contradicted herself by stating - during one of her half scripted rants - about the RAM being the only user replaceable component. Anyhow, that's behind me now, the Seagate is being shipped back to Tiger for an exchange.

Looking at the second drive bay, it appears that the missing SATA cable feeds to the second bay from the square panel in the middle of the notebook. I know one needs to purchase the caddy for the drive but is the other cable tucked in the RAM panel or does it need to be purchased as well?

I'm thinking about going stock WD and SSD in other bay.

The Seagate drive also emitted a light vibration when held while powered on. Slight but perceptible. Is this a characteristic of 2.5" 7200RPM drives or is this just more crap from Seagate?

By the way, for anybody keeping score: 0-2. HP battery DOA, Seagate drive DOA.

 

The Primary and Secondary drive brackets/caddies are unique and require their own unique cable as well.

HP sells the Primary and Secondary drive brackets/caddies and cables as a complete kit only.

http://newmodeus.com/ tells me that they are working on caddies and cables as a part of their aftermarket business, but I don't know the expected date of availability.

See previously posted pics of the HP bracket kit to see details of the Primary and Secondary drive parts: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/484905-official-hp-envy-17-owners-lounge-144.html#post6345922

 

Alright yall, moment of truth... I'm buying tonight or tomorrow morning.

I'm a gamer.
I want to play FFXIV.
I already have a gaming desktop but I'm studying abroad for a year.
I don't need large hard drive/pair of hard drives.
I will be in lecture halls and really like the compact size and slice batteries of the 14.


Should I go with the 14 or the 17? Is it possible to load out the 17 so that it comes in underweight?

 

i didn't know this when shopping for an envy, but it comes as good news as i like clean audio thru headphones, every other pc/laptop i've had is an audiophile's nightmare. there is still some noise in the signal, but it's much less than what i've heard before.

regarding raid: i had raid on my m1730. when set up as raid 0 it was snappier than a standard non-raid setup, but i think SSDs are going to drive raid 0 out of business. raid 1 will probably still be around, but raid 0 (even with 2 identical SSDs) isn't really worth the implementation. remember that raid still introduces some processing to the read/write path.

 

go with the envy 14. you won't regret it. screen res is awesome, size is perfect. i might just sell my envy 17 and go configure an envy 14.

btw, i tried crysis last nite on this machine, and it plays smooth with all settings @ high. i'm not that into fraps & other technical details surrounding games, but i didn't see any hickups/problems playing. so, regarding featureset and configuration, unless you're looking for long-long term gaming with the latest demanding games, a core i5 + 5850 graphics will be more than good enough. although an SSD would add greatly to that performance, if you're willing to fork the extra coin for an SSD.

 

2 weird things i noticed today i am concerned about:

the computer completely froze (after a windows update installed).
also, i've inserted a disc and it would not spin up (tried twice). heard a very light click after inserting the disc that didn't hear before when the drive worked fine.
tried once more and now it works.

i really want to root out all my hardware issues within the next week so that i can return this laptop if it's going to be problematic.

 

Thanks Zero.

I'm pretty much going to town on this rig, so the SS is in
What about the i7? Cost isn't an issue. Is it a big power drainer? I've hears there's no switchable graphics on the i7s. Will this change?

 

the i7 by itself is not really a power drainer, but the i7 combined with dedicated graphics is.

personal taste for me was an envy 14, core i5 (2.93 GHz), but after placing an order i caved in and bought a 17 when i saw it at an hp retailer in the city. luckily it's a core i5 model, saves me a little battery over an i7, not sure if mine's got switchable graphics or not.

 

There is no switchable graphics on the Envy 17.

The HM55 chipset supports switchable graphics. However, HP has not enabled this on the Envy 17. In theory, you could enable switchable graphics if the BIOS supported it and you had the appropriate drivers. Thus, maybe in the future you could have switchable graphics, but at the moment the Envy 17 does not have it.

The question of switchable graphics has been beaten to death and brought back to life only to be beaten to death again. Please let it rest in peace.

 

Hey guys, I currently own an hp dv7 which is being replaced by hp. I have a choice of another dv7 or an envy. Reading all your posts is scaring me away from the envy 17. The specs in nz are low but if I want to keep my extended warrenty I have to choose between two models; dv7-4035tx and envy17-1019tx. The dv7 has blueray and tv tuner but only the ati hd 5650graphics while the envy17 has no blueray, on tv tuner but the ati hd 5850graphics. Help I n eed to decide today!!!

 

So, a question, are you still pleased you bought an envy17 even though you have needed to replace it 3 times?

 

Because there are certain games (and steam) that I want the quick load time on (think: WoW, FFXIV) and games that I don't.

After a while it becomes a huge hassle to remember and all that. I may, at some later date, go with an aftermarket option so I'm just going to stick to the cheapest drive.

Also, as far as RAID0 / SSD goes... apparently TRIM on RAID0 is fairly new and still emerging. ( Intel release TRIM for RAID | bit-tech.net) Keep that in mind when evaluating that kind of setup.

 

Hello all,

I have been doing a lot of research lately in an attempt to find a replacement laptop for my aging HP dv9000. I actually purchased a HP dv7 but returned it due to the display being absolutely dreadful (poor contrast, inaccurate color rendition, extreme color/brightness shift when changing viewing position in any way at all, below average brightness, etc.). I calibrated it with my SpyderExpress but that only made it marginally better.

Anyway, I've been looking at the new ENVY 17 and will try to locate a store in my area that carries these so I can have a look at the display firsthand. If that checks out then I will purchase one. Does anyone have any thoughts on the display. I've gone through 30-40 pages and not seen much mentioned about it.

Also, does anyone know of a working coupon code that would net me a savings of at least 10%? Thanks.

 

Did you see my posts on the wobble? I bought the first 1006-tx from Harvey Norman and it had a bad wobble. They replaced it from Harvey Norman, and the second one had a bad wobble.

I complained and moaned and raised the issue with the customer resolutions team in wellington. They offered me a 1019-tx, which is due to replace the 1006-tx in stores shortly, if it hasn't already. The 1019-tx has a slower proccessor, everything else same so I wasn't happy.
Eventually, after WEEKS of phone calls, emails and discussions, they offered me a 1007-tx (can be found on the HP Australia website with a "1007-tx" search) which is a maxed-out model.

Since it was worth a hell of a lot more than my original purchase I was happy. It took a long time to sort it though. There's no way to get the 1007-tx in New Zealand, it's sold in Australia and they won't ship it here. I mean it works fine in terms of settings and everthing, but it's just HP policy. The only way I was able to get a model outside of NZ was because it was compensation as part of the resolution, and HP NZ offered it to me to settle.

Sadly, the only Envy 17 avaliable here is the 1006-tx which is a low-end spec version, and the 1019-tx which is even worse in my opinion with the slower i7 proccessor.

So in conclusion, I didn't ask for the 1007-tx, they put it forward to me - but I was starting to get very angry. They first offered me a 1019-tx replacement and I said no way. So yea if you're not happy with what's avaliable in NZ then ask if they can replace with an Aussie model.

But the 1006-tx cost me NZ$3,499 and they shipped me the 1007-tx as a replacement no charge, which costs AU$4,499. So I was satisfied in the end with the specs of this model.

 

It's a socket 1156 (I believe), both procs fit. Same MOBO. The top layer on the 17" is plastic, the 15" (1st edition Dr. Dre) I messed with was metal. On the 15" the graphics card was on the right side.

The heat you feel on the 15" is the processor. That is on the model with the "flat" battery. It's right below the left palm. On the 17 it's higher up and more towards the center under the keyboard.

Sometimes you get lucky and get a cool running CPU. I tested a display model with the i5 and it didn't go past 71c when fully stressed. The one I bought gets to 85c. A i7 I had was hot just sitting there.

 

Turns out, my envy has shipped earlier than expected!!! It was supposed to be delivered by the 30th and now its coming tomorrow the 21st!!! I ordered on the 10th. I jump for joy wHOoooo!

 

i have the envy 17, not 15. wen in windows, lite surfing, the entire left side of the laptop warms up but the right side is cool. back where the battery is that area is cool.

i'd also agree that the mobo's are the same, just discounting the possibility.

 

Posting this question again as I did not get an answer a few days ago:

How much better is battery life on the 17 with an i5-540 vs i7-840? Someone with 540 please write back you average battery life and also someone with an 840 please. I know a lot depends on what you're doing at the time, but I'm trying to decide if I should wait for the possibility of i5s coming back, or just get an i7. If there isn't much difference in battery life than I might just go for the i7, even though i don't need that powerful a processor. thanks for any feedback.

 

@sophie21

The Envy 17 suits my needs. It is powerful and it is much better than my ASUS G1S. Horrible after horrible experience with ASUS made me dump them forever.

And now, onto my monologue.

Screw you ASUS! I gave you a chance, but you seemed to have no record of my extended warranty even though I registered it on your website as per the instructions in the warranty booklet. You never once told me you required a copy of my extended warranty card until it was too late and I had to go back to school with an overheating G1S (all vents were clean).

So, I jumped aboard the HP ship.

My first Envy 17 was pretty perfect except for the wobble which annoyed me after 2 days. They sent out a replacement, but 2 days after they placed the order for the replacement, they had the 4th of July sale. If I reordered, I was getting a better configuration for about $30 less than what I paid. Well, HP couldn't cancel the replacement cause it was too far down manufacturing. They shipped it and I received the replacement.

I made use of the 21 days return policy and torture tested the machine with Furmark, OCCT, Vantage, etc. Even the replacement had the wobble. I called HP again and again because they had missed the ship date on my 3rd Envy. Should have shipped on July 9th. They never sent me a delay email until I called them and told them I never received any communication regarding shipping or delay.

They sent me a delay email on the night of the 12th. I called them every day to see if they had any new information regarding my order and to find out exactly what part was causing the delay. Customer service didn't know. I then proceeded to return the replacement Envy.

On the 16th, I called HP and again asked about my Envy 17. This time I explained to the representative my situation and told her about the wobble issue. I even mentioned the large gaps people had on their units. I gave her the link to this forum and told her to note the reviews linked in the second post. I then informed her, and HP for the second time, of a mistake with the Intel Turbo Boost driver listed for the Envy 17.

The Turbo Boost driver listed for the Envy 17 is actually the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator driver. In other words, it is for integrated graphics. The Envy 17 currently does not support this. I explained to her that the driver is mislabeled and does not apply to the Envy 17. I further explained that there is no driver required for the actual Turbo Boost that the Envy 17, as well as all the other Envys, advertise. Turbo Boost is a built-in function of the processor.

The representative thanked me and said she was putting in a refund for my 2-day shipping because it would never be used since my laptop was delayed. I told her that I was already getting a refund for the shipping because a manager agreed to match the free 2-day shipping I was getting on the replacement Envy. She then said that she would put in a refund for $50. It didn't really matter to me, but I appreciate any money I get back.

I called HP on the 19th. I was told by a representative that I would receive my order by the 23rd. So, I asked her for when it shipped out, but she did not have that information. She told me my order was being expedited. I asked her why it said my order was going to ship out on the 23rd when she told me I would receive it on the 23rd. She said my order would ship out on the 23rd and I would receive it on the 23rd because it was expedited. Confused, I instant messaged HP customer service and was told that my order would ship out on the 23rd. They had no other update on my order other than what my delay email had told me. Great! I was extremely confused.

On the 20th, I received an email saying my Envy had shipped out. Expected delivery date was the 22nd. Two hours later, it changed to the 23rd. Fedex reported a shipping exception.

Four hours later, I received a phone call from Travelocity regarding a refund for 5 tickets from December of last year. I had been fighting with them and United Airlines for 7 months and 25 days. A supervisor from Travelocity called and told me my refund had been processed. I was going to get all my money back. I would just need to wait 2-3 billing cycles, as was said on the phone. I received an email saying that it would take 45 days to post the amount back to my credit card.

Again, I was confused, but whatever. The refund had basically paid for my Envy.

In all, I've spent two months with HP over my Envy 17. Hopefully this 3rd one will have no issues whatsoever. If it does, then there will be some problems.

I am finally in the clearing. I have no one to fight with currently and am bored. Hopefully I can just relax with my Envy. Cuddle my Envy. Regurgitate all over my Envy and most importantly, copulate with my Envy. Get the sarcasm?

So am I pleased I bought an Envy 17? Yes I am. The question is, am I please with HP? Not really. The Envy 17 is a great laptop that has been forcefully penetrated by a clamidia carrying HP.

So, thanks for listening. Really appreciate your time. Hopefully HP appreciates my time.

Finger crossed. Eyes crossed. All hairs crossed. Yes, even down there; crossed. Come on Envy. Come in one perfect piece. No scratch. No wobble. No issue at all.

 

Oh, Okay. Sorry about that. Mine seems all right when surfing. When things are busy there's a rise in heat but nothing unbearable. I get about 74c on the CPU when gaming too, but then I'm using a different keyboard and mouse.

If peeps are concern about heat, best to stick with a dual-core. The exhaust is pretty normal looking. Nothing extravagant. I've seen better (with a little more thickness). It's not quite Macbook hot though.

 

Hi Lennon

May I ask when did you place your order. Now they changed my status to July 28th!

 

For Amazon, I did a refund/exhange order on the 18th, and they just shipped the new one out today... so I'm guessing they have them in stock? or they just put me first in line again? sorry if I bumped anyone :/

 

Amazon has the Envy 17 in stock. I added it to my cart and with 2 day shipping I would receive it on Friday.

 

I ordered June 26th, so almost a month ago.

 

After reading your post, I quickly sent a email to Amazon and demanded that they ship my HP Envy 17 immediately. This morning they had posted July 28 for my delivery date, now my status is preparing to ship. I hope to receive my product by Friday.

I ordered mine July 1. Can you please post if yours has a wobble or not. I believe the one you and I will receive will be from the same batch that shipped from Shanghai. If yours won't have a wobble most likely the one I will receive won't also have one.

 

Well spoke to HP today and they now reckon the UK release date isnt going to be by the end of the month like they said before - its going to be 8 weeks!

Make up your f**ing mind when you're going to sell it HP or at least give your people on the end of the phone a single answer for everyone!

 

Sure, UPS says mine is out for delivery today, so I'll let you know if there is any wobble tonight.

 

Picture attached.

This is after running the computer for about 2 hours under light load at work. Open is internet explorer, iTunes, Word, Excel and Outlook.

edit: forgot to add I'm running a 2nd monitor with HDMI out.

 

i5 with standard battery, surfing for research while preparing a technical presentation at Starbucks. Display at 80%, wifi on, forgot and left bluetooth and keyboard light on, "power saver" mode selected, 1:50 or so. Full up, no power saving, etc. LCD at full bright I would expect to be around 1:10-1:20.


I had a DV8t with an i7 that had short battery life and a DV7 with an i5 and a long life. This is in between and mostly seems to scale to the miuch smaller battery compared to the DV7/8. From that experience, I would expect the i7 to be around an hour; not acceptable for me.

When the less power hungry i7s are released, I might swap one out for the i5 if its not too pricey; I occassionally do heavy processing that would benefit.

 

DV7 vs Envy screen: i have the 1080p screen and it is far, far better than the 1600x900 from the Dv7. Brighter, better contrast, sharper. The DV7 I had was the one from 2 months ago from just before the current metal skinned ones.

 

Got my Envy from Amazon about an hour ago. I'm just now starting it up, but there isn't any wobble, so thats a good sign.

 

I had a post earlier where I described my experience from calibrating the screen - after reducing the brightness and adjusting for the display's initial blueness, I'm very, very happy with the display. I have never personally seen better on a laptop.

 

Jul 21, 2010 10:55 PM - Picked up - SHANGHAI CN - Package received after FedEx cutoff

Grr. Heh. Guess I might have to wait one more stinkin' day! I hope I don't have any issues with this one. I'm moving the first week in September, and it would suck to have to wait till the last second to get one without problems.

 

Before RMAing for wooble only you guys should check if the rubber pads beneath the laptops are perfectly fit into their rubber holes... It's easy to take the rubber foot off and place it back on the right spot => wooble gone. Then again you can thin of thicken a rubber pad simply by taking it out and putting some double sided rubber scotch between the rubber slot and said too short rubber foot. Or cut a too long rubber shorter and glue it back...
Going through the trouble of RMA'ing a otherwise perfect envy if that was what caused the wooble is kind of stupid.

Man it's going to be tough in the future if you're going to RMA your house for any easy do it yourself fix.

 

just to let eveyone know, a new BIOS update was released today.

"Fixes an intermittent issue where the screen display flickers or the system stops responding (locks up or hangs) when graphics are experiencing heavy loading."

 

So far everything is running pretty smoothly on my Envy, but I did have the bluish screen, which I just tweaked a bit in Catalyst, and I am also experiencing the not recognizing the battery. I will keep it plugged in over night and if it doesnt fix itself, I'll call to get a replacement.

 

Thanks for that reply. My problem is that I purchased an extended warranty with my dv7 last year. But after months of problems HP said they would replace it. My processer is dual core2, 2.8GHz, with Blueray, had the top specs at the time. I have managed to keep this dv7 for nearly a year waiting for a better model with great speed and graphics card, blueray etc. However it has taken a long time for these specs to arrive. I wanted the 1.73Ghz in the Envy17-1006tx even though it didn't have blueray. But after reading your threads about wobble etc was scared away. I went in 2 days ago to Harvey Norman and explained I would prefer the Australian models but was told I would loose any warranty under Harvey Norman and have to deal with HP direct. I paid hundreds for this 4yr warranty. Also I assume HP will still give you 1year warranty on yours. Anyway the manager at Harvey Norman is getting worried because he has not had anything in writting from his HP rep and if he leaves we will have a problem. What should I do?????

 

LOL!!!! Thanks for that, very entertaining. I am in the position of having to choose between a dv7-4035tx and envy17-1019. Both are NZ models and only have 1.6GHz processors. The dv7 has blueray and tv tuner but only ATI hd5650 graphics compared with the envy17 with no blueray but has ATI hd 5850. Both screens are only 1600x900 displays. Is the envy graphics really great? I'm having such a problem deciding, neither is exactly what I want. They always send the crappy ones to NZ and better specs to AUS.

My problem is that I purchased an extended warranty with my dv7 last year. But after months of problems HP said they would replace it. My processer is dual core2, 2.8GHz, with Blueray, had the top specs at the time. I have managed to keep this dv7 for nearly a year waiting for a better model with great speed and graphics card, blueray etc. However it has taken a long time for these specs to arrive. I wanted the 1.73Ghz in the Envy17-1006tx even though it didn't have blueray. But after reading everyone's threads about wobble etc was scared away. I went in 2 days ago to Harvey Norman and explained I would prefer the Australian models but was told I would loose any warranty under Harvey Norman and have to deal with HP direct. I paid hundreds for this 4yr warranty. Also I assume HP will still give you 1year warranty on yours. Anyway the manager at Harvey Norman is getting worried because he has not had anything in writting from his HP rep and if he leaves we will have a problem. What should I do?????

 

For Amazon, I guess they aren't really "flying off the shelves". This is my observation and assumption...

My first Envy shipped on July 03.
(Label on Box - Probably Batch #) Sales Order #0031054940 PO# N7549610
Box # 31 of 46 (either 46 per shipment, or 46 for this batch, but they probably produce more than 46 per run)

I exchanged for a new one because of a dead pixel.

My new one arrived today, same label information batch #, Box # 38 of 46

Hope there isn't a dead pixel...