HP Envy 14 (& Beats) sandy Bridge is real & POSSIBLE ordering

This.....

I'll just wait till the official word comes from HP....

Not that I'm expecting much from them to begin with but I find it ridiculous to believe a single word of this. Not to mention sketch...why would someone hate HP on one hand yet offer to take orders for them on the other?

 

I totally agree. However that involves one or more steps in the building process and increasing production costs significantly.

I didnt mind racking an extra $200 for the radiance.
I think Dell and Clevo are the few that still offer that option.

 

It makes me wonder whether my math major/business buff friend might have been right. He hasn't written HP off for good, but he's looked at all their recent moves and said they might be getting themselves into trouble. I personally look at the way they've expanded their market share over the years only to find themselves competing at the razor thin profit margins against competitors like Asus, Acer, and Dell. Bad move. There's a good reason Toyota as an example doesn't only sell Corollas.


WebOS might just be a ploy to differentiate and get themselves out of the notebook price wars, but the way i see it, they really made some bad moves when they began making all their notebooks look like the Envy. No radiance display was probably a major deal killer for professionals out there who need higher color gamuts on their displays. A touchpad that requires extensive 3rd party tweaking of the kind available on these threads only killed it for many people. I had one person Amazon telling me I basically changed his life when I advised people in my E14 review to download and install paradisoft touchpad locker. We're talking about a basic touchpad feature such as as "disable touchpad while typing" that HP didn't even bother to include!

 

Well HP's darn revenue went up 20+ billion from 2007 if I am not mistaken. Probably for the cheaper laptops.

 

Does anyone have a good estimate on when 14's with SB will be released? I've been without a computer for about half a year now (dropped it.) I have ADP so I'll be asking for a replacement, but it expires in August.

 

Believe it or not, that is of no concern to me. I have offered to have my source checked out by NBR officials if needed, I will however not release my source to the public it is rude as hell.

My motive is:
1. Help NBR as a community by letting you guys know that Envy 14's with SB are definitely real, and a very very rough idea of what to expect.
2. If you notice I would be expecting compensation for putting an order in. So there is a monetary motive. Not really anything great to be honest I am sure the hassle of ordering/calling in to make questions/making sure the laptop arrives unscathed is not even going to be worth the money I will be taking for the compensation.

 

And how exactly is watching a movie or game (and maybe even photo editing) on a small, inferior screen, as opposed to a superior external HDTV/monitor, having high standards? I understand the importance of brightness and possibly viewing angle, but there are more important aspects you should be complaining/worried about such as the lack of newer generation technology/ports. I'd rather have those or a better GPU before requesting a better screen.

 

I'm going to accept that most if not all of Crimsoned's claims are true. They sound like they're just about right.


I mean, face it. Back in 2010, HP seemed to be developing an adventurous streak when it came out with the 1st gen Envy 14. Edge-to-edge radiance display, over-sized touchpad, LED backlit chiclet keyboard, thin/light aluminum form factor. I was genuinely surprised myself.

But in 2011? I dunno...things seem to be...different? Whatever news I'm hearing from HP is mostly muddled with FUD. Fear. Uncertainty. And doubt. No announcements of promising killer products. Their Slate was a dud and a bad idea from the day it was announced. Some of us were repelled by the laggy navigation that was clearly visible during the promo videos. Even today, they're late to the tablet market. They have yet to release a killer phone. And the higher ups have regarded the Envy as just a neat concept to wash over to its lower-end products. I'm all for making decent-looking pretty cheap notebooks, but it's not a smart idea when you need to differentiate your product lines. The Envy 17 3D is just a half-arsed attempt to hold the fort down, but I don't see any signs of HP trying to advance into the premium 17" market with any eye-catching commercials or any revolutionary features. Hell, as I've mentioned in at least 100+ posts, they still haven't solved their touchpad bugs on either of the Envies! They've essentially conceded the higher-end notebook market to Apple.


Yeah, it's hard for some of us to accept. But the Envy 14 isn't going to be as ground-breaking as it was in 2010 when it first came out. We won't be seeing 3rd party multitouch touchpad gestures or higher color gamut with high-res displays for a long time...if ever. Sorry people, but as my middle school history teacher used to always say, you gotta go above and beyond if you wanna succeed. Mediocrity is comfy because you take fewer risks and put in a bit of effort to be just "Ok." Better than dead last, but never first place.


I'm personally disappointed. I was hoping to fleabay my Envy 14 right after graduation in June of 2013 and upgrade to a 4th generation Envy 14. I envisioned the 4th gen Envy 14 as being very different from the sub $1,000 notebooks out there. Premium materials as always. Thinner and lighter than it is now. A display with beautiful color reproduction and high resolution. A touchpad with really nifty gestures and pixel-level scrolling that doesn't require extra programming! But now that reil (dude who helped code software that made the touchpad enjoyable to use) has moved onto bigger things in life...I'm kind of scared. Scared that I may have to turn to the dark side and submit to Emperor Steve Jobs and Darth Tim Cook if I want to see any of these things. NOOOO.

 

The Envy 14 not having ground breaking advances is not a sole reason for going to Mac. Personally I see no reason other then having specific software needs that you can't get out of.

There are plenty of other options if you are willing to look for them.

 

Ok, I exaggerated. HP's Envy wasn't ground-breaking, but it sure did offer us a PC package with features only Apple normally offered in a single notebook. Let's go down the list of features I love.

1. Thin/light form factor
2. Aluminum unibody
3. Oversized touchpad that doesn't jump around but allows for smooth scrolling and potentially multitouch gestures
4. High gamut/high-res display
5. Good to excellent battery life
6. Moderately high performing CPU/GPU combo


All in one package. I want every single feature. No one else on the market offered this combo at an affordable price in 2010. #3 proved somewhat true only because of the NBR community's resourcefulness. I forgave HP but was aware that we would not always be able to rely on the generosity of the NBR open source coding community. But it seems to me HP is going down the route of compromising on #4 and is probably not going to work on upping #5 without some kind groundbreaking engineering. #4 is a big issue for me, 'nuf said. If they don't work on fixing #3 without requiring NBR community's help, I might just defect to Apple once I get a job and am able to afford expensive notebooks.



That's my $0.02. You can't offer to sell me a $40,000-$75,000 Lexus if during the test drive I notice too much engine noise, the suspension's excessive sensitivity to teeny tiny road bumps, and poor steering mechanics. Yes, I know a car isn't a notebook. But you can't deny the comparison is worth noting!

 

Uhm, not even gonna bother with other models. Just gonna say have fun when you get your Mac.

 

I really hope I don't have to. I have old shoulder injuries long ago that preclude me from using a mouse for long hours. In short, constantly switching my right hand between keyboarding and mousing causes a lot of repetitive stress on my shoulder socket. That's why a functional, working touchpad with lots of gesture options is really attractive to me. You'd be surprised at how much multitasking productivity can be improved with the MBP's touchpad gestures.

 

We have sold them where we work, and I've used Mac's plenty. Not exactly amazed since I can use a mouse without shoulder problem for way better productivity.

I really did like the M6500's application specific gestures and on mouse hotkeys for Photoshop/others. That was probably one of the best mouse pads I've used (smaller then the MBP/Envy but darn good).

 

The envy isn't a unibody laptop. Apples are. They're machined from 1 block of aluminum.

 

Really? Seems to me the general understanding is that the Envy uses an aluminum unibody too.

 

Heres the cheesy apple video of it

Apple - Why You?ll Love a Mac - It?s made with better hardware.

Definitely not the same as the envy. There's only 1 seam and that's at the the bottom. The envy has a lot more. Also the envy looks to be stamped and not milled though I could be wrong about that.

 

Guess it's true.

 

"NO RADIANCE DISPLAY, OR ANYTHING LIKE IT. SORRY."

I stopped reading right there. I own an Envy 13 'and' 14 and will NOT be buying the refresh. Sorry HP, if you're going to release a machine with 'Envy' in the title, which isn't even as good as the initial releases, don't expect people to buy.

Shame as I would really like to sell the 13/14 and settle for a new 14.

 

I dont think you can "stamp" metal into chassis, usually stamping is for sheets or plates of metal.

More then likely they may be cast parts for the magnesium alloy and milled for the aluminum.

The Macbook's unibody is overhyped.

 

The typical buyer wouldn't know or care whether whether it's a one-piece cast or not. I can understand why Boeing's 787 jet's spun-barrel fuselage design is superior in terms of structural rigidity and weight savings as compared to the older practice of gluing together aluminum tiles. But with notebooks, I don't really see any real advantages to the buyer of a true unibody design.

 

actually its quite common and more than probably what is used here.

Actual pieces:

Display - stamped

Keyboard tray - stamped

Side - stamped

bottom - stamped

quite easy and possible way. If its milled you can pretty much notice the difference, and the e14 is not milled in any area.

So they are going to keep the chassis?

it means that the keyboard and the touchpad are going to be the same... The envy is a no go for me then.

 

There are, you can simply use less aluminum in the chassis (the waste from the process is recycled), it gives more structural rigidity, so people that complain about flex and all that are happy.

the problem is that aluminum is a soft metal, and it bends quite easily. So I would get a magnesium aluminum composite

 

Odd, not sure why they would stamp the bottom when casting the magnesium alloy would be far more effective and cheaper.

Not sure how when would creative the crevices and curves using a stamp method. As I said stamping is good for producing sheets or plates of metal (you can of course shapes but the pieces must remain flat or in a cylinder like form).

Sides are definitely not stamped. how would they stamp the metal out into a vertical ring without creating a lip around it?

Keyboard face plate could be stamped, however the palm rest could not.

The LCD display is doubtfully stamped as well, not sure how'd they'd get the exact shape down using a stamp procedure (would require several processes and would be cheaper just to mill).

Milling isn't expensive you know, in fact it's pretty cheap when ran in large scale production.
But of course I am sure you've disassembled hundreds of laptops.

From my experience most parts can be casted, some have to be milled, but very few are stamped.

 

Um, in addition to finding out about the GPU, OP, could you also ask for the effect of the SB architecture on battery life?

 

I also want magnetic power cable!!

 

I could ask but more then likely he won't go that far into specs with me. Gotta keep in mind these notebooks are not even announced he probably won't want to divulge specifics like battery life, gpu speeds, etc.

 

He is not willing to give specs but he is willing to allow you to order it and receive it?

edit: or is the one you are ordering not the new official release and just the old one with SB?

 

I'm pretty sure they weren't able to just stick the new Envy 14 motherboard with its new CPU and GPU combo into the old Envy 14 chassis. I'm going to guess the chassis had to be changed a bit to accommodate all the new stuff.

 

then he might as well give all the specs if he knows he can order the laptop

 

He can't always do that, it is not an announced product, they can give general specs that WILL be on the production run but as far as anything too specific they can't.

Actually my contact already told me they have the Envy 14 with Sandy bridge at this time, they are currently testing it. They are also testing the USB 3.0 firmware.

 

I was sure this was the case. I was replying to the other guy who thought HP was selling an HP Envy with the old chassis and Sandy Bridge. Other rumors floating around here have stated that they had to redesign the internal chassis as they'd never placed a Sandy Bridge chipset into a 14.5" notebook.

 

Well I did ask my contact if there had been any changes physically, or in terms of features. I think he had said no.

Also a chipset =/= a motherboard. A motherboard can be designed in whatever way is pleased, whatever size, or whatever dimensions. The chipset is the actual chips that go on the motherboard that control various functions like SB/NB. The actual silicone is another matter.

Remember the Envy 17 had never had SB before but they had motherboards made exactly for the Envy 17 to place in SB. It isn't difficult.

 

I just hope that you are not one of those hipster reporters, since you are not likely but completely wrong.

You do know that all the Dell laptops that use aluminum are stamped. You do know that pans are stamped. You also do know that milling is not that cost effective, specially due to it being a slower process, and that the waste material is big although it can be recycled, it still costs more money.

Im also pretty sure that you ever saw a factory floor.

 

Hipster reporter? No I don't report.
Dell laptops that use aluminum? Those are far and few. I can only name a few that use aluminum, one I owned the M6500. The ones that utilize metal are usually magnesium alloy, and those are cast. So I can assure you the magnesium alloy used for HP's are not stamped, and are more then likely stamped.
Milling is not that much more expensive, and there isn't much a waste actually since most of the remaining blank can be used to produce smaller parts of the laptop. There are all kinds of milling operations that are set up for mass production, specially in the car industry for insignificant parts that can cost a few bucks (actually for the computer world too).
Let me put it this way, Albion one of the premiere sword manufacturers uses a CNC to cast out sword blanks. They can sell these sword blanks for about $160-$220. All the while the actual finished Albion sword can cost in the thousands ($1,000-$2,300 or more) Other companies like Hanwei if I am not mistaken can sell bare blades, ready for use for around $80-$110. This is carbon steel, not your softer aluminum. This is because milling is CHEAP. $10,000 can get you a CNC machine. Another say $5,000 to hire a programmer to set up your CNC design.
$15,000=you can pump out hundreds of the same object repeatedly very quickly and efficiently.

Pans are stamped, however look at their shapes, and look stamping machinery. They can only produce "container" like objects not complex figures like the palm rest, or the aluminum trim (how could you stamp a trim out that goes along vertically, it doesn't make sense). It's like:
Taking a flat surface like this
-------------
Squeezing it downwards
and coming out with a vertical ring like this
|||||||||||||

The LCD cover COULD be stamped however I am unsure.

Lastly no you won't be able to tell the difference between a milled product and a stamped on if anyone with a belt grinder got their hands on it.
You do realize milling produces very rough edges, and a very rough surface and requires polishing out right?
Stamping typically produces smooth surfaces, and rough edges. However shapes are vastly limited.
Casting depends a lot on the metal and process, but like just about all the time it produces rough surfaces.
Once polishing and buffing is involved all these difference disappear.
Milling would be cheaper for various reasons in laptops:

1. Stamping produces flat surfaces or cylinder types of containers (some more round then others). With no way to produce holes without changing machinery constantly. Second the fit produced by stamping is not very accurate at all, not to mention would require far more time having to reshape the object via automated polishers, or a CNC machine
2. Milling operations can be run pretty damn efficiently with a assembly line system (kinda how Macbook Pro's are machined- sorry but they are not machined individually in an individual CNC machine, they are run in an assembly type of line).

I actually researched CNC milling when I was researching about swords. I also researched Dell's magnesium alloy, and other's manufacturers choice of materials in laptops to figure out what type of laptop I would need for maximum durability, and comfort. What I ended up with is that Thinkpad's are #1 in durability, and #1 in comfort when it came down to it. (Toughbooks=not very comfortable, trust me, but yes they are basically #1 in durability)

After selling/handling/using MBP's I can safely say a Macbook pro is one of the last laptops I would choose for durability/comfort.
Sharp edges on the palm rest hurt the hands.
Soft aluminum body is expensive to replace, since you cannot repair it. $200~ from my understanding from ifixit. Vs a few bucks for plastic.
Soft aluminum body is very susceptible to scratches and dents caused by just about most bumps. Warping of the unibody is also known when help by the edge where the superdrive is. Kinda sad it can't hold it's weight.
The aluminum is too efficient in heat conducting producing a pretty hot laptop to handle, leaving comfort pretty bad.
The fact people think it is light is a wonder to me, considering the typical weight of average 13/15/17 inch laptops are usually a little less then the macbook pro's and are actually thicker then the MBP's. How the MBP is considered light, is beyond me. For their size, they are quite heavy.
The LCD is pretty much a death trap with that thing of an LCD cover, and the edge to edge glass having nothing to protect it from smashing against the keyboard if weight is applied, I think it has like a 1mm lip around it iirc. This happens quite a bit on Macbook Airs, and it isn't unheard of in the Macbook Pro's.

meh.

 

I called HP a few days before ordering my Envy 14 Beats. They said it would prob take until summer for them to get it out onto the market. With that said, the guy actually said that there wasnt really a big advantage with sandy bridge in the envy 14 because its a laptop.

The battery life would still not hit 6 hours LOL. and anyways, a big selling factor for sandy bridge is its overclock capabilities. but its a laptop, you dont need it for that. currently, my envy 14 runs everything fine, gets 3+ hours of battery, got a slice battery for 30$, and is basically the perfect laptop for school. sandy bridge will prob just make the laptop more expensive since they can not give discounts on the new line of Envy upon release.

The only think i would like to be changed on the Envy 14 beats is for the Beats Logo to be an LED lol. that would be sick. Other than that, a sandy bridge processor would not really make a huge difference in the laptop (straight from the Envy representative). ANyways, sandy bridge is hyped up. I was about to get so mad after I built my desktop during the summer before sandy came out, but then realized sandy bridge <<<<< Gulftown hex.

stick with your current envy 14's. sb wont make a difference really. and doing the usb 3.0 swap would be that difficult if you know what you are doing.

 

Sandy Bridge, despite my best skepticism and number crunching, a pretty significant improvement over the previous line of cpus. Not just in power savings, but also in power.

As far as usb 3.0, the usb host is integrated I really don't understand how you would upgrade that.

HP will really need to up their game and get some better screen tech if they want to play ball with the 1k+ crowd.

 

Desktop sandy bridge is indeed more of a hype, but for notebooks the difference is ENORMOUS.
i7 720QM has 1,73ghz turbo when 4 cores are used
i7 2720QM (sandy bridge) has 3ghz turbo

I don't have to explain that the difference is HUGE...
Integrated GPU will also most likely let the machine last a bit longer, which was in the quad mobile segment of 2010 impossable (only dualcore had integrated gpu)

 

Really? I think it's one of the more popular brands. Whenever some people want a premium PC laptop, the Envy always comes up. What other premium laptops would you say is better than the Envy?

 

I'd like to say you really are clueless about sandy bridge.
1. Sandy Bridge introduced the first time ever locked FSB's/multipliers. depending on the chipset, by moving the FSB on the chipset itself. Meaning no overclocking on laptops and no overclocking on many desktops unless you buy desktop "k" series processors. Which by the way the desktop Sandy bridge processors are nothing big of a change compared to the mobile counterpart.
2. Sandy bridge for the mobile platform introduced massive performances for turbo boost, and clock for clock speed. Not to mention finally added true speed stepping (undervolting/underclocking) to the core "i" platform.
3. Battery life on the Envy 17 SB is already peaking at 4-5 hours with the 9 cell battery option. On the Envy 14 it should be close to 4~ hours with the standard battery and way more for with the slice battery.
4. USB 3.0 swap is not that difficult? Lol? How are getting the firmware/where are you getting the USB 3.0 card, and how are you fitting into the laptop?
5. The Envy representative you spoke of is more then likely a Sales representative. The same representatives that have said: The Envy uses titanium alloy chassis. The Envy uses the most powerful graphics available. And the said representatives that have been trying to con many of NBR forum members.

My contact is straight from the department handling the Envy 14 SB AT THIS MOMENT. Not some sales person who doesn't know the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit.

 

SB isn't going to mean anything when your bottle neck is the hard drive. I can put the top of the line SB processor in my laptop but when I still have a 7200rpm disk in it, it's going to be just about the same speed as my 1st gen i5 with an SSD, if not slower. Unless you're doing heavy encoding/decoding, graphic design/CAD the average person isn't going to experience that much of a gain. Don't quote me synthetic benchmark test because those are for the most part useless for daily stuff.

 

You do realize the hard drive can be swapped out right?
Silly kid is being silly.

 

This thread is going out of control.

 

More like 1 person...who seems to think he's right 100% of the time and everybody else is wrong. And God help you IF you happen to like Apple's OSX OR the MacBook in any sorta way.

This whole thread is beyond useless....and we passed the point of being "rude" a few pages back.

 

Commenting on my preferences concerning apple products would only make this worse.

 

hay, it was really nice to see the envy do well in the market, i remember a few threads that got up to literally thousands of posts of happy buyers. Those were the times we should remember about the envy.

I was always a fan of the envy before there buy out, I loved there website. All the different envys people could buy, it was so cool, they even had there own forums where people would dicuss there latest envy they were getting and how it was being customized for them. Never seen som many varities of colors you could choose from when buying a laptop then the envys had. Truly artwork and for the time, the best performance as well. Its shame HP couldnt have done something as drastic as dell did with alienware.

 

Yes I definitely agree with you on the fact that the Sandy Bridge processors have a big improvement in power, but overall, its just a stepping stone for Ivy-bridge. intel tried out a lot of new things with sandy bridge, and I believe the most important factors for a laptop (14 inch ) is battery life and mobility. Yes, the SB would offer much more power and a little improved battery life...but it really has had a significant gain compared to the battery-power ratio of the MBpro.

Yes, the 17 inch will REALLY gain because it has room, ex. to hold a larger battery. But on a 14 inch laptop, throwing in an i7 wont give you great battery life...But maybe a lot of ppl buy Envy's as gaming laptops? LOLOL.

I talked to my Comp Sci professor at UCLA and he was explaining how he loved Nahalem and that most "performance oriented" ppl will stick with Nahalem/Westmere architecture until Ivy-Bridge cuz sandy bridge is really just a test. All the ppl right now are just paying for the improvements in Ivy (which i will be swapping my i7 Gulftown for upon release)

 

You could keep this up forever... in my opinion Sandy Bridge is a milestone in the mobility space.

It shrinked quad-cores to 32nm, delivered integrated GPU on QC's (both of which have tremendous impact on battery life), it has brought QC's down to an affordable price point (2630QM) and it includes SATA 6Gb/s support for SSD's.
What more could you ask for?

Ivy Bridge will deliver nothing spectacular, just more battery life and native USB 3.0 support. Most SB laptops already have USB 3.0, so what's the point?

Anyway, we're spirralling out of control...
By the end of of this week I'll decide what laptop to choose: Clevo P150HM, Alienware M14x or the new Envy 14.
Isn't it possible that HP still has some Radiance screens laying around to use in the first batch of the new Envy 14's?

 

Okay let me explain why this "Comp Sci" professor is wrong.
1. Sandy Bridge has no new performance or power savings features. It was just given a die shrink, and given the same power management features found in Core 2 Duo's. It is very rare for Intel produce a new performance feature out of no where, everything was once tested with previous generations of processors. From L2-L3 cache, to multi threading, to undervolting, to integrating various parts into the Chipset or processor it has all been tested by Intel.
2. If Intel's trends continues expect Ivy bridge to be powerful, and power hungry with the next die shrink. Don't expect the same performance increase n the mobile world as you did with Sandy Bridge due to Ivy bridge's power consumption+heat.
3. The performance of Sandy Bridge is sufficient to call it "ground breaking". Since when has a mobile processor been able to outperform a full blown last generation desktop processor, not only by 10% but by nearly 20-30%~?? And leave behind the previous generation of processors behind like it was Conroe all over again?

Honestly you can start talking crap all you want SB is ground breaking and if Intel follows suit Ivy bridge will be the power dominator in the Desktop world but will pale in comparison to the success of SB in the mobile world.

 

I assume you are speaking about me? There's good reason why I rarely recommend Apple as a computer technician (and now HP), I am afraid I don't find it funny when companies market/deceive just to bring in new unsuspecting customers, specially in how Apple markets their products often invoking paternal/maternal emotions.

 

Sheer amount of nonsense. Even if its to be believed that you are truly a pc technician I wouldnt send it to you.

You do forget basic principles of economics and manufacturing.

Aluminum for it to be recycled it is indeed cheaper than to produce it again, but its not as inexpensive as you think, there is also the added costs of shipping. To say that stamp is less effective than the milling is to be completely out of touch, I can produce a piece in LESS than a second, with milling I will produce a piece in SOME seconds, and this thing is the difference of producing some thousands more pieces everyday.

It actually has and most of it is derived by the integration of the north bridge and the improvements done in the nehalem arch. The nehalem made core 2 duo pale in comparison, simply because they could shut down an entire core, without any leakages, this is called power gating. The difference between the integration of those cited techs is this:

Pentium 4 HT (it enabled hyperthreading), the problem here is that the controller chip for it, was unreliable, and generally not used, since windows XP cant handle well multithreaded tasks, nor the programs at the time were truly multithreaded.

Core Duo (implementation of 2 cores or more since the HT fiasco) however it was basically two cores stamped together in a single die, with a controller hub making some form of comunication between the 2 parts, they each had a their own cache, controller and so forth, making it basically 2 chips in 1 kind of deal.

Core 2 Duo (implemented the true multi cores processors) now they are implemented in decent arrays with shared L2 cache, the controllers are now more efficient in managing and distributing the load between cores, as the OS behind it (Vista)

Core I (nehalem) major arch revamp, some features like power gating, a new level of cache memory to the processor, better controllers to handle the loads and threads of process in the cpu

Core I (SB) arch revamp, improves and establishes new performance settings, and several other improvements.

Nope, it will be more power efficient, since it will be in that edition that quads are supposed to become more mainstream that they are now, the TDP is supposed to be lower, and I have to agree that in every tick that intel made the tdp of part of the line decreased.