HP Envy 14: Availabilty, etc.

...hey its official, there's an * OFFICIAL: HP ENVY 14 Owner's Lounge*

Indeed, lets hope HP's robots make a sexy Envy 14. :yes:

 

Why doesnt someone try ordering a $20 E-gift card right now with the 25% bing and see what happens? The real issue is with the 60 day waiting period. You could be denied 2 months from now and miss out completely.

 

Personally, at this point, unless I have a 100% certified response from Bing that I can buy a gift card, I am just going to have faith that the 25% Bing Cashback will come back at least once more before the program closes July 30 and buy then.

 

The next line says "There may be additional or different limitations on purchases at certain stores, and those limitations will be disclosed on the store's site."

Well I did call hp and talked to multiple people and they said bcb will work with gift cards. But ya, this is pretty much a risk on whether or not it'll work.

 

Right which is what I stated at the bottom of my post that unless it specifically says Bing Cashback eligible it is not. I dunno. With this much money I'd rather just wait. Besides Bing is the one distributing the money and most likely most of their money on the line, not HP's.

 

if u try using that $20 gift card, it will void your cashback when u attempt to use it to buy your laptop

 

I dunno guys... a few people might be able to get away with buying a giftcard, but I'm guessing most who try will run into a brick wall a few weeks from now when microsoft wont send you your money.

Personally for me, its not worth fighting microsoft over it for months. I'd rather just work some overtime.

 

If you have overtime let alone a job!

If the gift card thing was cut and dry then I'd do it in a heartbeat. But it's not so better to wait. I'm not worried. 25% will be back. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll be there this Sunday.

 

Got my wait-list follow-up letters. I'm going to put off my apartment plans until early August. I have more or less another month to buy the E14.

 

Lets hope so! I'm still waiting for my job offer... I hope I get that first! Should be sometime this week...

 

I am wondering, why the Envy shines silver on most official press images (e.g. 1st post in the owner's lounge: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-owners-lounge-forum/493715-official-hp-envy-14-owners-lounge.html) while it looks bronze on hands-on images ( http://blog.laptopmag.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/hp-envy-14-keyboard2.jpg). See what I mean?

I thought it was coming in bronze! I saw an Envy 15 recently at an electronic discounter nearby and it was definitely bronze. Can the light reflections really spoof me so bad?

 

It looks like they just desaturated the casing. I'm guessing most, if not all, HP-released Envy 14 pictures have been photoshopped... unless their amazing screen can summon crystal hummingbirds

 

Went to Fry's again today ya'll. I was messing around with E13 and the MBP 13inch. Build quality seems close. Only diff really is that MBP is all metal even the bottom. E13's bottom isnt same metal as the lid/palmrest, etc. It's still very high quality stuff though. I like it. I was squeezing it like a lemon, pressing it like a vending machine button, mashing asdfjkl; with good force, and it seemed very reliable and solid. I like it alot. And that's the ENVY13. Only thing from observing and testing the ENVY13, is the cooling system. Even if the ENVY14 will have the slits on the underside, I'm not entirely sure how efficient the cooling will be. Which is why I will purchase a Thermaltake Massive23 cooling pad to go with it.

I really like the ENVY 13 though, and imagine the 14 won't be too much different, if not better. Willing to shell out at most, $1200 for a new lappy. So hopefully when Sunday rolls around, you folks will be there to guide me (and everyone else) to the best deal possible to attain it at a price as close to $1g as possible.

In terms of build quality, I highly recommend HP. I was torturing the dv6, 4, and 3 also at Fry's. They all seem really good/robust. The only thing that seems different from my own Dv2610us (dv2500/2000 series), is that the lid's are thinner, so if you press on the lid, it caves in slightly, unlike my dv2610us which stays solid. Still, it's not as bad as the other comps at Fry's/BB (Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, and even Asus). The only other solid lids were on Compaqs(which share HP quality), and surprisingly MSI and Sony.

As I've said before, I can't wait. Hopefully you folks will stand by me and help me get the best deal possible. I dont really want to go the route of gift card/certificates, cuz it seems too good to be true, and it might not arrive on time anyhow.

Please advise on the BCB giftcard dilemna, if possible. Thanks!


EDIT: ALso, for the poster above me, the color of the ENVY 13 was not silver nor bronze. It was in between. It's kind of Champagnish colored. The lid however, is more bronze/greyish.

 

LIES!!! ALL LIES!!!
THE REAL ENVY 14 COMES IN PINK!

I was going to go with green (pun ) but it looked too fake
you can see the real color fairly well here

 

Count me in! :-D

 

maaaaaaan... when are they going to release specs for uk models... i know that the model we'll recieve is the envy 14 1050ea but i can't find specs anywhere. I just hope it's an i5 model not an i7.

 

You make it sound like the UK will only get one config

 

Are most of you purchasing a warranty for the Envy 14 or not?

It sure does add a hefty cost to the total price, so I was wondering if you think it is worth it?

Someone earlier compared a warranty to making a bet with HP. I thought that was an interesting comparison... just looking to get more opinions.

 

I'm looking to purchase either a 3-year warranty with HP and swipe it with AMEX so I can tack on another year from AMEX's extension to get a 4-year manufacturer warranty. If I think that's too expensive, I'll probably just buy a Squaretrade Warranty

 

well on the list of envy 14 models on hp's website the only model number followed by ea is the envy 14 1050ea so i'm guessing uk will only get one config. UK model numbers are followed by ea for envy laptops in the uk.

 

My dv6 i got last year is a "sa" not a "ea". Was there any sa's on the list?

 

ahh the joys of living in the UK! we still didnt get the i5 envy 15!
I am hoping the 1050 has the 900p screen, if not I will get it from the US. we often get screwed on screen over here

 

That does suck. I've heard many UK laptops don't have 9-cell battery options, while the US versions do.

 

I think the battery option is the least of our concerns in the UK. The laptop is not even up on the HP website yet . Typical...

 

Speaking of colors, whats the harm of offering color options with premium notebooks these days? If you buy a Ferrari, you can get it in whatever color you want, but when you buy a top of the line notebook, you get no choice.

I think electronic manufacturers would profit greatly to offer more color options. People are always attracted to gadgets that they find attractive, so the more colors, the more people the gadget would appeal to.

I would love a gun-metal colored envy 14, with black accents =]

 

Batteries are nothing compared to the fact we don't get anything that's good from the US from HP, all of our envy 15's had the 1366*768 screen whcih nobody would want to pay a premium price for, and the envy 15 2nd gen was only out for like a month in the uk before it was taken off the market... or else i'd be buying one of those rite now. HP complained that enough of the first gen hadn't been sold, but who'd be willing to pay £1200 for a crappy 720p screen on a laptop... stupid uk marketing

 

I agree, with a premium 15 inch laptop, I'd say 1440x900 is the minimum limit. A 720p display on your average 15 inch laptop is fine, but when you get into the premium sector, you really would expect better.

 

Yeah i tried to get hold of the gen 2 even though the price was rediculous and everywhere was sold out. I think there must have been a total of 5 units in the UK.
Personally I really wanted the i5 version which never got here at all.

I am still hoping the envy 14 will hit these shores with a decent price and spec and I will jump on it. In the meantime I have ordered an r2 m11x which will probably be returned unless it really impresses me and can play bfbc2

 

No Full HD, is a deal breaker for me.

 

Wow, I never realized how incredibly thick the M11x is. I'd rather take a 13 or 14 inch notebook that is thinner. Admittedly, the M11x is rather light, though.

I could settle for 1440x900. My old 15.6 inch laptop had a 1366x768 screen, and it was just too few pixels. On my desktop I use a 20 inch 1680x1050 monitor, and it's really perfect for me. I feel like it's just the right DPI.

 

I haven't caught back up in the pages since this discussion was happening, but I received a response about the gift card issue...

 

5 days~ =D

 

Saw a blurb on the new Acers, FYI only of course.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/22/acer-aspire-timeline-x-laptops-arrive-stateside-sans-ulv-process/

 

Yeah it is think, but I guess it needs it for the cooling. The internal temps are amazing (gpu maxes around 65c overclocked and cpu mid 40's) and external temps are good for me too

 

I can't seem to find anywhere to customize it...is it possible?

 

Ah, looking at the specs, it has nothing on the Envy 14.

 

You can get a lot of different fixed configurations, but its not possible to customize them before buying.

 

well thats dumb.

 

I'm now interested in the Sony VPCEA290X...any thoughts?

 

I actually looked at those but was a bit put off by the GPU. It's the 512mb 5470. Not that it isn't a decent GPU, it just would not suit my needs for some games. Other than that, I thought it was a great little lappy. I really liked the color offerings.

 

Yeah, I need 512 at the LEAST (department requirement). I wanted to switch it out to 1 gb on my own, but I was surprised to hear that that's not possible. I'm not a big gamer, but I need detail for some engineering and modeling programs.

I like the colors too.

 

The speed of the card is what's important, right? Hasn't the memory
on video cards gotten to the point of just being marketing hype, like 5-bladed
diposable razors? I'm running @ 1920x1080 resolution on a old 32mb nvidia card.
(Yes, the card is SLOW, but that's a reflection of the pipeline speed.)

 

Hm. I am obviously not very computer literate (that will hopefully change soon), but I'll look more into the 512 mb that comes with it. Perhaps I fell into the marketing scheme..."bigger is better..."

 

Yep, 1440x900 is minimum for me as well. At work, I have 14" in 1440x900 res and I feel borderline cramped with a few browsers and a MS office application up and running.

 

Im starting to get the "eager" feeling. i want a new laptop soo bad.

 

Yeah that sony has a too underpowered GPU and 1366x768 display.

In a notebook nothing about them is configurable usually except for system RAM and hard drive. Maybe optical drive if it has one. GPU performance is all a combination of GPU performance and memory size and performance. For this GPU, 512MB may even be overkill.

 

I think it is worth a second look. This laptop would be a serious contender for me if I didn't have the intention of trying to play intensive games with maxed settings. I think it would be great for most other activities including light gaming which I do the majority of the time but not exclusively.

 

Sooo...is there any reason Engadget hasn't replied to my e-mailed question as to why they haven't released any reviews for the Envy 14???

 

GPU memory is a marketing thing. For a mainstream 128-bit DDR2/GDDR3 card, 256MB will not perform any slower than a 1GB card. There are some laptops that have the same card, and one model had a 256MB GDDR3 version and it performed better than the 1GB DDR2 card (since GDDR3 is faster than DDR2), while a 512MB GDDR3 card performed no different than the 256MB GDDR3 one.

 

A Little Update for peeps from the UK. I called HP again today and stated that the release of the Envy 14 is in 5 day in the US; European countries such as Germany are taking pre-orders so when can we expect to see the 14 arrive in the UK. I even gave the speculated UK model number being 14-1050ea and yet again they answer me back with nothing is coming up and then start speaking to me like i don't know what I'm talking about as they think the Envy 14 doesn't exist! Great news for us eh lol!