*HP Envy 15 (11XX / 12XX series) Owners Lounge!*

Hey...

So yeah. I am not going to try and act like I know what they heck I am looking for when I rung these programs. Can you give me an idea as to what I am suppose to keep an eye on each on you suggested?

Regards

Chad

 

Sorry about that. The main thing is that all of them should run fully and successfully; as such, there should be BSODs, random reboots, stuck on black screen, etc.

Now specifically speaking, you're looking to see no errors in memtest (run it for a few hours), and you need to compare your 3Dmark/PCmark score with people who have similar systems to yours (i5 or i7? how much ram? SSD or no? etc.). Finally, if you do have SSDs then run some sort of HDD benchmark (forgot the exact names atm...) and look for random 4k read/write speeds, then compare those numbers to references you find online or on these forums.

For wifi, make sure signal isn't dropped or intermittently lost and is as strong as other devices when in the same location and using same settings. For battery, let it fully charge while laptop is off, then unplug it, let go completely empty, and recharge it again (with laptop off).

Hope that helps

 

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to purchase an HP 90w adapter as sort of a "travel" adapter. I considered the 65w slim travel adapter, but it is a bit pricey (around $60 on Amazon right now) and throttles quite a bit (apparently this can be overridden, but I can't imagine it would be good to constantly stress the power supply). I also heard the 90w is quite a bit smaller and lighter than the 120w, although I haven't heard many comparisons between the slim travel and the 90w.

Anyhow, I've been looking on Amazon, and the first couple options I see all look the same but have different price points: Amazon.com: hp 90w smart ac adapter
I've been wondering which option would work best, or will any of them work?

 

That menu is exactly what I get when mine is enabled, except for under "Open Settings" is a "Turn adapter off" option. Not sure why you don't have it. Could it be a rights issue? Can you go into device mgr and disable the broadcom bt adapter and do so without an administrator credentials warning? FYI, I'm using driver version 6.3.0.5560.

edit: I also do not have the send a file, receive a file option when enabled. However, I also don't have any bt devices connected.

 

I like to keep a power supply in my for days when I am away from my desk, so I got the Kensington K33336US 120W adapter. It does not seem to throttle or overheat. Also, it is less than 1/2 the size of the 120W that came with my Envy15. I got it from geeks.com for approx. $60 shipped.

 

Replaced my stock SO-DIMM PC3-8500 with Muskin I got from New Egg yesterday. Stock apparently were Micron.

Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Essentials 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Laptop Memory Model 991644
$99.00 / 4GB Stick.

Re-Ran Windows Rating, went from 5.9 to 6.8! LoL!!

 

Thanks yeah I've considered that one before but it is a bit pricey. I don't really mind using the HP 120w adapter at home, I just need something smaller that I can take with me when I go out, but that can preferably provide me with a bit more juice than the slim travel adapter.

 

This one should work if you want to save some money: Newegg.com - Recertified: Kensington K38049RR 90W Wall Notebook AC Power Adapter for IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad

Oops, NM. That's only got a IBM/Lenovo tip.

 

How much average time we can get from envy 15's battery while browsing on wifi
with an i7?
With an i5?

 

That charger does work though. I got it from newegg when they had the 100% universal one. I know pro-vantage sells it for 22ish with like 6 bucks in shipping

edit:
Never mind apparently they dont sell the refurb one anymore

Epic edit:
http://www.provantage.com/kensington-k38050rr~7KNSA043.htm
Found it, they sell it but it will take about a extra week or 2 since they have to special order it

 

with the i7 820qm its around 1:40. Depends on power settings and wifi, but this is an optimistic figure -- normally, I get closer to 1:30.

 

I get 2:20-2:30 from my i5 540m and stock battery.

 

Does it get too hot when doing hardcore stuff? What about when simply doing light stuff. What are the temps than

 

Hmmm interesting thanks. I looked up the specs for it on Kensington's site and for whatever reason it appears to be even heavier than Kensington's 120w adapter (20oz vs 14z for body + cables) and its dimensions aren't much smaller. I think I'd rather just go with HP's own 90w adapter or the Kensington 120w.

 

it is not there slim model but for 20 bucks its not a bad price for something that works, and it works with my envy and my lenovo s12 so I am happy lol

 

Anyone noticed faster battery drain with firefox as opposed to IE or chrome? I was poking around in the 14's battery life thread and they said that switching to chrome from firefox helped battery life. Is it the same with the 15?

 

no one really has had this problem?

 

My wife and I have used five different Envy 15s at one point or another, and we never experienced the problem you described, but I disabled the GUI boot to improve startup time.

you can try to do the same, although it sounds like there may be some other problem causing your startup issues.

How To Hide Windows 7 Boot Screen

 

I am having intermittent problems with my brightness controls. It seems that after my computer has been put to sleep the brightness controls on the keyboard no longer function. The slider in the power settings menu is no longer present. The only fix I can find is to restart the machine.

Thanks in advance for any hel

 

I have similar issues, and it also happens to me when I come out of hibernate. I have it set so that when I close my lid, it only turns off the screen but doesn't go to sleep or anything, so to get my controls to work all I have to do to fix the issue is to close my lid and reopen the lid. This seems to reset some switch for the display because my brightness controls will work once again. It's only a stop-gap fix, and I am also curious if there's some more permanent fix to the issue.

 

I have been following the Envy 14 thread and recently several people have reported similar problems with the brightness controls not working after sleep or hibernate. This would indicate to me that some recent update from HP common to both models may be cuasing this issue. What HP updates (if any) have you done recently?

FWIW Here is a link to a page of the E 14 thread with the brightness control issue comments, appears no fix has been found yet. They have been thinking it has to do with the ATI drivers and switchable graphics which would not apply to the E 15.

 

Come to think of it, this might have actually started happening around when I updated the BIOS to the latest version. It could also have started happening when I updated the ATI drivers to 10.7 (or w/e the newest version is). I suspect one of those is the culprit.

 

Recently ordered the Envy 15 because of the HD Display over the 14. However I'm not sure how much I will love or hate not having a built in DVD drive. Any personal opinions from the current owners?

 

I've hardly ever used a DVD drive, save for the occasional installation. So I actually don't miss it and am quite happy with the reduction in weight and the better use of space for cooling. Everyone's needs vary, of course. Then again, if you do need a drive, you can always get an external one for ~$30 or less if you look around.

 

Can you link me to that driver? My driver is 6.1 and am trying to figure out if we have the same BlueTooth device.

 

IMO it would suck to carry an external drive. The envy 14 is smaller, more portable and it has a slot loading drive (which i love way better than the trays that come out). Im a student so 15.6 in would be too big. 14.5 is decent. 13 would be perfect but it doesnt have a slot loading drive so I went with the 14.5. I'm starting to like the size better than the 13 in.

 

I have yet to use it. I installed my OS via usb flash drive and the rest of my programs over a network. I need screen space to work with the programs I do so a 14-13 are to small. Heck, the 15 is not even that big.

 

Uploading the driver package now. Might take a few minutes until it's full available as it's almost 60MB.

BT driver

 

Thanks a million. I guess I should ask does every Envy 15 come with the Broadcom 2070 Bluetooth, or is it possible to have something else?

Regards

Chad

 

Will my Envy 2. gen support an Intel 640M cpu?

I currently have a 720QM cpu (the Envy 15 with 4 ram slots), but I think it gets to high temps. Therefore I wanted to "downgrade" to a 2 core cpu. However I don't know if it's supported since it has a graphics die. Also I need to make sure that my usb 3.0 ports will still work (HP states that: "usb 3.0 is available only with i7 processors").

I asume that the 640M cpu will run cooler because it's 32nm and thermal design power for the 640M is only 35W vs 45W for the 720QM CPU,


Does anyone know if Intel will make a quadcore I7 32nm cpu that will work with the Envy 15? I don't know why they haven't made 32nm I7 QM cpu yet...?

 

I have a need to burn discs pretty frequently, but with the E15 I'm able to use a 12x Buffalo USB 3.0 blu-ray writer which is much faster than the internal BD writer on my desktop.

 

It should support the 640M, but you probably won't see a lot lower heat from it. Even though it's rated lower, the dual-core i7's are still significantly hotter than the i5's from what I've read at least. Have you tried reapplying heatsink paste to your current CPU?

As for if they'll make a quad core, I have no idea. I don't think it'll drop the heat enough for it to be worthwhile, they're waiting to get the quadcore + GPU in the next round I believe.

 

I forgot to say that HP lets you chose between two different HD 5830 cards. One is "for i5 and i7-620M Processors". The other is for I7 quad. I don't know if this will make it impossible for me to "downgrade"?

I also think that the I5 + I7 620M Envy 15 only has 2 dimm slots, vs 4 slots if you choose I7 quad. However I'm not sure, because at the moment HP.com has removed the possibility to choose any I7 cpu's. Right now it's only possible to choose I5 with 2 dimm.


Even though the 640M cpu won't run cooler(?), it will give me a bit longer batterylife?!


And NO, I haven't tried to reapply heatsink paste. Do you know if I will void the varranty if I open the Envy and reapply heatsink paste?

 

I think generally speaking the dual core i7's will run about as hot as the quad core i7's. This is due to the quad cores (720qm for example) being able to scale down to 1.6GHz when there is not much work to do. The 620m dual core can only go down to 2.6GHz. I wouldn't expect much of a difference in battery life between the two.

 

Update video driver yet?

 

Also, here is an image from a pretty good article comparing dual core systems, you can clearly see how much more power the i7-620 consumes even compared to an i5-540. Too bad they did not include an i7-720qm on there just for reference...

 

Hmm, the Core i5-540M did well in the tests. BUT since the Envy 15 doesn't support usb 3.0 with i5 it's not really an option. usb 3.0 was the whole reason that I bought the Envy 15

Anyways, during stress tests my 720qm does get extremely hot. It reaches max temps at around 93-94 degrees Celsius (92c with my homemade 3 fan 12v notebook cooler). Idle temp is around 48-50c WITH the cooler So that was the main reason that I wanted to change the cpu.

I have the 2. gen, so I hoped it wouldn't get that hot. I haven't changed the heatsink paste yet, but I don't know if it would make such a big difference?
Also I didn't want to void my warranty just to change the heatsink paste (will it void my warranty?). I use compressed air to remove dust every month, so that's not the problem.

 

Nope. You can run either processor. That video card selection is really only the motherboard configured, and a horrible UI for their configurator. It should automatically select the proper "graphics card" for your processor.

It may still give you better battery life, but heat and battery life are tied very closely together. The more heat it's generating means the more battery power it's using.

You shouldn't void the warranty as far as I know. But I'd double-check your warranty documentation. I do know that I reapplied heatsink paste to my GPU and it dropped the max temperatures by 10C.

So? The USB3 chip won't stop working when you stick an i5 CPU into your motherboard. They just didn't ship it that way, trying to segregate the i7/i5 into different markets for whatever reason. An i5 should even be able to deal with all 4 banks of RAM, I believe.

 

That's one reason I bought the 15, including the very nice anti-glare HD screen, and not having an optical drive. All pluses in my opinion.

But if you're putting an i7 in a laptop, you have to expect some heat, there is no way around it. At this point it's basically a desktop replacement with limited cooling ability compared to a desktop.

To not expect to have some heat coming off this slim form factor with a quad core i7 processor and fairly high end graphics card, is a bit unrealistic. Add in a 7200rpm drive and you're making things even more toasty.

Also, I doubt changing the heat sink paste will make much improvement, unless the original paste was not applied correctly. You might knock a couple degrees off with some higher quality stuff, but IMO it's not worth the trouble unless you're going to be disassembling anyway.

 

Can someone with a 720QM or 820QM cpu in their Envy 15 tell me what their idle and max temps are?
It can't be good for a cpu reaching temps above 80c so fast?


Just tested how fast my cpu reaches 90c using AVG virus scan. It takes only 1min 14sec for the cpu to reach 90c!

 

I have pretty conservative settings - everything set to maximize battery power, "fan on constantly" set to off, only doing web browsing - yet my discharge rate is around 23,000 mwh. This seems high. What are your average rates/how do you squeeze more battery out. I also did the critical battery thing at 2% and still only got about 2 hours out of it. Someone claimed like 3:20, I'm having trouble believing it.

edit: second gen i5 430 with 4 gigs ram, 500gb hdd, glossy 1080p screen

 

I followed this thread on the parent site: Notebookcheck: Notebook Test, Laptop Test und News, which is in German and has a discussion forum, whereas the English version has no forum. People wanted to know whether the 620m really had higher power consumption; the people at notebookcheck re-tested and found the power consumption between the 520 & 620 were pretty much the same.

 

So I got my Envy today with the i7-720 and the hybrid disk drives. My observations so far from using it.

-Its fast. No question. Boots fast, runs smoothly, everything pops up instantly.
-The keyboard is going to take some getting used to. Not only is it a bit off to the right, but its worse cause my old laptop had a keypad on the right (which I ended up hating). So its going to take some work adapting. Its a good keyboard though.
-This thing is hot. Even when doing nothing, its making my legs warm underneath. Definitely going to have to find something to put it on.
-Which is good, because the angle that it leans back absolutely sucks. This may be the flaw that has me return it. I'm a tall guy and it does not tilt back far enough for me to comfortably use it. I'll have to find a cooler and see if that's any better.
-The touchpad. Who thought this was a good idea? Usually I use a USB mouse, so I don't really care. This thing is awful to use.
-The power brick. One of the advantages of the Envy was its small form and light weight. And then they put this in. Its a good 50% larger than my old power brick, and at least as heavy as the external DVD I got to go with the Envy. This is a real bummer, and sort of makes me wish I'd given in and gone with the i5. Is it possible to get something less gargantuan?
-16:9 screen I think it is. Whoever thinks this is better than 16:10 should be shot. It feels so much smaller than my old laptop. Its a nice, beautiful screen otherwise though.

 

Keyboard's screwing me up, but after a day of use I'm getting used to it. I'll be fine with it soon.

I have the i5 and even it can get toasty. It idles around 45-50, which seems high.

Screen angle does suck. 14's is better.

Touchpad I've actually grown to like. It just takes some getting used to. Use tap more than click and it works well.

Power brick. i5's is still pretty big, much bigger than the Dell's brick I had. It doesn't help that the cord is fat as well.

I like the ratio of the screen. It lends itself to Windows 7's ability to put windows next to each other.

Any help with the battery or heat problems? I did all the tricks I could find... limited the CPU, lowered the crit battery level, brightness, turn off the always on fan in bios, what else is there to do?

 

There's a guide or thread somewhere about how to adjust the trackpad, which supposedly actually makes it a great trackpad, whereas it sucks out of the box.

 

I'll take a look for that, thanks.

I'm running Orthos right now to test the laptop. Good grief, its toasty. This is way too hot to be realistically used as a laptop. The processor is running at 180 F and even the hard drive is over 100 F. Ouch. This is unacceptable. Its almost too warm for my palms on the top, and its uncomfortable through my pants too.

And yeah, the fat, heavy power brick is a real turnoff. Why make such a sleek laptop with a nice looking external DVD drive and then stick an ugly, crappy power brick on it? It boggles the mind. There's not even a power indicator light.

 

What boggles my mind is why would anyone care so much what the power brick looks like, it's not like you leave the brick sitting right next to the laptop or anything? It comes with a nice long cord so it can be stored under the desk or left near the outlet. Problem solved.

If you look hard enough, I'm sure people can find all sorts of things to complain about. But seriously, most of this stuff is so minor, I have to think people are just looking for excuses to return it.

And again, expecting an i7 laptop to run cool is very unrealistic. You should stick with an i3 or something if heat is that much of an issue.

I'm not just trying to defend HP here, but at some point you gotta draw some lines on what is a reasonable complaint. Did you do any research at all before making the purchase? Most of this info is readily available with a few quick searches.

Why don't you just return it already and get it over with.

 

Hi there everyone, I'm new to this site but I signed in to asked few questions,

- what's wrong with HP online store?? How come I can't custumize the envy 15 to have an i7 processor?? By the time I'm writing this the site only offer i5 processors, and I truly can't see how the largest notebooks in the world won't have enough i7 processors.
- why no backlit keyboard in the 15?? How come the 14 and the 17 got a backlit keyboards??
- I did my search online and I noticed that since the envy was introduced the complains are the same, I can understand the heat due to the i7 but what about the backlit keyboard and the screen angel?? I'm sure by now hp should be aware of those complains why the hell they are not doing anything about them? I mean of you intend to produce a hi-end notebooks you need them to be as perfect as they can be.
- does anyone know when I will be able to get an envy 15 i7 from hp's website? Or do you have any idea if a new model is coming out soon?

Thank you all.

 

I have a gen 1 720. As I write this, cpu cores are running from 38 to 40C, and the GPU at 39. The principal thing I've done is use MSI's Afterburner utility to reset the fan profile. One of the self proclaimed 'experts' on the Envy15 has posted that the utility does not work on the 2nd Gen 15 but i have no first hand information confirming that, so you might give it a try. Use the "settings" button on the first page of the utility and that will bring up the fan reconfiguration utility. I have no complaints about the heat on this unit UNTIL you start full bore gaming pushing both the cpu and the gpu to the limit, then it does get warm, but waaaaay less than say the MSI 740 or G73. The reason your palm rests get warm is that the metal case on the envy is apparently intended as part of the 'heat sink' Two things you can do for lap usage, get the slice battery which not only insulates the unit from your legs, but prevents the air intakes from being blocked at the same time, and,
go down to any department store and buy a wire mesh rack 'tray' kind of thing. Don't know what its called but you'll know it when you see it. Some have foldout legs. It's about 3 inches wider than the Envy, and works perfectly as a tray on your lap and you can even unfold the legs and make it a perfect breakfast in bed type tray for late night gaming in the sack Either way, allows free flow of air and keeps the thing off your legs.

Seer

 

Could you provide a picture of the wire mesh rack "tray" that you have, or a link to a store w/ a pic?