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

Sorry about that!

For me personally, it's an expensive purchase to make. Long before I purchase stuff that's $500 or more, I research thoroughly. When it's possible, as in the case with a GPS, a car, or a smartphone, I try to examine it up front. Get a feel for the aesthetics. Look on internet discussion boards and blogs for flaws. The fact that I would have to open up the laptop completely to do an upgrade was a huge turnoff at first. Even now, on my free time, I occasionally scour the web for more reviews.


I did the same for my Dell Vostro couple of years back. I took note of downsides like the weight and the plain looks. But I ended up getting the best bang for buck after 2-3 months of straight research. Only problem is not too many months after the 1-year warranty died, Nvidia announced that my GPU was flawed and Dell refused to cover it. But that's another story.


I DID say May/June, but if there's a $300 coupon that pops up, I'll definitely jump on it months before that. It could be soon as Feb.

 

It's a nice thought that falling costs would impact selling price in such a fashion, but in reality it doesn't always work like that so quickly, and in a few cases it doesn't work like that at all. Take for example buying a coffee. If you went to a mom and pop run cafe about 5 minutes from a busy train station, you could buy a coffee for let's say 50 cents. Go to a starbucks in the same location and it might cost you $1 (for the Starbucks experience).

OK, now go buy that exact same coffee but inside the station. Whoa, it now costs you $2 for the exact same coffee, which ultimately costs each of the companies the same to buy in terms of raw ingredients etc.

The problem really is that people are willing to pay more for the convenience. They almost become price blind because of it in fact.

People can become price blind for a great many reasons.

Now it's a little more complicated than that of course, because the Starbucks inside the station has to pay more because the rents charged by the station management are higher. The thing is, at some point an agreement is made based on the price point which causes more people to walk on by rather than buy, yet still make the same level of profits considering the increased rents.

The same thing will happen in terms of the memory modules. The cost the the original manufacturers will drop, but they obviously need to recover the costs of building those new factories, so they continue to charge as high a price as possible to make their profits as high as possible. Eventually price will drop so they can make higher volumes of sales, and a balance will eventually be achieved.

Therefore, in an ideal world, the best way to make the price drop, is not to buy them at all. But that doesn't work either in reality, as product lines that don't sell are often dropped, or their price maintained at a high level for those few buyers that do relent.

Economics is a very interesting and complicated beast, and trying to forecast what will happen to the price of a product line is incredibly difficult, even without worrying about externalities.

 

@Fragilexx

Good explanation. If I may summarize:

Commodity Pricing = supply vs. demand lol saves a little typing that way

 

I get where you're going with that, but coffee and memory prices are two different animals. In the past 5 years I've been watching them, memory prices have been affected mainly by factors such as cutthroat competition to the near point of attrition and industry consolidation in the past year. Companies like Elipida, Qimonda, and TSMC have all been shelling out money into R&D and partnerships to compete with the likes of giants like Samsung and Hynix. I believe last I heard, the R&D spending for 2010 among Taiwanese companies was figured at well into several billions to match Samsung. What makes the picture even more interesting is Samsung's recent move to enter the foundry industry. Depending on how soon Samsung begins manufacturing its own chips within newer factories under this foundry plan and manufacture for other companies, we could see chip (including flash memory) prices fall further, even if flash memory isn't manufactured at these foundries.


Coffee, on the other hand, isn't affected by the very same mechanisms. You are correct in that supply/demand factors play into how much a cup of joe costs at the train station and at other locations. Great. But once again, coffee is a different commodity. Like DRAM chips, it is a commodity whose price fluctuates according to supply/demand, which has led to the near-death of $5 coffees on the menus. But companies like Starbucks aren't subject to the same level of cutthroat competition. At least not in my city. Starbucks sales are driven more so by brand recognition and customer loyalty. You don't see Starbucks lowering its tall/grande coffee prices to margins to drive out other companies in my city.

 

Forgot to add. Yes, you're correct that the manufacturers have to recoup investments. Yes, that's how technology works. Manufacturers will originally raise prices sky-high to pay for all the wages to skilled engineers and scientists on top of paying for factory construction (Sharp's LCD plant in Sakai 2011 and Toshiba's flash plant 2009). That's part of the reason DDR3 prices are ridiculously higher than DDR2. We have the techniques to make DDR2 cheaply. But DDR3 is new. Once enough people have bought enough DRAM sticks at current prices to pay for all this investment, prices will drop. That's how it's always been in the industry and will continue to be.

 

Which means I'll upgrade my Envy to 8GB of RAM and an SSD in about 2 years, and it'll be like a brand-new machine, and still a lot cheaper than it would be to do it now

 

Yes, but remember:

The memory industry has always rife with surprises and of course risk. I'm not surprised that even almost 4 years after Samsung made the first 512MB DDR3 DIMM, prices are still really high even when factoring the fact that DDR3 RAM since 2005 has gotten faster and more power efficient. The recession is probably partly to blame for this, though don't quote me on this. I recall back in the 2002-2004 period when Pentium IV chips took on a snail-slow pace of improvement. All we saw were incremental clock speed improvements along with a few other tweaks as laptop/desktop sales became lackluster during recession and post-recession era. The recession simply created little incentive for Intel to innovate though its relatively high profile compared to AMD's can be partially blamed too.

But even then, the fact that laptop sales are gradually displacing desktops should be a comforting thought. I still remember the days when the cheapest notebook was $1,500 or more. Nowadays you can get a full-size notebook with ok specs for $400 or even less if you shop around online enough. That really says a lot.

So in essence: I'm just making flat predictions. I could end up being dead wrong if/when the world ends in 2012. Stuff happens all the time and new technologies get introduced every few months. But I'm confident prices will drop over time. If there's one company that has the cash to splurge on ramping up production and taking even more market share than it already has, it's Samsung. It's the one company that's been been in the black in the DRAM sector for years with the exception of 1-2 red quarters. Once it signs all the licensing agreements for "Samsung Foundry," things should start getting really interesting.

 

oh very nice.. mine is at newark.... hope it gets on a truck for delivery today!!

 

I just ordered mine, the i5-520 version, Anti-glare Widescreen Display (1920x1080) screen. Mostly a purchase for school, and portability. The only game I plan to play on it is WoW. Unfortunately the estimated ship date is Feb 26. You think there will still be a backlog by then? I have a trip planed for Mar 6th.

Oh thanks for the info, I've been lurking here for 2 months.

 

I have been having a hard time choosing the right laptop since September 2008...

 

Damnit HP! If this had a backlit keyboard it would be a no-brainer.

 

Jan 29, 2010 9:08 AM
On FedEx vehicle for delivery
JAMESTOWN, NY

Less than 2 hours to go!!

 

Weee, mine says ETD by 4:30 and
Jan 29, 2010 7:12 AMAt local FedEx facility DENVER, CO

 

you guys are def luckier than me, Mine is at Newark, and its so late in the morning already, its most probably not gonna get on a truck today. I guess my weekend is going to be Envy-less

 

well, you could hang out here and listen to everyone'e impressions and pics

 

yep, thats what I'll be doing.. living precariously through those who got theirs or are getting theirs today

 

Woot! Mine is in Los Angeles!

I should go raid the Fedex sorting facility! =D

As to backlighting, you can always look at the Sony Vaio F series, which is also 2 pounds heavier ^^;; Has a expresscard slot so you can install a USB 3.0 adapter to it if necessary =P

 

I have my USB3 drive here ready to make sure the Envy can handle the load... muahahaha.

Can the first person to open theirs confirm that the SWSETUP folder is available with all the driver installations in it please? Thanks.

 

Where specifically would this be located and does it have recognizable file names so we know what's what?

 

I just noticed strags has "ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series" 8.690.0.000 driver listed as of 1/25/10. Do you think this is usable for the 5830??

 

man, you guys are making me sad. My package is still in Tennessee :[

 

The word is vicariously Living precariously is living with your front door opening to a cliff

 

HA. I knew I typed it wrong.. my brain isn't working right today

 

It should be on the C drive, and will look like its full of crap. haha

That driver may work, i have been looking at it for days... just waiting to get my laptop and try it!

 

If no one else checks for SWsetup before mine arrives in a few hours I will do that first thing, I want to disable RAID0 which will require a clean install, but I need all the unique gen 2 drivers

I'll let you be the guinea pig on the GPU driver since I had such trouble getting the 4830 modded....

 

SwSetup is there in C with 2.56 GB of stuff.

The Envy is great! A little warm (with an old Targus fan running), but not as much bloatware as I expected (maybe it's 'cause I got Win 7 Pro? dnno).

 

SWsetup is intact, has all new drivers. Dont forget to save this folder if you format!

Also, if the lines on the display bug you, well they are still there. I dont mind however.

Also, USB 3.0 is working great... getting 102MBps sustained off my external 500GB. Thank You HP!

 

Well, mine arrived! I am impressed with the system somewhat.

Things I don't like are the clicky/clacky keyboard and the matte screen.

Anyone else's matte display look dim and fuzzy? Maybe I am just too used to my desktops display but I am not impressed

 

I just got a delivery exception telling my they tried to deliver it. I was gone to class. I hope I can get it later today. I had 5-7 day shipping. It only took 3 days. Impressive.

 

Yeah, the matte display does look a little dim. However, I turned the brightness up so it's not that bad. Maybe a little fuzzy, but I can't really tell (will probably need to try gaming/HD videos).

 

The driver at Strags.com is currently giving an error. It gets pretty far but then says that "this version of windows is not supported"

The included HP driver is a 9.11 i think anyways, so I am content without finding a hack at the moment.

 

This has probably been answered before, but what is a good application to use for monitoring temperature?

Also, any suggested modifications/installs to improve general performance?

 

Have you turned off the "adaptive brightness" in the power plan settings. This was on as default in the gen1 versions. It was always trying to dim display via the sensor by the webcam.

 

Well, the multi is def locked at 9x on battery.

Tried to use throttlestop but that didn't work.

Backing up files now to reformat

 

the core on the 5830 looses stability at about 550mhz, only a 10% increase.

the memory on the other hand is above 1000 right now and holding, ill try and grab a 3dmark06 default score.

 

A higher core shouldn't help much anyway... that the RAM runs that fast is AWESOME news, though.

 

What OC tool are you using?. I have links to AMD clock tool V 0.9.8 (from 2008) and V 0.9.26.0 which says it's for the 5870

 

My i5-520m based machine arrived around 1:00 EST today. I'be been playing around since then - love it so far. The matte screen is nice and bright with virtually no reflection - great! I'm backing up the SwSetup folder and doing a clean install on a new drive. It gonna be a long sleepless weekend. This machine is staying much cooler than the i7 based Envy at BB. So far Id say it was worth the wait!

 

using AMD tool for the 5870

the core would have helped the SM2.0 score.

At 545/1000 i got at 9270.

Guess ill play with it a little more after the format and see if itll hit 10k without having newer drivers or not.

As of now its right on par with the 4830 OCd

 

Ok. I take it back. The matte screen is great!

I just got rid of the AWFUL HP theme that was ruining everything on my desktop

 

My bios is F.18, i thoutght i had seen F.17 earlier on some of the Envy Refreshes.

I wonder what has changed...

 

My SSDs are coming up as Gen2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No WAYYYYYYY!

Woooo HOOOOO

 

Great stuff guys. Looking forward to first impressions. Mines coming on Tuesday!

 

Great news! Sure hope it is reading that correctly Mine should be here in a few hours, I hope you didn't just get lucky. Maybe that's why the new BIOS ?

I've never had SSD's before or RAID0 drives, do you know of a good source for 'SSD 101' ? not even sure of the correct way to erase drive(s) for clean install.

 

Mine is in Newark as well

 

yep, the keyboard has always felt "cheap" to me, as well as the frame around the screen, which also always comes with a bunch of fingerprints, and minor scratches. My previous two envys came like that. Also a lot of dust on the keyboard, around it, and on the palm rest. Takes some of the wow factor away.

 

can folks add their system to the signature, so that we know what you are talking about

 

The keyboard feels cheap? Dammit I thought this would have a good island keyboard.

 

note to all with usb3 ports/i7:

hookup your external usb dvd drive to the usb2.0/esata connector or u cant reinstall wondows, you will get a driver error because as soon as the installation asks for the hdd location to install on, it cant use the usb3 ports anymore as they dont have a driver yet.

 

I just got mine and was a little curious if others where getting DDR3 1066 or 1333. Using CPU-Z it says I have PC3-8500F (533 MHz) 1066, Micron DDR3 modules 7-7-7-20-27 1.5V.

PM55 Chipset
NEC USB 3.0
Atheros AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet
Intel 6200 AGN wireless
Hitachi 320GB 16mb cache 7200RPM - 4 Partitions (200MB SYSTEM, 283GB C, 15GB Recovery, 103MB HP Tools)

Idle Temps are 48-51C and bottom of the laptop is warm right under the touchpad.

Envy 15 v2, i7 720, 4GB (2x2) DDR3 1066