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

So, just how slow/limited is this thing on battery? Sorry if this was covered, but I couldn't find anything since the original discovery of the .931 GHZ throttle down setting was revealed. What can/can't you do on battery? Also, any tests of battery life with/without slice? Thanx.

HP Envy 15: Core i5 520M, 4GB DDR3, 500GB 7200 RPM HD, ATI 5830, 1920x1080 Matte EDD 2/8.

 

is there anyway to change how hotkey/quicklaunch key's programs on the keyboard?

 

You can play most games, but obviously the battery will drain very quickly.

It can decode 720p mkvs just fine, but not 1080p.

Everything else works just about perfectly. I mean, how many people actually do video encoding on battery?

It just pisses me off so much that it doesn't have switchable graphcis. If we could use switchable graphics, the video card could be turned off and the system would remain silent. the cooling system for the CPU is so excessive for the i5 that the fans never have to come on unless you are stressing it. Instead, the video card just sits there wasing electricity and gneerating heat all the time.

 

You can use mpc-hc for hardware decoding.

 

thanks. I had forgotten all about that.

 

I am looking for a HDMI to VGA (female) adapter to be able to plug a video projector on my Envy 15.

HP is out of stock and will not say when it will be available again.

Any idea where I can get a similar product?

PS: don't recommend me any of those HDMI to VGA (male) + RCA cables, as this is a male VGA plug, and from the users forum, it does not work properly.

 

I've only got one test for 1080p mkv's and it's anime (Macross Frontier) with subs and even on VLC it doesn't drop frames on battery. It's also fine with mpc-hc.

Apparently even the onboard intel graphics is supposed to handle Blu-ray decoding without stressing the CPU much. I also would rather have the ATI 5830 switch completely off when it's not needed (like 99% of the time when I'm operating on batteries.) Definitely something that draws me to the new ASUS laptops that are just available at newegg.com.

I did an ad-hoc, slice/battery drain test on my i5-520/1920 matte/500GB/4GB at 50% brightness, wifi connection, bluetooth on, but not connected to anything while I was at work today. (Just sat the computer on my desk while I worked.) I did a couple of reboots, it crashed once, so badly that a blue screen didn't come up, it went directly to bios restart, and hibernated it once when I went to lunch. With 10 minutes of Mass Effect intro screens to "impress" the coworkers, and then < 1 hour of browsing, and about an hour of setting stuff up like futzing with the Stardock envy theme, and installing BattStat and Putty and just tapping the keyboard every so often to keep the screen on, it lasted about 8 hours on both the slice and internal battery before it hit 7% combined capacity left, it just shut down.
That's about par for what I was expecting... a little on the low side though since I was basically doing nothing on the computer most of the time.

I'll do a more controlled test like looping a video or something after I have a few charge/discharge cycles on the batteries.

 

Pros and cons of changing fan options in BIOS?

People say the Envy has such a great internal design that fans are not needed most of the time but then why are they set to run constantly by default? Seems like it would waste battery if not needed, but are there risks to having them run only when needed instead?

 

Pros and cons of changing fan options in BIOS?

People say the Envy has such a great internal design that fans are not needed most of the time but then why are they set to run constantly by default? Seems like it would waste battery if not needed, but are there risks to having them run only when needed instead?

 

You only need to hit submit once From what I gather, some people just don't like having the fans turn on and off, and would rather just have them on constantly. That's the only real consideration. Yes, constantly on will probably use a bit more battery power, especially with the CPU clocked so relatively low when on battery.

 

has anyone called HP to complain about the scratches in their bezel, and if so, what did they do?

 

Yeah...same here, only black paper... got some hairline scratches too, E2E glass would be so great, and i also have a deep scratch at the edge of casing, highly visible
How is HP exchange policy?

 

My only complaint after getting mine yesterday is that the palm rest creaks a lot...it has a lot of play around the front edge all the way down. It is enough for me to want to send it back, as solid build quality is really important to me. Sounds nit picky I know, but that's why I bought a flagship notebook...

 

You can refit it and redo the screws, but again you paid for that to be done already so it is your call to do it or not.

 

Just noticed something else troubling, my i7 2nd gen is only showing two dim slots in CPU-Z, both populated. isn't there suppose to be 4?

EDIT: the two dimms under the battery are empty, but I wonder why CPU-Z only sees two.

 

Because only 2 are in use? lol

 

it's so quiet.

has everyone's Envy gone bad?

 

I'd think it's more a sign that everyone's Envy is good, so they're all playing with it instead of posting Me, I gotta wait to get home on Friday for mine :cry:

 

i'm just bitter.

I have a new DIMM from HP that I'm going to install in a bit. I hope it works. Otherwise, i'm sending it out today.

 

bezel scratches aside, i am very happy with my purchase. this i5 machine does run noticeably cooler than my old i7 envy. the ssd's might have alot to do with that. speaking of which, the ssd purchase is one I will never regret, the machine is quite fast with them. i plan on doing a fresh install.

when you guys did fresh installs, were you able to keep the recovery and hp tools partitions? i want to keep them in case I have to restore and send back.

Also when your machines arrived was there any covering for the lcd/bezel?

 

no covering, just black paper

 

Yup, its easy to keep the recovery and tools partition when you do a fresh install. It's exactly what I did, since I pretty much reinstalled it on first boot up. Even installed from a usb key without issue.

As to the tiny scratches/markings, they are a bummer. None on the bazel, but do have a two tiny markings along the power side of the case. Thing seems solid, but brittle. But at least personally for me, considering I have a 9 month old son, keeping the thing pristine is not an issue. At this point I'm happy if I can keep things functioning

 

did you use the oem key found at the bottom of the machine?

 

It would be nice to have E2E huh. After seeing XPS 16 and Envy 15 and MBP, the lacking of E2E does make a difference.

 

Hi,

I have the 1st gen envy with 4830 radeon chip.

I am still using the HP supplied 8.632 drivers, i have tried getting others working using the 9.12 and 10.1 catalyst drivers without success.

I have seen the 8.681 drivers on Strags.com but do not know how to use them.

Can anyone supply instructions on how to update the video drivers without failure with any method as i know that the 8.632 drivers are not the best.

Regards

 

Hmm Interesting, my Envy is just fine and dandy, no creaking on the palm rests or whatever, I left the fan running on the bios and it doesn't get hot at all, just warm, no scratches anywhere that I can see, but I'm sure I'll find some.

There is some minor defect on the keyboard keys, my K and F are a little crooked (not level) but that's about it I can live with that. And the Shift key sounds like its got a little bit of a clicking (like the lever arms are not smooth), I'll prob fix that later with some grease or something.

Also I had an issue with sleep this morning when closing the lid. But almost all laptops have that issue from time to time.

And although this has been said a million times in the Envy 15 forums, the person who designed the screen hinge to stop at 100 degrees should be drawn out and shot, what a tool.

I think this laptop might be a keeper though

 

No I did not, I figure if I restore that is what it would end up with. Wife got me a copy of W7 Ultimate during Christmas, so blasted that on there.


Also I disabled the fan being always on in the bios, see no difference in temperature from when it was on so far. It kicks on just fine. I guess some people find it less annoying to always hear it, then to have it turn on and off.

Turned on virtual extensions as well, since I need those if I'm going to be doing work on this thing.

 

This! Can't be stated enough times. I'm all for form, but not when it trumps function.

 

I gave my one year old his own remote control that isn't configured to any of the devices we use. He's mostly happy to use that He also loses any electronics the moment they go in his mouth, so he's learned that he can chew on anything BUT the expensive toys.

 

Some of the markings I thought were scratches (notable around the power input) came right off.

Might want to try

 

I am thinking of buying a HP Core i5 Envy. Can owners please comment on the following

1) Battery Life with and without Slice
2) Heat
3) Matte Screen Quality
4) Any major concerns?

Any help is appreciated. Planning to use for Coding, Movies and Surfing.

 

I just made a set of restore/recovery discs and then manually removed the partitions to gain back the 14GB of space.

The only protection for the bezel is the rubber 'bumbers' on the bezel itself, I dont think that sheet of black stuff does any good to protect it. I have now received 3 envy's and they all have had minor scratches in the bezel out of the box, 2 of them were full a fingerprints also. It is just a very cheap (soft) grade of plastic they use, I still can't believe they have not come up with a more suitable option for this. I think more of us need to complain about this so they come up with something better. Send an email to management via link on customer service page, it can't hurt.

 

For those who have "scratches" on the power side of the laptop, they are not scratches. I think it is the black box rubbing off on the computer. They come off with a little handy work.

 

How do you boot from a flash drive? On my desktop with an Asus MB all I have to do is hit F8 and select the USB drive.

 

I know Im personally a crazy f00L for constantly refreshing and reading every page of every envy thread, but seriously you couldnt read up on atleast the last 10 (or even 3!!) pages before asking that? Jeez...

I answered some of that here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5819374&postcount=506

 

http://www.dhgate.com/sony-usb-external-blu-ray-drives-on-sale/p-ff80808123822f72012383f1795a4438.html

Hey guys, what do you think of this for the envy?? hoping to get mine as soon as the uk models are updated and wanted a decent external blu ray player and cd/dvd player/writer

 

Looks like the drive I got off eBay (also a Sony). I have confirmed that it'll read DVDs and Blu-Rays fine on a single USB cable on my desktop, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. It should be fine with your Envy. I haven't run any actual blu-ray software, but I did copy some files off of it to verify.

 

Well, every other computer I have ever used it on it shows all the dimms, if they are in use or not. "lol".

 

Maybe you should return it since it isn't showing the correct # of dimms.

Don't know if it ever occured to you or not, but cpu-z doesn't always read laptop motherboards correctly

 

I said that I was curious in why that was, not that I was upset. Although, it did make me wonder if maybe the motherboard BIOS wasn't seeing all the dimms.

 

Okay how do you see dimm slots with cpuz? I saved a report and it only then shows me the 3 dimms I have installed. If I use Everest it shows dimm slots 1,3 & 4 as being populated

 

guys i think about buying this laptop. i have a question tho.

is the ram they put on this laptop 1066Mhz or 1333Mhz?

and if it is 1066Mhz, is there a big difference with the 1333Mhz?

 

Hey all,

Since I finally received my Envy, and have seen tons of questions regarding battery...but only i7 users replying, or i5 users without a slice...i just wanted to share my first official battery test with the i5-540 + Slice

Settings: I left the HP Recommended Plan pretty much at default...which means processor power on battery was at 100% and the ATI Powerplay settings were set at "maximize battery life" and system cooling was set to "active". During the test, I watched Hulu for approximately 2 hours..and had streaming music from Pandora ongoing for the remaining time. Also, I had AIM open and was actively using Microsoft Word. Finally, I had the screen brightness adjusted to 2 levels above minimum.

The total battery life was 6 hours 3 mins before hitting 7% on the 6 cell battery. During the test, the slice battery ran itself down to 3% before the Envy automatically switched over to the other battery.

I am pretty excited about these results and strongly believe that if someone just wanted to use Word and turned off all wifi/connectivity and adjusted the brightness to minimum, they would be realistically looking at 7+ hours easily.

_________________________________________________________________________________________
HP Envy i5-540 ~ 4gb RAM ~ 1GB ATI 5830 ~ 320gb 7200rpm ~ HP Ultra Brightview 1920 x 1080 ~ Slice

 

Interesting. its probably the same thing as the Bluray I got that came with my Envy. my one says its a Sony Optiarc.. I'll get the model number later..

 

kool that would be good, u got it from hp??

 

yea I got the BluRay-player from HP, with the envy. Apparently just in a nick of time because a day later they took it off the site.

its a slot load.

 

ah right, thanks a lot for the info... at the moment the better models come with a blu ray player so probably these ones. I'm hoping when the refresh comes out in the uk they'll finally get usb 3.0 and dual ssd's/combo hdd&ssd... that's really the only thing holding me back right now from gettin it rite this minute

 

The corel software that comes with the envy is actually good if you use it, they are the pro version of corel photostudio and videostudio with a retail of $100 each. I like it, its a shame that most of the people on here decided to wipe it from thier computers.

 

i'll stick to photoshop thank you very much

 

No doubt photoshop is better, but the Corel software isnt bad as well and it does have its advantages to photoshop in certain aspects, I mean I dont feel like paying 500$ for the pro version of Photoshop CS4.