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

It was definitly a pain. I honestly was a bit concerned about weird noise coming from the unit as well. Took 2 hours but sort of got things squared away. If I had just sent it in and waited exchange then new estimated build was Mar 1. Instead what they did was issue a return then processed a new order, this time using BML, with expedited build and 2 day shipping so its supposed to be built and shipped before the 19th.

Wasn't easy tho. First I talked with TS, who said 1066 was what they come with so there was nothing wrong, then I mentioned how many with the same processor got 1333 she said she didn't think anything could be done but transfered me to sales anyway. Several more periods of being on hold and then transfering to someone else they issued a return for the one I have, placed the new order which came out higher but they adjusted the price as it was technically an exchange via BML so now I wait. Hopefully the new one will have the better memory but who knows.The little tsk tsk tsk noise did have me a tad worried tho.

 

what tsk tsk tsk noise?

I hear a very slight hum coming from it, but it isn't a mechanical noise. More of an electrical one.

And I really wish this thing came with a quieter hard drive

Also, you do realize that they are going to send you a replacement with 1066 ram, right?

 

I already put it back in the box and shipped it off, as I have a replacement Envy on the way.

The replacement had 1333 printed on the DIMM. I didn't check what the old one was as it was never a concern.

 

now that i think about it i kind of hear a bit more fan noise than my first one. then again the first one had a regular hdd... i'll have to pay closer attention and make sure my envy doesn't have a fan issue.

 

I tried again, but no luck on 10k 3Dmark06... my GPU core wont complete any tests without locking up above 549core. Memory was fine at 1130. We will see if the 1333 ram i get today has any effect.

 

Well the hope is the new one will have 1333 installed, since thats supposedly why they agreed to the return/exchange (crossing fingers anyway). The noise was something I wasn't sure if normal or not. It just sort of sounded like a faint cymbal crashing sound. Some said it was the HD but, for me it at least, it seemed to be coming from the upper Left side near where the lid connects if you have the laptop open and sitting in front of you. It wasn't a system audio sound as it was happening even with Audio muted.

Either way as the replacement will be on BML I'm still a bit happier. That was how I wanted to pay for it in the first place but because of goofs by HP when I initially tried to fix my initial order which was placed using BML, they had declined it and I had to take money out of savings. This time it went thru so by the time it ships and the 6 months no payment period is almost up my Student Loan for the fall will have come thru so even if it does still have 1066 memory I'm not out coin for a while at least.

 

Ditto.

You play percussion?

 

hey guys can you unload most of the bloatware without having to do a clean install? It's just that I'm not very confident without having the drivers directly from the website, and was wondering what programs can be removed and what can't as i don't want to mess it up...

 

just download the drivers in the zip file that sleey0 posted in his sig.

 

LOL, no I took Piano, Guitar and Vocal in school . Thats just the best way I could think to describe the sound. Almost like the sound you would hear if a drummer was brush stroking a tophat. It may have been perfectly normal.

Anyway, if your hoping to do a swap over memory be prepared to be on the phone for a good while. I think it took almost 2 hours to get things sorted. As I mentioned in the other post you'll get 2 options you can send it in for repair/replace which means a build date of around Mar 1 or do like I did and set things as a return of the unit and a reorder a new unit as an exchange which they can then expedite. Supposedly now I'll get expedited building, 2 day shipping for free and it should be built no later than the 19th but most likely sooner due to the expedite request. Its already listing as in process at least.

 

are those all the drivers you need?? i'm wondering why there's so much confusion if those are all the drivers you need... like all the ms silverlight, mswebcam etc talk... i'm not really following why people are installing this stuff.

Sorry if i'm being a lil annoying, I'm just new to all this and seems quite interesting to read

 

It's exactly what I did, except I got an additional $50, and the order should be in by the 12th.

 

Well some of the other stuff is just nice to have. The drivers are all you "need" for the system to be functional but for some of the added niceties like the onscreen display of volumn adjustment and such you need to install more than just the drivers. Silverlight is a decent program for streaming video anyway. As for the mswebcam I would think you would want that need so your webcam works, if that matters to you.

 

ah rite, so ms webcam just to play round with ur webcam? and the silverlight thing lets u use the hotkeys?

does mswebcam let u do all the stuff u wud have been able to do before with your webcam?

 

they were all i needed. i didn't install the hdd software he included though since i have ssds...

 

With having to swap out the laptop am kind of glad I didn't go through the effort of formating/upgrading to Ultimate yet, hehe. Think I will go ahead and get a thumb drive put together tho that has all the SW folder stuff on it and the Ultimate files so I'm prepared.

 

I wonder if HP will release Envy 15 with E2E this year, I would be if I picked up one in the next month and they end up doing that....

 

Doubtful. The one thing I read is that they considered it, but realized that after the bonding and such it would add a fair bit of weight to the machine that they'd rather use for stuff like nice copper heatsinks and such that actually improves performance.

 

I see that HP is shipping the USB 3.0 Elitebooks now...

Still isnt an envy however.

 

Just an FYI to let ppl know. Some had mentioned using Diskkeeper with their SSD's. I am a fan of the program but use it with regular platter drives. Anyway I got an email from them this morning to try and sell me extra 2010 Diskkeeper licenses and at the bottom of the email it mentions:

"Have a Solid State Drive (SSD)? Try it with HyperFast® solid state drive optimizer for $10 more"

So apparently they do offer a form of their hyperfast specifically for SSD's now. Let me be clear tho, I don't work for them and was only posting this info in case it will be of help to someone else so please no torches and pitchforks.

 

So I've been running this tool called intel turbo boost technology monitor, which is a desktop gadget and shows how the processor speed changes.

A few minutes ago I noticed it changed its appearance to a big red X. When mousing over it, it says turbo boost technology is disabled. So I started looking at the multiplier with other tools and noticed that sure enough it was locked at x13, which is the base mult for 820qm procs.

I guess the question is if anyone has seen this, or know what could disable turbo boost that suddenly. A reboot made things normal again.

 

What's so special about e2e? Is it an extra glass on top of the screen or part of the screen?

 

i assume e2e means edge to edge, meaning no frame/bezel around the glass, like the macbook pros. Look awesome.

 

In the mini 210 thread, someone complained about hp use a glossy e2e on top of an anti glare screen.

 

It's basically extra glass going to the full edge of the screen, and it's optically bonded to the underlying panel so that it doesn't distort the image. It's easier to clean and looks great, but the trade-off is weight.

 

Not specifically but when I did a clean install someone had posted a link with all the drivers etc. and they had placed descriptive names on some. One was TB...as a file name (In SWsetup folder) and they described it as Intel turbo boost.... I loaded it and it looked just like the 'intel rapid storage' install pages, after the 'finish' button I expected something to open or more info...nada. I have no idea where it went or what it does but at least its not causing problems, lol.

I am sure that turbo boost was working before I loaded this because I had tested it. I just thought it was something like a utility that I overlooked when sorting thru HP's crapware in that file. For whatever that's worth maybe you should try running it.

 

It is more of looks than anything. Neither less, if I am going to spend 2k on a laptop, would like to make sure I get all I can out of it.

Ain't going to spend 2k on like Inspiroin, I might consider on the XPS16 since that is E2E and does sport some pretty good feature.

 

On xps 16, it's possible dust get stucked between e2e and actual screen. They are not optically bounded.

 

Yeah, I have yet to see any E2E screen bonded with the panel itself.

Even the insanely slim Adamo's screen had a tiny bit of space between it.

 

anyone had a look at this?
http://www.uscrybe.com/

seems so coooool, really want to install when i get my new envy, has anyone used this?

 

Hummm, I just bookmarked that link. It does look interesting so would love to hear if anyones tried it. Then again since this machine is going back in a few days maybe I'll play guinnee piglet

 

if you do let us know how it is =D some screenshots wud be nice too =)

 

From my reading the only memory to achieve a full 7.9 memory score in WEI is of the kingston hyper X Type, I found this article which is pretty old but someone listed in the comments the description for thier PC and the memory scored a perfect 7.9 (although they used PC 16000)

 

I have a question about the palmrest....

Something inside the left hand palmrest seems loose.

You can here sound if you lift the laptop left and right.

It is my own problem or? I check the manual and don't
know which part it will be.

 

how does turbo boost work with core-i5? does it work the same as core i7?
dual core boost and single core boost highest?

 

Could be a screw....

 

so let me call hp first before I open it by myself.

 

I've installed on my envy and now the amberLED on the left side of the pad stays on all the time, bright when the pad is enabled, dim when the pad is disabled.

Pretty much a "cool" toy. I don't see myself using it much. It works as advertised, but the gesture for "control panel" is so complicated that I generally have to try twice to get it right. But I really haven't configured any specific gestures for the items I normally use ... the defaults don't really activate much that I actually use and all the web stuff pops up in IE... and I use Firefox, but don't have it set up as the default browser just because some sites just don't work as well on FF (ie Microsoft sites.)

 

Well giving it a try. So far its not too bad. A couple of issues tho.

1. After installing this suddenly the dbl tap to turn off the touchpad is gone. I'm gonna give it another shot by uninstalling and telling it to NOT replace my origonal driver and see what happens.

2. Some of the stuff is preconfigured/locked so like highlighting something and then drawing the ? symbol insists on opening a Yahoo Search. You can create a movement to open Bing instead but so far cant find a way to do it so that bing will automatically search for a highlighted word.

3. For some odd reason when I draw the symbol for photo edit it seems to insist on opening WMP.

Anyway I did make a restore point just before the instal so going to roolback and try installing without letting it install new touchpad drivers to see if that fixes the on/off problem. I'll update this post once I try.

 

Upgraded my Envy with another 2 sticks of RAM and WEI score for memory went from 6.8 to 7.3

 

Which hard driver are you using? I only get 5.6 for hitachi 320gb.

 

okay i just finished some temp tests on the i5 and i7 envy15

i5 Envy15 stock cooling/paste
30 minutes of prime95 stress test (4 threads)/CPU Usage at 100% give out a temp of 77C/171F
30 minutes of idle time after prime95 stress test 34C/93F
3Dmark06 CPU scored a 2888 - plugged in
3Dmark06 CPU scored a 1285 - on battery

i7 Envy15 stock cooling/paste
30 minutes of prime95 stress test (8 threads)/CPU Usage at 100% give out a temp of 85C/185F
30 minutes of idle time after prime95 stress test 41C/105F
3DMark06 CPU scored a 3063 - plugged in
3Dmark06 CPU scored a 1635 - on battery

 

Any news regarding the HP Slim Travel charger?

Any way to use the laptop at full power with this charger, without draining the battery?

Additional question:
What are the dimensions of the HP 180W Smart charger?

 

how is your aero performance so high? mine is 4.5. i hate the number 4

 

My aero score is 6.8 (same with gaming). I'm using the drivers that came with the envy though. If you're using modded drivers, that may mess up the score.

I'm wondering why he's getting 0.1 higher than me in aero and gaming when we have the same gfx card though, and my HD is 0.1 lower as well.

 

yeah my gaming is 6.2 I wonder if it has anything to do with having an external monitor hooked up right now? Pretty interesting to see how arbitrary the scores are. My ram score is 7.3 btw.

 

I have the i7 quadcore which is the only real difference with a different M/B of course.

 

Holy crap... I just went to configure an 8540w. To get something similar to the performance and features my Envy it's coming to around $3500

 

Does the envy 15 have an ambient light sensor? How do you enable it?

 

It is enabled.