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

that's the thing, why do some people see lower res screens as a "feature" for gaming, or rather ignore the fact that rigs that get lower framerate simply do so because they choose to game at their native resolution? on the envy you can always turn res down to a pedestrian 720p, add an AA multiplier and chug away at almost twice the framerate.

and then, when you're done being a space cowboy, you can settle down and enjoy 1080p media.

 

We did something similar back in the days when I had the Asus Z71V laptop. Basically the concept is to make the headsink as smooth as possible so i maximize the surface it touches on the CPU / GPY w/o laeving any air pocket.

Take the heatsink and use several grade sandpaper and work your way down to the most finest one to polish off. Then apply a thin set AC5 on there....

was able to drop by up to 5c ....

 

AS5 itself can do 2-5* depending how bad the stock paste/pad is.

 

Sorry, but again, total BS.

Called a good friend who has seven esspresso stands in the South end, he happened to be closing up shop at the stand that is 1/2 mile from Best Buy....

Well he just called me from the Best Buy, I'm pretty sure you already know what he told me.... Only 1 Envy 15 on display which is the only one they have and it has been their for months ! When he asked about getting a new one the guy checked the computer and said they have dropped the model for new orders and they haven't sold an envy 15 since Feb. Now it appears your making things up to cover for your earlier misstatements....

The main reason I am posting this is because I have a serious problem with people who state incorrect facts and mislead others by providing false or inaccurate information, especially untruthful information!

Another example is your post earlier today that says "I design electronics and embedded software for a living" while last week you stated " I actually write software for Microsoft...." Well which is it ?? Let me guess, you do all that for MS

I choose to just drop this issue for good and will just ignore any grandiose or misleading posts from you in the future. I just hope others don't get mislead or scared away from the Envy due to your rantings.

PS: Please post your images as a link or a reasonable size. I hate it when i have to scroll sideways to read posts..........

 

Are you not using 1080p? Why r u scrolling sideways?

 

Well, I just ordered mine. Hopefully it won't have any issues.

 

So,

My girlfriend and I both ordered our envys at the same time... Hers arrived here on the east coast US, and mine somehow went west to Kazakhstan!

On a lighter note, can we rename this thread the JJB vs Lepton thread? Just kidding guys, you both post insightful things minus the envy bashing on lepton's end.

 

I have IE8 zoomed to 150% on the envy when it's sitting at the back edge of my desk and I'm using my desktop for work, that way I can read the Envy in full screen when it's 5+ feet away. This site auto resizes (scales) very well when zoomed to 150% except when someone posts an overly wide image, then it gets to wide and I have to scroll sideways....

Congrats and good luck with getting a trouble free machine.

 

Your kidding right? Kazakhstan?? Funny thing is I recall someone from there asking if anyone new a way to order a custom envy from HP and get it shipped to Kstan, LOL. Heard they have good hackers there, maybe he rerouted your shipment

Welcome to the club !

 

Why would that happen?

 

13 lbs? did you order 2?

 

Hey Krugoh,
would you mind posting your gf computer specs? Im curious as to what is holding my order up as well as a few others that orders ours on 3/30.

Have yet to even get a tracking number. I'm begininning to think that they have a shortage on glossy screens or something. Thanks.

 

Well that's a new shipping route They normally go from Shanghai > Anchorage > hp, memphis (east coast) or San Jose (west coast) > fedex > customer

Try your tracking number on this site; http://www.simpletracking.com/ They sometimes show a lot more details than fedex...

 

Probably a new route for east coast deliveries.

That's lite, if you get the slice it's 16 lbs The box is like 7+ lbs

 

The status on mine is still "in production," (ordered on the 31st) but to be fair the estimated ship date isn't until Monday. The wait is painful .

 

Hmm I got the slice but it's only 15lbs, did they forget to ship my charger?!! Wow I can't believe the slice is really that heavy..

I got matte screen on mine. It is on the same flight as the posted pic. Wonder how many Envys are on that plane. I got another on order with Brightview and SSD. It can't get here soon enough, the Alienware I picked up is a dud, it's going back tomorrow.

 

Yeah, it's 2.7 lbs so 8 lbs total which doesn't sound to heavy until you try and pick it up with one hand off a flat surface....Always catches me offguard when it's attached since I'm used to the weight without it. Great design concept but poor execution due to weight. I now just carry an extra 6 cell (or 2), easier to pack and they only weighs .8 lbs.

 

me: specs in sig

gf: everything base except matte 1080 screen.


both ordered on 3/31 i believe (ship date 4/12)

 

Thanks for the tips. Do you recommend disabling the critical battery level for regular everyday full battery drain usage? Because I wouldn't want to cause any damage or faster battery degradation from doing this all the time.

 

Now you let more dusts coming in.

 

You toor put the dust guards? You lower temps by allowing more dust in so other things can break? I hope you open your machines to clean them often and have no pets.

Also mine went to KZ for delivery.

 

In general it is never good to do a "full battery drain" on lithium ion batteries. This decreases the life of the battery significantly! See this data:

http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Of course a "full drain" isn't possible on a laptop. It just cuts off power before fully drawing down that type of battery technology. If you fully drain a lithium ion (to less than 3 volts) it will likely never charge back up again!

Edit: I shouldn't say "never good", but rather do this infrequently (like every 30 or so cycles). Doing it daily will likely kill a battery in a few months.

 

Apple and many other companies(Lenovo/IBM/HP to name a few)) recommend letting their battery drain then letting it sit for a hr then charging it back to full to recalibrate it.

Also from that site

"Batteries with fuel gauge (laptops) should be calibrated by applying a deliberate full discharge once every 30 charges.l"

 

Thanks man. I just meant removing the reserve level as JJB put it. That wouldn't really drain it completely since it's just going through reserve level, right? Don't they have a built in security feature so that 0% is really not 0%, or is the reserve just that?

 

I leave it that way all the time. It's really not an issue because the envy shuts down when the battery voltage hits ~8.5 VDC which is nowhere near low enough to cause problems.

Edit: I forgot to mention that you cannot use 'hibernate' to shut down when 'critical battery action' = do nothing (I think), I have disabled hibernate.

 

I sell and buy new machines before any dust can accumulate! I'm j/k though.

Of course I clean my computers every 6 months or so. I also do the same with Windows (reformat and reload everything using automated scripts every few months, cleans out the "cruft").

Edit: Now that I think about it, the fans aren't even on most of the time (even playing a Blu-ray... BBC Life is on right now). So cleaning probably won't be a problem!

Edit 2: Before I get called out again ("BBC Life isn't even on Blu-ray yet, hah!")... you can buy it in the UK and they mail it over for you. Of course it costs more and doesn't play on regular displays (it is 50 Hz). But David Attenborough is so much better than Oprah (sorry Oprah fans!).

 

Hello all,

I just got my Envy 15 a couple days ago. Loving it so far.

It's an i7 720, 4GB, 500GB HD configuration. Got it because of its pretty body, and my desire to get back into some PC games (been a Mac man for the last 7 years or so, and still use my 24" iMac for work).

Just perusing these forums.

 

What BIOS did it come with?

 

hmm, how do I get the battery indicator to tell me how many hours/minutes I have left? it only shows the percentage...

edit: also, in general, the display brightness control is VERY unreliable. about half of the times I need to lower brightness nothing happens, wether I use F2 or the power plan settings. is this the video driver?

edit 2: to wrap the power consumption thing up, when I open the AMD clock tool during some random browsing while plugged in, it tells me the gpu is at 100/200, even if I tell it to re-acquire the clocks..should I assume it underclocks itself even on high performance settings? not that I'd have noticed otherwise..

 

Interesting...

Looks as if HP have pulled all the 2nd generation Envy's from their UK product line.

So they had all of about 1 months product life over here.

 

1) Cannot display time on the envy, something like this will work: http://osirisdevelopment.com/BatteryBar/index.html

2) Someone else just reported a similar issue on the main thread. Have you disabled the 'adaptive brightness' option in the power plan settings?

3) the 5830 auto clocks based on demand. standard range on all power plans (plugged in); 100/200 min to 500/800 max, on battery; 100/200 min to 300/300 max. You can increase speeds on battery by turning off the 'power play' option in CCC, it will then perform like being plugged in but use more power. With the clock tool you can check the box below the clock adjustments that says 'show current clocks' and then it will show the speeds as they adjust, note that to set other (OC) clock speeds you will need to uncheck that box first.

 

yes, adaptive brightess is off, I even turned the sensor off..

thanks for batterybar, btw

 

they only came to a few stores across the uk as well... the 2nd gen didn't even make it to the big boys of pc/electronics retail stores e.g. pc world, currys, comet etc

Looks like I'll have to order one from america, get a power brick from hp uk or somewhere on the net and hope there won't be any defects on the body like bulges, dents, etc

 

I agree with you the design is extremely unique but the weight is very huge. But then again considering what you get out of the slice and its weight is marvelous. I get almost around 7.5 when the slice is attached. That's awesome. I don't even need to carry the charger around.

 

I ordered a few weeks ago during the -$450 coupon

can it run all current games like me2 mw2?

 

I have the same problem too. I turned off adaptive brightness because the sensor doesn't seem to pick up up a right "ambient" level.

But it should still work. It takes a few seconds sometimes for the "smooth transition" to finish. Also does your Power control panel have a trackbar to adjust it? Do the keys work (you may have to hold down for awhile, the steps are pretty small)?

 

http://www.amazon.com/External-Slim-CD-ROM-Drive-Black/dp/B001B1796U


is that a good external optical drive?

Also what type of cd would I need to backup the laptop?

 

It is my opinion the "Gen2" Envy was really a minor refresh to keep people happy. It was never intended to be the "next Envy" so it didn't make it into stores. You can't buy one in Seattle and probably will never be able to.

Stores utilize "planned obsolescence" when they sell things. They want a natural ~6 month cycle for laptops where new products come and go. Sometimes products don't make it to stores because they know something even newer is coming down the pipeline. So maybe they know of HP's next toy and we don't, which is why they don't bother stocking the Gen2?

Best Buy's stock levels are a good way to predict when a new product is about to launch. You'll see them sell out and not reorder anything of the old product. This is how people know the next MacBook will be out very soon (MacBooks are never out of stock, except right before the refresh). This could apply to the HP Envy as well. If may also be true that HP and Apple will be in "lock step" with releases. They both will start to refresh at the same time (possibly).

Disclaimer: These observations are my personal opinion and not intended to start a flamewar with OCD fanboys. Please accept them as impossible statements that do not reflect reality.

 

If you don't intend to start a flame war, then don't flame.

This thread has been tremendously useful and it's disappointing to see it reduced to this. Lepton, I think you've made your point - please consider just leaving this thread alone as you are essentially the metaphorical troll-under-the-bridge whose pasttime seems to be warning people away. By all means, you should do so on the 'what laptop do I want' forum if people ask about it, but you aren't achieving anything on this thread beyond poisoning the atmosphere.

 

My envy 15's left palmrest is about hot right now with AC power : ( .

It's not under stress and room temp is around 83 F

 

You definitely want a DVD-RW external drive! This is only a regular CD-ROM.

You'll need 12 or more CDs to back up the Envy's disk from the factory. Or just 3 DVDs for the same space.

Get something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-External-Optical-SE-S084C-RSBN/dp/B002C1BBU8/ref=pd_cp_e_3

 

I found this article on engadget showing that HP ENVY 14 & 17 are listed in HP support documents. It could be that Best Buy and other retailers are waiting for ENVY 14 & 17 if there is any. Here's the link if you would like to check it out
http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/26/envy-14-envy-17-and-pavilion-dm4-cited-in-hp-support-docs/

 

Hey that's not a bad idea! I wonder if the 14 would have the HP "radiance infinity" type screen (found only on the 13" Envy). I really want that screen to be in the larger notebooks (the viewing angles, color gamut, and brightness are incredible). The 13" Envy is just so obsolete by today's standards though (they have to be refreshing it soon).

 

yes I have the trackbar, but moving it doesn't change anything. I tried tapping and holding the buttons, nothing. the only solution is rebooting. maybe hybernation is related?

 

Have you tried updating your BIOS? (current version is "F.1B A" on the HP website)

It works normally after a reboot? So the functionality is disabled at some point then...?

I stay away from Hibernate myself, that feature is too buggy and the time saved isn't appreciable (esp. with a SSD).

You can disable hibernate (run "powercfg -h off" on the command line) and save a bunch of space on your C: too.

Edit: To disable the "adaptive brightness" feature run this command (and reboot):
sc config SensrSvc start= disabled

 

I'd prefer not to have to disable hibernation because it'd be a hassle to reopen the documents I'm working on and the couple firefox windows with loaded media I usually have.

I haven't updated the bios mainly because I read it makes the palmrests hotter, but especially because I also read that unless something is badly wrong, you shouldn't update the bios lest you fix a little problem only to end up with a bigger one...

edit: oh FFS just on the topic of looking for big trouble by fixing little trouble, I just opened Stardock Colors to see if it was something I could uninstall and it instantly applied some revolting black, low res theme, just like the one people are frowning at in the other topic..I told it to put windows aero back but it instead put some very weird theme with tiny fonts and now all my desktop and document folders are grey and glossy...ARGH
also, I can't change them back...wonderful. it's like stardock is trolling me...

 

I understand that. That's why they have hibernate of course... no other power save mode lets you leave stuff open for extended amounts of time.

But the BIOS update should not affect temperature that much. I think the anecdotal evidence isn't backed up with hard data (how many degrees increase?, are fans disabled?, is this idle or running Furmark?, etc.). I'm willing to bet that it doesn't change anything and people are imagining things. It shouldn't break your machine either (theoretically).

And to fix your theme problem just uninstall that HP program and put the following text into a BAT file (then run at BAT file). This cleans up a lot of the "cache" that Windows uses for themes/icons/windows settings (sorry but I don't think a BAT file could be attached, so here it is!).

----

setlocal
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

:::::::::::::
:: view settings

set BASE_KEY=HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows

:: Delete cached folder views
reg delete "%BASE_KEY%\Shell\Bags" /f
reg delete "%BASE_KEY%\Shell\BagMRU" /f

:: Set default folder template
reg add "%BASE_KEY%\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell" /v FolderType /d NotSpecified

C:
cd %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local
attrib -h IconCache.db
del IconCache.db

del /s /f /q Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\*
del /s /f /q Microsoft\Windows\Caches\*
del /s /f /q Microsoft\Windows\Themes\*

:: Restart Explorer
start explorer.exe

----

Edit: Whoops, forgot the "Themes" appdata folder. This is the one that fixes your problem! The rest are just to "tidy" up Explorer. I run this script every so often if Windows gets a problem like what you described.

 

well that sure was a quick fix, thanks a bunch!
not that anyone's going to read my warning here, but avoid stardock like the plague. jagged, ugly playmobil themes, anything else is 20 bucks.

as for the bios, I'll decide later

 

Hey guys I was wondering how good the envy is compared to most, I don't care about the portablitiy but I would like to know if it gets warm on lap, also the gaming on it. Do u think it will handle starcraft 2 and whitcher