*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 1*

hahaha 20C drop in temps...thats hilarious, i wonder how much crap hp has run in the background.

 

haha damn and my hopes were high!

 

Unfortunately, the machine would actually cost MORE without the crapware The software manufacturers pay HP a fee to get their software included in new installs. Norton doesn't make money on the first purchase... they make money when people subscribe.

 

Part of me is wishing i chose the raid'ed SSDs, but I know prices will go down so drastically in the future... I cant justify an extra 550$ right now.

What does everyone else think?

 

Speaking of bloatware, does any one know if HP ships a standard OS install disc with the Envy? I know the $197 HP notebook I got from Amazon on black Friday didn't, which was disappointing.

It is easy enough to grab a standard install disc, I know, just curious. I've found clean installs to always perform better than a system in which one only uninstalled the bloat.

 

ohh well in that case load her up! regardless if its 10mb or 320gb, i always erase it. I wonder how many 'normal' users appreciate the bloatware...

 

NO DISC INCLUDED. You get an SD card with the manual and the partition on your HDD.

 

I think for this setup (2 SSDs), the raid setup is convenient. Make sure you backup your system frequently, depending of the nature of the data you have on it. I have a Windows Home Server at home, so all my windows PCs are backed up every night. So RAID0 is not a concern to me.

 

I was completely torn myself, I wanted 6gb and the SSD RAID but I know technology prices always come down, and I don't NEED either of those functions now, they would just be nice and I couldn't justify $550 for only 320gb as I am looking at installing close to 100gb of software on my laptop when I get it, so I'm sure i'll be upgrading in short time, and I'd be upset if I had to pull out the SSD RAID array to fit in a 750gb HDD or something.

 

Is there an option to create a restore disc, though?

 

I think that a year from now you will be able to find 2.5" SSDs that perform as well as todays RAID setups. The problem being of course that they will be bottlenecked by SATA II. Still, you will also be able to find faster and cheaper 1.8" drives as well.

Of course, price drops wont be too drastic. It will be another two years before Intel starts producing 22nm drives, and until then the cost to produce the memroy is going to stay roughly the same. Yields will improve and profit margins will shrink, which might result in some reduction, but don't expect them to drop in price by half, at least not within the next 24 months.

 

If they made the SD card slightly larger they could have put a full copy of Windows 7 on it.

 

If you have a tool to clone your HDD you could to a DVD, using the external one.

 

Off topic, but I get an error going to the link in your signature, Serg...

 

Seems fairly half-assed. What if the main drive dies? How do you restore in that case?

 

What explorer are you using? Does it block opening new windows? Both seem working just fine for me...

In that case, my friend, you get ~!@#$%^& hahaha better be careful with what you do in that case.

 

Not sure but I remember uninstalling a bunch of media smart crapware that had 'TV' in the titles, think this was internet tv apps... if you don't mind a cable attached maybe you could run an HDMI output from a source (hdtv, sat recv, etc.) and use your envy as an external display lol.

The only thing I've heard of is Direct TV and / or Dish Network (US Sat TV providers) have some sort of wireless repeater to mirror the decoder boxes signal to a TV in another room, no idea of what the reciever side looks like or how it is powered / connected.

 

You make the restore CDs as soon as you get it. Otherwise you call HP and complain.

 

If I use it and decide to return it, should I wipe the HDD empty to make sure none of my data is left on it?

 

FireFox, "http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5718710#post5718710" is the access URL, error is forums based, says "srhinesmith, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons: 1. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system? 2. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation."

::shrug::

 

Sounds complicated. The thing is I have an HD Decoder but no HDTV, and since the Envy is big enough for my needs (no TV person here) and I have a FHD, I though skipping the buying the TV per se and using the laptop as one.

But I dont understand how that works... U did see some TV crapware between all I removed though...

 

You restore it to factory conditions, using the recovery tool could do it. And clean the registry.

 

You can buy a USB tuner. Just make sure you know that it can accept input from your decoder.

 

But I dont have a DVD drive and I dont want to bother having to make recovery CDs.

On the other hand, I can just use Boot Disk Nuke to wipe it completely empty through a flash drive. What I want to know is whether it is Ok to send it back with a totally blank hard drive.

 

I am not sure. Contact HP and ask them. I think as long as nothing is broken they take it, but on the software part I have no idea honestly. Sorry.

Thanks for the reply. I'll get to check that. Is it plug-n-play the USB tuner?

 

I would like to get a quick survey on what Configs are people ordering and what they currently own.

1. Core i5 On Order (i5-520m or i5-540m)
2. Core i7 On Order (i7-720qm or i7-820qm)
3. Current owner Core i7-720qm
4. Current owner Core i7-820qm

Serg, you might want to post a Poll.

 

I have never used one. Unfortunately, they all seem to be made by no-name chinese companies, so it will probably be hard to find a good one.

 

I can make a separate thread, to keep this place "clean"...

EDIT: poll created here http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=451377

 

Anybody planning on getting a laptop cooler with their envy? Any recommendations?

 

im actually thinking about getting a cheap targus one for when im at my desk...

i just looked at my temps im running in my current craptastic laptop and its a case temp of 49C, both cores on my ULV C2D at 52C, and the HDD at 34C....

so i'm going to be speechless if the envy runs hotter than this piece. But I always had a thing for heat transfer in college...hehe

 

You seem to have one of the beefiest configs No, I'm not. I'll wait to see what the machine does, but from the reviews I've seen it will get warm but it has a pretty good cooling system: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Envy-15-Notebook.22272.0.html

43/45C max case temperatures in their tests, no clue about the actual max component temperatures.

 

Yes there was some 'TV' mediasmart stuff preinstalled, not sure what it was for.

If you have broadcast HD signals there are several USB based hdtv recievers for PC's available, basically a small antenna and software package, most pavillion 'entertainment' notebooks come with it preinstalled and have USB external antenna. It sounds like you want a similar sofware package but instead of antenna you need a way to plug in your tuners signal.

If your tuner has coax cable output something like this might work:

http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Cable-Laptop-Desktop-Recorder/dp/B001JYTIEU

 

nevermind reposted to 'survey page'

 

here is a poll thread for that

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=451377

Also check out the 2nd gen envy lounge. I talked with serge in there he said some interesting stuff about how far he thinks a 90W travel adaptor will be useful. might be worth your time to pick one up.

 

the IGP isn't soldered into the MB is it? I kinda just fell in love with the mobility 5870 but since its tdp is 2x what the 5830 its pretty ridiculous to consider using it, but if ATI got the TDP down to 25W like the 5830 i'd consider cloning a kidney and selling it for a 5870.

 

The IGP is on the same package as the processor. It shares the 35W with the CPU cores. If you are running on the 5830 card, the IGP should be disabled so you the CPU cores get all of the 35W. Unless you're using "IGP" to refer to the Radeon, which isn't really an Integrated Graphics Processor.

 

thanks for that I'll take a look.

 

yeah, sorry, my newb came out, i mean GPU, the one that has nothing to do with intel.

 

Off topic but does anyone know how to get a single tab in IE8 to auto refresh, or some other way for example to keep up with new posts on a forum??

Should have never upgraded from IE6

 

You should upgrade from IE 6, you just upgraded to the wrong browser.

 

thanks LOL

 

It's funny when I bought my first computer 10 years ago I had the option to upgrade to an 8 gig hard drive and was advised not to spend the extra money because I'd never use the space. They were right. Now the operating system alone takes up something like 16gigs. Still, you'd need to have a massive library of movies if you're ever going to use up more than 80 gb. I'm more concerned with speed than space I'd really have to make an effort to ever fill up. If you're talking about 320 gb as if it's very little, you must have a commercial (server, photo imaging, etc) use in mind for it.

 

The newest quad core Core i7 desktop processors that came out before Christmas (Lynnfield) has the dual channel memory controller instead of triple channel. It also has PCI Express 2.0 instead of QPI. Intel is trying to match their products with current economic conditions and these were cost savings measures (which is also why they moved their Core i5 and i3 products to 32nm before Core i7). Lynnfield is what the mobile quad core Core i7 processors are based on.

 

The Envy has a full HD screen... a highly-compressed 1080p movie is what, 8GB? That will eat up hard drive space very quickly.

 

Who stores 30-40 HD movies on their laptop and why?

 

haha I'd get an external for movies.

 

Triple channel memory is completely useless. Moreover, QPI is useless unless you have a multi CPU Xeon server or something.

On the other hand, the i5 has hardware accelerated AES which the desktop chips lack.

 

Unfortunately, this is not true. Others have pointed this out as well, but these statements above are just not true. Most manufacturers don't list a battery's instantaneous power draw capabilities, but they do have one, and it is different from capacity. I'm not sure what the Envy 15s instantaneous power draw limit is, but it could conceivably be 52W, and this could be different from 6 cell or 9 cell Dell XPS, because of differences in battery chemistry and the driving electronics.

Capacity is measured in WHr, and instantaneous draw in W (or VA).

If you buy a battery backup (UPS), which are essentially giant batteries for your PC, you will see they are commonly rated in VA / W - i.e. instantaneous power draw. They should have a second rating for WHr which is often omitted, the exact opposite situation compared to laptop batteries.

 

Two upcoming SSDs that look pretty exciting, and actually have a chance of lowering prices on existing SSDs (due to superior performance on the new drives):

Sandforce based Vertex II:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3702&p=11

Marvell based Micron / Crucial RealSSD:
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=3712

Still the X18M / X25M, especially in RAID will probably feel just as fast in a 'seat of the pants' kinda test, as opposed to benchmarks.

 

Yeah, AES is useless too. Unless you work for the government or a research company and have some super secret data you need to encrypt your hard drive for.

QPI would be nice to have though, it's always nice to reduce latency.