*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 1*

I recieved my laptop today. And I've been trying to figure out this lines story. Is there a post with a nice screenshot of what I'm looking for? I keep thinking i see lines, but i can never be sure if its lines in the monitor or actual source material.

 

I recieved my laptop today. And I've been trying to figure out this lines story. Is there a post with a nice screenshot of what I'm looking for? I keep thinking i see lines, but i can never be sure if its lines in the monitor or actual source material.

 

Everything I try to do, change size of brushes, save, change tool.... incredible frustrating.

I want to upgrade my RAM to 8 gb but are waiting for the compensation I should have for wrong spec when I bought my envy.

/Yvonne

 

Im sorry but in all honesty you shouldnt even need 8gb of RAM with photoshop since its mainly CPU intensive. And plus 4gb of RAM should be more than enough for anything your possibly doing unless you have multiple programs running

 

hi everybody...

i have a Dell M6400 Covet who i use for cad-photoshop

i'm looking for this envy 15" but...the monitor is good ? i have read it have only the 60% of colour gamut in adobe rgb...

i need 8 gb of ram , one ssd e one backup disck 8 now i've read the double disk are only 1.8" , i can take an external backup drive ) and this is all possible but...

for you is good to change the 17" with this envy 15" ?




if i buy it ( in europe , where ?? ) i'm looking for this

- i7 720
- 4x2gb ram
- cheapest hdd who i change with an ssd
- 6 cell extra lition battery

 

Is it always bluish? I remember someone else having this problem here. But I cant really recall ATM what was the solution.

Oh brucehal, that is terrible to hear. At least you got the MBP15 and it works ok. Too bad you had so many problems with your Envy...

Hello there. I dont understand why would you change a workstation laptop for a multimedia laptop to do workstation things.

The RGBLED display is a 8bit on the M6400, if you have the FX3700M and the QX9300 I see no reason for the downgrade, other than physical size and weight.

 

i've an m6400 covet with p8600 and 2x1gb ram , and a nvidia fx2700m...

i want to change ram and cpu...and video card if i can...but on this dell , the m7740 video card ( the same or similar 4830 chip , only with opengl 3d driver )....

if i sell my m6400 i can buy an envy 15" with better cpu , better memory , better battery life , better weight...but the display of the m6400 is the best on the notebook world...

 

The M7740 is the faster version (4860HD in fact).

This is an interesting proposition, since I would love to put the M7740 in mine (running CATIA and Inventor here).

I do think that the Envy 15+M7740 would be great, but very expensive. (little off topic, why does your covet have a FX2700M? I thought the Covet used only FX3700M and had up to 16GB RAM)

And yes, the display on the M6400 (or the HP 8730w) cant be beaten. Although youd get with the Envy full WUXGA but still smaller than the M6400 at 16:10 ratio (more height)

Still 2 weeks to get mine, but lets see what other users have found...

QUESTION TO ALL OWNERS:
Is the GPU soldered into the motherboard? Can it be removed?

If the answer to question above says it can be removed, then dang...I might get later down the road a M7740 and boost performance.

BTW, buying in Europe? Which country? France has it for 1400 Euros, the UK for 1200 Pounds.

 

m6400 has a variety of configuration...and these are avaible in the m6400 covet edition...

now i've ordered 4x2gb of ram and then i change cpu and hdd...

where you find the envy in france or europe ??

 

Envy 15 in France:
HP Envy 15 at France for 1399 EUROS

If in France, this link might come in handy: http://h20465.www2.hp.com/gpl/search.aspx?language_code=fr&country_code=fr&SearchType=hho

In the UK I saw it (and used it) on PCWorld. 1199 Pounds.

WARNING: HP does not like Europe. Both have WXGA vs the WUXGA on the US as standard

 

just tested the webcam and it is only working in black and white.

Am i I really don't want to send it in for warrenty repair. (unless I can con them into upgrading to the ssds.

F.06 is shipping, but I still don't see it o the web site? wonder what it will fix.

 

Well, I received my Envy 15 back from the HP Repair Facility with the lines in the screen are STILL there. I used the laptop for about 1 hour and then turned it off. When I went to turned it back on 30 minutes later, it would not turn on, I tried everything. I called HP Technical Support and after 3 hours of being transferred to different departments I finally got setup for a exchange laptop.

When I recieve the new laptop, I am not even going to open it, I am just going to sell it on Ebay. This laptop is not worth keeping for the $2000 price tag. No Edge to Edge screen (Very Cheaply made Bezel, Horizontal lines in the screen, power issues, webcam, Battery Slice issues..... just not worth it.

 

Lugnut, I'm torn there myself. The thing that's keeping me with it so far is the power in the form factor. There's just no competitor right now. I keep thinking i see these lines occasionally, but honestly they dont bother me that much. What's killing me is my webcam, which i use a lot. I'm about to hop on the phone with hp shopping right now and request a replacement.

 

I have the same exact problem as you do with the web cam also, I think most people do.

 

lugnut, did they at least put F.06 on your Envy when they sent it back? At this point F.06 fixing the horizontal lines issue is the only way I'm going to end up with an Envy 15, since I can't even do an exchange and expect that the new one will show up without the same problem.

 

Dont know if this has been asked before, but has anyone confirmed the model of the SSD drive that's being offered with the envy right now as a configuration option?

--> I'm asking because I'm going to be getting an exchange and I was wondering what sort of upgrades I should consider before I finalize the whole thing.

 

You guys are making a huge deal over the horizontal lines issue which is nowhere near as bad as the triple line problems on the old sony trinitron /mitsubishi diamontron which is normal for the display and obviously acceptable back then. Ive seen 3 envy 15s from diplay models to my own and the problem is only mountain because were making it out to be. The only real issue im having or had with my model was the warm left palm rest due to the CPU being right there and not having a backlit keyboard blew but its a trade off for a 5lb powerhouse.

 

Are there any tips for getting the slice battery to be detected? It has decided that it's not connected, and no amount of disconnecting and reconnecting is fixing it.

 

I can confirm that F.06 is shipping. My 2nd Envy I received yesterday came with the F.06 BIOS installed.

About the webcam. You get a greyscale image when the "Low-light conditions" setting is enabled. If you turn that off you'll get that bluish image that people have talked about.
I played around with the settings a bit. If I crank up the white balance to maximum, it gets better but it's still not right (I also noticed that the "Auto" setting for white balance doesn't do anything.). Basically, it seems that the green channel is not capturing properly - there's no green component in the colors.

 

Looks like I'll be getting a full replacement model, here's hoping this one doesn't have any issues. Won't get it for quite a while though unfortunately. Out of curiosity how many of us have had to return/exchange their systems for one reason or the other so far?

HP support btw was definitely nothing but polite and although it took a while I ended up pretty satisfied with everything all in all.

 

Just got my replacement on the way. There certainly seems to be alarming number of replacements occuring.

I hope the problems I'm having with my hardware are a one of build issue, but I'm starting to believe they are all affected.

I have two main gripes so far:
1) Webcam shows black and white constantly
2) Battery slice is unusable due to connectivity issues. Currently the slice is only connected (recognized by the os/hardware) when my hands are resting/pushing down on the middle of the laptop. If i take my hands away, the connection is broken and it stops working.

It's a shame too, because this laptop is doing everything else flawlessly. From virtual machines to video game performance, it performs spectacularly. I honestly dont know if I want it though without a working battery slice. Does anyone have a slice that WORKS?

 

My slice works absolutely fine, Havnt tested webcam,

 

1. Regarding the webcam in greyscale. Did you read about the "low-light conditions" setting I wrote about? Did you try to change that or any other setting?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5565860&postcount=2869

2. Regarding the slice battery connection - did you try the fix that FX2000 wrote about:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5556378&postcount=2781

 

Hey guys I wasn't sure if anyone might have some bing knowledge on this, but if I were to opt to go for the beats edition envy as a replacement for my own (since I have to get a replacement anyway) would my 25% bing cashback work retroactively or would I be basically out of luck and risk losing my cb all-together?

 

your YMMV I havnt lost my cashback yet

 

Thats odd, i have no problems with photoshop on my machine. It runs smooth and fast. I was hoping to get cs4 so I could get the 64 bit version. Unless you are running huge files? my files are usually 5mb-20mb

 

that did the trick for me! thanks!

 

Changing the low light setting just switched it from black and white to a slightly blueish tint. It is still not in actual color.

I'll give the screwdriver thing a try with the slice.

 

One more issue. Is anyone having problems syncing their iphone with their envy? I get errors when trying to back up the phone and syncing.
It says "The Iphone cannot be synced. Unknown error (-48)"

 

its a known error with i7 machines that run on the p55 chipset which the ENVY uses

 

No, no huge files... I read somewhere that the drivers for a printer could screw things up, so I will try to update all drivers that are not up to date, I think there are a few for the envy also to update.

/Yvonne

 

one thing I have noticed with the envy is that after the machine boots up, Mozilla (and alot of other programs) take 20-30 seconds to load. But after this initial load, if I close out and open back up, it loads right away.

 

That is a MS thing. It records the command bits of information on the cache so that next time it is faster to load.

 

Is the F.06 Bios available for download yet seeing as its now installed on new machines?

 

How much difference is there between Single vs. Dual Hard Drives?
For someone who will be using his PC for mostly work (Word/Power Point, and multiple browsers) & occasional game play such as Command & Conquer and Modern Warfare 2….do I really need a dual SSD & hard drive vs. the 500GB single drive that comes with basic options? Any suggestions? My objective is to try and get my purchase under $2k by using Bing Cash Back…currently with dual drive + 2 Yr Service Return I’m over $2k with the Bing 20%, so I’ve been looking to see if I should cut back or not?
Thanks

 

Nope, dual drives will not be worth it IMO in that case. And hello!

 

Why are dual drives important...what type of work is necessary for upgrade

 

Dual drives can be important for some work, such as using the machine as a SQL developer machine - you should ideally keep log files, data files & tempdb separate from one another, ideally on different hard drives.

However, the reason most people will be going dual drive configuration is because they can have one SSD and one HDD. The SSD will give faster load times for things like your operating system and programs, but on a pence per GB of storage, an SSD is considerably more expensive than traditional HDDs; which is why you have a HDD for storing data on (like movies, music, documents & pictures).

Some people go with two SSDs because - being expensive is not their only drawback - they do not come in very large sizes (well, not commercially anyway). Therefore, to have a decent amount of space, you often will need two of them.

For what you are using your machine for, honestly, you'll be fine with a standard HDD. The performance increase for SSDs is large; but at the moment they are still quite expensive. I would expect to see the prices drop over the 12 months. They'll still be expensive then, but not as over priced as they are at the moment - although HP are actually offering their SSD at a more sensible than most price. Typically at the moment you get enthusiasts buying them, or people with bottomless pockets.

 

Quick question guys: How do I change the settings so that the laptop doesn't adjust for low/bright light?

I bought my Envy on Friday and so far it runs like a dream. I'll take some pictures and run some benchmarks for everyone.

 

Select the battery icon --> adjust screen brightness --> change plan settings --> change advanced plan settings --> select the display tab --> under enable adaptive brightness change it to off for whatever setting you want.

 

Greetings all,

I am conflicted. I am seeking a Core I 7 for gaming and graphics/CAD. Weight is important, but what I need is a quality unit. As a general question would you guys recommend this unit over Sager and the others? I am concerned about what I have been reading here as far as the screen and battery slice.

Thank you for your input.

 

hmmmm i havent installed my printer drivers yet

 

hey I'm not sure what CAD programs you run but I'm currently running 3DSmaxdesign 2009, photoshop and google chrome as we speak. 3DS max renders really fast on my envy. My only problem is I cant change my bitmap sizes in 3DS to maximum. I think its a driver issue.

 

The build quality of the Envy will be much better than a Sager's. The screen is gorgeous, imo, very bright, and I think the "horizontal line" problem is more metaphysical than real. I can only see them on alternate Tuesdays if I stare at the screen from a distance of 1 inch wearing 3D glasses.

I don't have a slice, but you can apparently fix the problem by widening the clips slightly. But I haven't actually seen confirmation of that yet...

 

What CAD and graphics software?

 

I tried messing with the clips. All that happend for me was the battery was recongized but refused to charge.

 

Wait, who was it that said they can play borderlands on Max? I just got the game. with native resolution, it's smooth but it's no where smooth enough to run and gun. I'm still trying to find the setting that would have decent enough frame rates.

 

Togra2o2 is right. If you check out other threads who have an i7 on the p55 chipset, they are having the same issue...

 

Yikes! Well, I stand corrected...

 

I have the same problem with the slice charging, however if I turn off the machine, disconnect the slice, align it perfectly and put the clips in place, turn it over carefully and boot it'll charge.

If I do this while the machine is running it wont charge the slice or sometimes not even recognise it.