*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 1*

My point exactly…not sure when it launched…so the 18th will be exactly several months (Several =2 or 3, but not many). So people have not even reached the 60 day window….so we will see what hell will break loose on Dec 19th.

Net-net…its best to be safe than sorry…we are not talking about a few dollars here…like $20-$50 dollar rebate….most people are expecting sizable returns…I was looking at basic model and thought I was getting $400+. Also, some people back in October were applying the Bing 25% discount, so they are looking at nice Cash Back totals or NOT. The problem is if you don’t read the FAQ or HP rules on this you will be out of luck since your past the 21 day return period and have no recourse or leverage. Ask the tough questions now.

Note…anyone can apply for Teacher or Friends & Family, which gets you about 10% off…not bad for a new premium item.

Lastly, let’s all remember a few things:
1) that Envy has a lot of power under its hood and to purchase a compatible quod 4 system, such as Alienware, you would be well over $3k.
2) As a new PC (hardware) and new Windows 7 OS (software) there will be glitches. Look at the Blackberry Storm…but all was resolved with new Firmware Updates in 30 days.
3) Also if you try and match the same system with the best Intel Duo chip, 6GB Memory and 500GM Hard Drive (if offered) you still can’t match the price and performance that the Envy delivers.
4) Lastly…for those of you who are leaning toward a Apple Pro…and I’ve seen many reviews that are complaining that the Envy is too expensive? Why don’t they every say that about Apple? Too even get close to the Hardware performance of an Apple Book Pro you would have to spend well over $3500k and still not get the performance of the Envy. So what are all these reviews complaining about price when the Mac is well over $2k by the time you leave the Store.

No I don’t work for HP…I just won’t by an AppleBook Pro and have been waiting for someone Dell, Lenovo etc. to bring to market a good looking, solid performance machine that is well rounded. And for round #1 I think the Envy is just fine and I’m sure version #2 will raise the bar even higher.

 

Lucky for those who bought over Thanksgiving, the 21 day window will expire after the day-one purchasers had their cashback vest.

Until then, it appears that all glitches described here are about people who did not have the cashback show up in the first place.

EDIT: And yes, I am also surprised that this laptop is considered that expensive when

a) Other high-powerd laptops are not that much cheaper. The envy 13 is very expensive for the specs, but the 15 is not, and has a much nicer form factor than similar systems. Maybe people are lumping them together.

b) The MBP 15 is more expensive for less performance.

c) Cheaper laptops often bite you in other ways. Sub $800 laptops almost always have screens that I consider unusably bad. My 3 year old MBP 17 has a nice screen. I wouldn't settle for less.

 

The linked review above is a small disaster piece of PR for the Envy 15, his facts about the specs seem accurate but he is fairly critical of the build and the 80 minute battery life. Gizmodo is well known and widely read <ouch>!

I had a much better impression of the Envy from the posts on this board, minus all the grief and what must be 100 or so Bing cashback going to work or not posts.

There really isn't anything like the Envy 15 on the market, at it's spec and price point, at least the reviewer acknowledges that. I am forced to agree after a store inspection the trackpad is a total waste, but otherwise found the the machine fast as heck, and the display pretty sharp.

It is beginning to sound like a small price drop and some design tweaks/improvements are in order from HP & soon before other competing models hit the market... especially the battery, 80 minutes is rather short by today's standards whether it is more horsepower under the hood or not, at the end of the day it is still a notebook not a desktop.

... and yes I still want one just waiting for the bugs to be ironed out and a price drop
my other option is the Lenovo 400TS, the thin profile 14 inch touch screen, which I hear is great, but of course has NO where near the horsepower of the Envy 15. I need the extra horsepower for my work.

 

In my opinion, that's an extremely poorly written review. A little bit of google to copy/paste pieces of other people's reviews? Then he just looks at it and hits the keys a little bit? That's the "review"?

He even writes "Given this system’s sizable footprint, it needs to last more than 2 hours under moderate use. Stick a bigger battery in there, HP. Something. Please." with not a single mention of the bigger battery that actually exists for the Envy. That shows the quality of this write-up in black and white: In plain speak, it's garbage.

In regards to battery life of a laptop with Core i7 and ATI 4830+, is there any such laptop that gives more battery life than the Envy 15?

 

This post is being read by many people looking for unbiased reviews of the Envy. There are all levels of technical backgrounds here on this post, which I like and appreciating greatly.
The most recent review, as stated above, has no value. More real facts and truths can be found herein.

Net-net, my most recent 24 hr post-a-thon related to the Bing Cash Back program was raising an issue that I know many readers would appreciate. As I indicated, there are so many loop holes to the BCB program that undoubtedly will cause issues for more readers than myself. Since you’re not buying an Envy until the price comes down, you’ve got nothing to worry about and are only better informed when you join the ranks of the Envy 15 owner group. Too your point…probably enough said about the BCB program, so we should move on towards newer horizons. :wink:

 

well from using my Envy for a while, i wouldn't say the performance is that great for gaming, It struggles with HON on max settings, and also for borderlands. but i'm really happy with what I have lol.

 

Well, gotta realize it's still a laptop... There's no laptop in the universe that can compete with my desktop, for instance... Not even if you slap two or three of the best laptops in the same box.. But relative to other laptops I'd say there aren't many that have better gaming performance (yet).

 

I have been an avid follower of this forum as soon as I discovered the Envy 15. It has been a great resource so thank you all. Well, my Envy arrived last week and I thought I'd give my first impressions. I wanted a powerful laptop, with a large screen, that I could use at work and then carry home in the evening for personal use. So it had to be portable. Battery life is not so important to me as at work and home it will be plugged in most of the time - especially when I'm doing stuff that requires heavy processing power. Also the only time I have used an optical disk in recent years is when I've been installing software on new computers, so this was not essential for me. Taking all this together the Envy 15 seemed perfect. The unit is stock apart from no slice and I opted for the SSD/HD combo and boy, am I glad I did. This is my first SSD and the speed is amazing - programs load in few seconds, that appear now to have taken an age on my old Sony Viao SZ. If you can afford it (and most likely you can spending this much on a laptop in the first place) then I recommend getting the SSD option.
I was shocked to read the Gizmodo review and the reviewer describe the Envy as cheap. This thing feels solid and well put together, almost no flex at all and the metal finish beats the dull plastic look of almost all the cheaper models. I wasn't sure about the engraving at first - it reminded me of paisley - but its growing on me and now I think it is better than just a plain brushed metal finish.
The performance is awesome, I work as a researcher at a cancer research institute and need a computer that can handle large quantities of four dimensional confocal microscopy data. This computer can do it. My old Viao would scream and hide in the corner if I even thought of using it for this kind of stuff. Photoshop and Illustrator run with ease - an earlier poster claimed to have problems with Photoshop, so far I have had none.
The 1080 screen is beautiful too, but what about that line problem? I wish I had never heard about it, because I would never noticed them. Yes they are there, but I only see them if I hold my face a few inches away from the screen (which for some reason I find myself constantly doing now to see if they have gone). Also they are only visible if the background set to a light blue or grey color, with darker colors I cannot see them at all. I can understand people being annoyed with this after spending so much money, but for me, under normal use (i.e. head more than 6 inches away from the screen) I can't see them and therefore have no problems with it - especially as I use the screen to look at microscopy images where fine resolution and detail are very important. My one gripe about the screen is that it doesn't recline back far enough, due to that big hinge.
The keyboard is fine though I would of preferred them to be slightly less mushy. The trackpad is very good - the first this I did was turn off the two fingered scrolling and activate the more conventional one finger "edge" scrolling. The momentum feature is very cool too.
Overall I am thrilled with my new Envy and I'll finish with a some comments made by a colleague at work today, that made me laugh. It went something like this.." I really like your new computer, look at it...it is amazing. Wait a minute, why is there an HP logo on your new Mac?...........Oh............"

 

Welcome to the forum B10gan and I'm glad you're enjoying your new envy. I was going to spring for the SSD option when I was figuring out my replacement, but some people warned me it could invalidate bing so I didn't bother risking it. Do you have any numbers you can post up to give us some idea on the speeds you're seeing? I wasn't a big fan of the etch pattern either and debated whether I should've gone for the beats edition, but I would've gotten more annoyed with gloss black vs. a metal finish. It grows on you with time.

Like the comment btw from your friend haha.

 

B10gan, congrats on your purchase and thanks for the review. I've already ordered my setup with all specs maxed out except the RAM. Just got word from HP that they're going to delay shipping my order to the 8th, but I got a $50 coupon because of that, so I'm quite happy. Seeing as you're the first one in this forum to order the laptop with the SSD option, I'm going to jump the gun here and ask if you can check the model number of the SSD. Is it an Intel G1 SSD, or a G2? This has been something that's been discussed here before and it'd be great if you could shed some light on the matter.

Also, what your friend said is a testament to just how awesome the envy 15 is. Mo matter how harsh a review is, it can't eradicate the fact that this is a PC with the sleek looks and light weight of the macbook pro, but it also packs the power of a decently powered desktop. For me, that's just too good to be true. Here's hoping that my unit is not DOA as some others have experienced in the forum.

 

B10gan, thanks for the review! It's great to hear another glowing Envy review. It sure beats that joke of a review on Gizmodo.

lol, actually, I think we should all post replies to that review. I mean come on...he doesn't even mention the slice option (even tho it has it's faults). But he compares it to a DELL and thinks the Envy seems cheap compared to those plastic POS's? umm, whatever dude. I think this is even better than a MBP...and that's saying a lot. And to top off the stupid article, he complains about the SIZE of this laptop??????? um no. This laptop is smaller than almost any 15" laptop (even those without a dedicated graphics card). It's about the same size as a MBP 15" laptop...but with twice the power. I don't know what that guy was smoking, but whatever...

Anyways, welcome to the SSD family...although it looks like you're the first to have the SSD direct from HP. Congrats and enjoy the snap (how snappy programs are now)!

 

I would love to have SSD. But they're just too small at the moment for me... :/ The 500 GB I have now barely makes it for me for serious work. I think I'll go with a 256 GB SSD and as large 1.8" HDD I can get when they become available in the future. Or perhaps a 2nd 256 GB SSD, but then I'm back at the size issue... Using an external drive would kind of defeat the purpose.

 

went to BB today to check this thing out and i got to say iam very impressed! i originally going to get a mbp15 but not anymore. iam going to get the cto direct from hp!

a dad was watching over my shoulder and telling his son that this is the most portable laptop with the most uptodate specs. (he did his research) the son says "but i want an apple!" it was kinda funny!

for me i still got about 5 weeks untill i have enough for the ither laptop... i really want this to be mine.

more on what i thought tomorrow.

 

Regarding playing DVD movies while you're on the road: I just realized that Windows Media Player actually can play DVD movies straight from the harddisk. (Choose File -> Open, then browse to the VIDEO_TS.IFO file in the VIDEO_TS folder.) So you can just copy all files from a DVD straight to the harddisk with Windows Explorer for later playback. No need for any fancier stuff.

Of course, with fancier stuff you can recode it to into a smaller format to take lesser space on the harddisk, e.g. with Nero Recode. If there's any problem copying the DVD to the harddisk (or playing back the copied DVD), you can use the free DVDFab program ( http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm).

Heh, another thing I learned was that Windows Media Center in Win7 now has the "DVD Library" enabled by default now (in Vista you had to change HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings, ShowGallery from "Play" to "Gallery"). So your Envy can serve as a Media center with the DVDs you have on the harddisk - easier than it was on Vista.

 

seriously guys, we should all comment on the Gizmodo review (for good or bad)

The points raised on the review are simply false, yet people will read gizmodo and and think the Envy is as bad as the reviewer says.

Btw i have made my comments, hope i raised valid points!

 

According to the Device manager the drive is an Intel G1. I'll try and post some numbers for actual speeds later.

 

I second that. I am on my way to write my response. That review is by far the worst I have ever read, and not because it didnt make my laptop sound like a beauty, but because it needs some SERIOUS editing!

 

Gizmodo is normally very biased in there reviews. look for example at there moxi review most of there information is not even correct.

I don't have a problem when the they are correct however that is not there standard style.

I have two very serious issues with my envy I am a photographer and had hoped to be able to use this laptop on the road to proof and upload photos however the lines in the display are causing me some serious trouble with editing my pics. Also I have had two seperate crashes as a result of the slice moving under my laptop. I had lost a good amount of work in both episodes and now I do not use the slice at all. I am working with hp on both of these issues and if they can not be resolved I will have to find another laptop. otherwise I am very happy with this system.

 

I was going to go for the SSD/HD for $275 more, but feedback here advised against if for what I would use my primary PC for. As indicated...all I do is run multiple apps such as Word/Excel and several browsers at a time most of the day. Occasionally, I would like to use laptop to play PC Games such as Modern Warfare 2 or Command & Conquer 4.

What real difference in performance is realized from the SSD/HDD vs. 500 GB configuration. I understood it mostly as the load times (start up) of the apps as opposed to run time or fps (frames per second) ability.


Thanks:confused2:

 

My reply to that review by Gizmodo:

EDIT: WOW that was long...^^

 

So I pulled the trigger and purchased an Envy 15 on November 26 with 6gb memory and the dual hard drive (SSD + 250 HD) option. Bing Cashback is working so far and my ship date is supposed to be December 4. I'm now looking for envy accessories and would like to know if anyone has a recommendation for a carrying bag that fits well.

I'm moving to Egypt in January and plan to use the Envy as my all-inclusive entertainment system (games, music, and movies). Can anyone recommend a good forum to help with selecting good PC speakers and wireless keyboard/mouse setups?

 

Hi there! Congratulations on your purchase psippola.

The Accessories forum at NBR is quite good. Give it a try.

 

Ok just got off the phone with a nice lady at hp support and the envy is going back for repair on the horzontal lines issue. now to see what they do about them.

 

I just received my Envy 15 yesterday but had to work most the day so havent had much time to set every thing up. So far the computer itself has been great installing Itunes (crossing my fingers my ipod will sync) and call of duty modern warfare 2 as I type.
I am having the typical issues as the web cam is purple and the slice is not showing up.
I am also using my Nokia E71 as an internet modem and the usb connection keeps timing out so I have to use a wifi ad-hock connection (not sure what thats all about yet).
Cant see any of the lines you all have been talking about.....

 

Hi there noimorti. Congratulations with your purchase and welcome to the NBR Forums and the HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge.

Is the Intel WiFi 5100 Adapter not working on your model? How come you use a E71 as a modem?

 

Ah its working fine I do believe, I would normally use a USB phone modem connection for internet because I live in Kuwait and the 3G internet is typically more reliable and faster than my apartments broadband.
I have an app on my phone to turn it into a wifi hotspot which allowed me to fix the problem of my internet connection being dropped by the computer software (it worked fine in XP).
I really got to get to bed..........

 

Keep us updated on the info, and thanks for the fast reply

 

PLease let us know how Modern Warefare 2 renders and works out for you.

 

excellent reply Serg!

my reply was under the name "TB"

I've asked HP reps from the HP forums to reply to but i doubt they well, not under real names anyway....

 

When you say you placed order and Bing Cash Back is working, did you show up on your account with bing as Pending?

 

Even with the F06 BIOS, the Envy 15 equipped with dual Intel G1 SSD RAID-0 configurations are exhibiting horrible random read 4k performance (less than 10 megabytes per second ... see the postings on thenextbench.com).

I would seriously advise against buying this machine for anyone that needs high random IOPs performance. It simply unbelievable how HP can launch such a badly balanced notebook, featuring stellar CPU and RAM options but with a storage subsystem performance that even the cheapest netbooks can outperform.

 

Seeing how the other performance numbers are more up to par, odds are it is some sort of BIOS defect, or maybe even a test issue. I ordered one with the dual SSDs, and if the numbers are still crap when the return period is about to end, back to HP it goes. I am not spending this much money on anything less than stellar.

That said, I ran the same tool on the computer I am typing this on, and the numbers of the Envy, even the strangely low ones, still crush my regular HD.

 

Could you post a link straight to the post you refer to on thenextbench.com?

Btw, I don't think RAID-0 helps at all with random 4KB reads on SSD. In fact, I think it'll be slower than a single SSD.
RAID-0 should help a lot on larger reads though, especially sequential reads. See this benchmark, for example.

 

What exactly does the F06 BIOS upgrade do? Should I just automatically upgrade? My Envy 15 has the F05 bios and I'm not having any problem.

 

I don't plan to upgrade from F.05 to F.06 until I: A) see a list of improvements and B) know that others have had no major problems. Like you, Pinnacle, I am not having any problems and I don't see much of a need to upgrade right now...

 

I was one of the guys who posted those results on thenextbench since im reviewing one and all I can say is there isnt an issue since 9-10MB is slower than a single Intel G1 drive but its faster than the 256GB samsung drives you see on the macbookpros and major OEM machines from dell and HP which normally hover in the 5-6MB region. Were not running major database servers on our notebook so having a balooned 4K random read/write is not important at all and as of right now is way faster than the standard 500GB drive it came with on launch day. I also suspect this has more to do with crystal mark failing in some way I'll post some everest benchies when I can.

 

Well, as I wrote above it's perfectly reasonable that 4KB random reads on a RAID-0 SSD are slower than a single SSD - but not by 50%.

What I'd like to know is if large sequential reads are similar or slower than a single SSD, or at least not substantially faster? If so, it could point to what someone else wrote earlier in this thread: the bus bandwidth could be clamped to half speed (this might not be noticeable with HDD, but it would be with SSD). And if this is the case, does the F.06 BIOS update fix this?

If large sequential reads _are_ substantially faster with RAID-0 SSD compared to a single SSD, perhaps it has something to do with the RAID stripe size (or whatever it's called now again)? Or perhaps it even has something to do with Windows 7 and not using the server version...

But I think a really awesome test would be to take out the SSD drives and put them in a desktop PC and compare the benchmark there. If the speed is the same as on the laptop, reconfigure the RAID, reformat and reinstall Win7 and try again on the desktop.

 

Ive compared these to ones that a major review site did with 2 G1 drives and the seq read/writes are indeed faster than a single drive by a good margin. Im convinced this is an issue relating to crystal mark especially considering the varying numbers it produces on the same system.

Also I managed to overclock the Radeon 4830 as its actually not the part thats making the system toasty and managed a healthy 600 core / 900 mem clock speed which translates to 9300 for 3dmark06.

Argh I just looked up the firmware of the G1 drives and there both using the initial release firmware (post april 2009 major update) which solved a lot of the performance degradation issues on the G1s however since there is no BIOS option to disable the RAID HP setup theres no way to update the drives unless we open up the system and void the warranty.

 

how did you manage to over clock the GPU?

Also as for warranty, Some members here have been told by HP that as long as nothing is missing or broken opening the HDD bays will not void warranty.

 

I am unable to update the firmware on the Intel X25 in my envy 15, anyone has the same problem?

i can hook it up to my pc and get the job done, so no biggie but if i have to do this frequently its going to be a pain

 

Start reading on this page and continue onwards

http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/HP-Envy-Notebooks/Dual-hard-drives-on-the-Envy-15/td-p/49181/page/5

A RAID-0 array should in now way halve the random read and write results, compared to a single drive solution. At worst, the random read results should be the same as a single drive while at best the random write results should be double.

I myself have shown that a single Intel SSD G2 in an Envy 15 achieves half of the random read and write performance, compared to almost any laptop released after 2006 (i.e. since ICHM7).

The following is not directed to you Smedis but to all other thread participants:
4k random read and write performance is absolutely crucial to the REAL performance of an operating system and almost all applications (save for a few exceptions).

Why do you think that even the Intel G1 drive (with its palty 70 megabyte per second sequential write speed) outperformed its competitors with an enormous margin until recently (even in PCMARK05)

It is only with recent firmwares that the Indilinx drives (e.g. OCZ Vertex) have been able to overtake the G1. However, the G2 still with only 100 megabyte per second in sequential writes is still considered the gold standard in SSDs (disregarding the hyper-expensive enterprise SLC units of course).

Togra2o2
I am happy that you are satisfied with your purchase and if your Envy 15 performs the tasks you need it to do in a manner that you are satisfied with, you naturally have no reason do be dissatisfied.

Me on the other hand purchased the Envy as I needed it for the heavy IOPS tasks. While I did not expect miracles, I did not expect its disk subsystem to be outperformed by any Asus EEE netbook.

I have now also started to lose patience with HP. Unless there is some progress on this issue I have promised my self to methodically benchmark, test, re-test and author a document precisely exposing the deficiencies with this system.

Either HP will have to start to act like they care about their customers that have bought their highest priced premium machines or I will make sure that they experience what happens in badwill and lost sales, when something like the Dell Throttlegate affair hits the first page of the technology websites.

 

Yes. It did show up as pending about 48 hours after the order.

 

OK....but this thread from this blog may be usefully for you.....
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=430617

Make sure you monitor progress...and that you did not have any other EPP accounts with HP with your email you used. To date, $200 is what HP is offering to make this problem go away, but I know that is not enough for many...it may change.

Good luck!

 

Has anyone tried to update the firmware on the G1 SSDs? I e-mailed tech support and they told me the following steps to disable RAID-0, which are the same instructions in the maintenance manual:

* Turn on or restart the computer.
* When the POST screen opens, press Ctrl+I to enter the configuration utility.
* In the Main menu, use the up or down arrow key to select 3. Reset Disks to Non- RAID, and then press enter. The Reset RAID Data window displays.
* Press the space bar to select the first SSD drive, and then press the down arrow key and the space bar to select the second SSD drive.
* Press enter, and then press Y to confirm the selection.

Has anyone tried this procedure successfully and updated the G1 firmware afterwards?

 

Could you please post a link to the maintenance manual you are referring to? The maintenance manual from September 2009 does not contain any info regarding mode selections using CTRL+I.

This is pure speculation on my side but I read in the Dell forum (regarding the E6400 and E6500 series of computers) that running Intel chipsets in IRRT-mode introduced latencies. If it is possible to switch to AHCI-mode (for single drives) the low 4k random read and write problems may be resolved.

Once I get home I will see if I can access the mode menu with my single drive Envy featuring the F.05A BIOS.

 

Sorry, this info is in the User Guide not the maintenance manual, under Appendix C RAID 0.
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01933145.pdf

 

Serg -- You might be interested to know that your post, and many other pro-Envy posts, have apparently been deleted from the Gizmodo review's comment section. (it's not even among the "non-featured" comments, as far as I can see.)

We violated the rule of acknowledging gods other than Mac, apparently...

http://gizmodo.com/5413076/hp-envy-15+inch-review#commentform

 

Such a shame to hear Wretched Gnu.

What a shame Gizmodo. I took my time on that reply and since it didnt fit them they deleted it...so bye bye Gizmodo for me. Those Apple lovers should not run a PC website if they are not up to the task of taking the comments.

 

I'm curious to see your comments Serg. Can you post it here?

 

So, how can we overclock the GPU? No matter how long i play games, the GPU side Right side if you look at the screen, never really gets hot and the fan never really kicks in. So there is possible to overclock quite a bit?