*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 1*

Wow I've been out all day and it took me an hour to catch up here.

Couple of updates:

I requested the estimated battery life (on the i5) on the next bench forum in a reply to the answer the Frendfrenzy/Barry sent me. hopefully he will respond again.

I also emailed Sheila Watson this morning re: USB 3.0, she replied with almost an identical answer to what someone else posted earlier here so I won't take up space copying it here.

I noticed that the 'cut and pasted' copies of the next bench reply to me (on this forum) shows ram speed to be 1333 but on the actual forum answer his reply to me says 1066 ?? Did he edit that after his original post?? (I ordered 2 x 4GB 1333 this morning)

For now I'm leaving my order as is and hope the 'throttled' GPU on battery will provide significantly improved battery life over the i7 I returned.

At least we are getting some answers now even if some don't like what they are. I will patiently wait for my new envy and see how it actually performs....

 

lol good times, I'm stoked to try out my new machine regardless, hell i'll even make a video and post it here just to show everyone, then I will either decide to keep it or send it back. Battery life is of no concern, portability is. The locked in multiplier is silly though, if I'm in a pinch and someone needs something rendered, I would prefer to use 90% of my battery life than have to find a wall outlet or wait an extra long time. Maybe we can get the folks that do RockBox to write us a decent bios for the envy?

 

In the nextbench thread the moderator says that the Envy 13 has switchable graphics, but I don't think it does, does it? If it doesn't then if he's made a mistake about that maybe he's made a mistake about the i5 specs.

 

with a core 2 duo and running OSX

I have heard running Windows you can barley squeeze 3 or 4 hours out of it

 

Looks like Envy's price has dropped further, its now about $200 off from last time I checked earlier today. Check it out.

 

I suspect they're looking for a Best Buy type scenario...you get what you're given and what you don't know won't hurt you. I bet if you gave an envy to a soccer mom and said enjoy she'd be happy but if you told her, oh you know you could extend the battery life by an hour or two she would get excited and want to know how then be pissed that her options were intentionally disabled by HP. After all, how often does HP cater to a computer savvy client? Hell this is the first HP I've ever bought only bc I have never been impressed with anything they put out. Honestly it was between this and a mac book pro for me, and the only thing that got me to take this was the quad core.

 

It's been at $1300 since CES...

 

could you please link to the site where you bought the ram? please and thank you :]

 

Envy 15 is still 1299 for the base model.

 

It is beside the point that there is no better laptop from a competitor. What matters is that if the battery life is hurt by the lack of switchable graphics then the Envy will no longer fit my needs and I wil lreturn it.

 

Here it is; http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=D3-13S4GS

I used a $15 off coupon code "fresh15" that expired on 1/11/10, they honored it by phone since they had changed the p/n on me from my online order, it might be worth a try to call them.

 

you guys may need to clear your browser's cache. It's showing at $1208 starting price on mine. Check screen capture attached.

 

thats with student discount

 

thanks, but i think i recall reading somewhere in this thread, or perhaps a copied portion of the thread from nextbench, that only 1 ram slot is accessible? im not familiar with the envy interior so i'm not sure how true that assertion is.

 

i was thinking the same thing.. not saying everybody though. You cant buy something assuming its going to come with something and then get mad

 

envy 13 is $200 more? weird...

 

oh, so it just randomly showed up on my browsing session? Never saw it before. I was able to get thru the configurator without entering any educational info.

 

Hi finally I registered here I was reading the forum since page 390 since I was looking to buy an Envy 15 and reading all the things about it (sorry for my bad english I'm from south america)
I want to get it with the i5-540M (yes no USB 3.0 ) but something that I dont have it clear yet..
Waths the difference between the Mobility Radeon 5830 for i5 Processors and for the i7 processors.. (Yes I know you have to pick it with the processor you choose
But are they going to perform the same??? are they exactly the same graphics card (In performance) or somebody (i7 or i5) will get it a little bit faster / slower like DDR3 or GDDR3 or dunnot...
But I dont get waths the point of HP giving you those options why just simply says Mobility Radeon 5830
Why make it like that... =/
Because if there are going to be some differences on the graphics card then... I dont have a reason why to pick the i5 (except that it runs cooler.. and uses less power...)

 

Haha, then you obviously fall into that 10% category I was referring to

_________________________________________

Studio XPS 1645 i7 720QM/ 6GB DDR3 at 1333MHz / 15.6 inch WLED /
ATI Mobility RADEON® HD 4670 – 1GB / 256GB Solid State Drive / BD-RW *Returning...

On its Way....Envy i5....specs...TBD?

 

I used the student discount on mine too, I may return it to get that $300 coupon to work over the phone, we'll see....

 

im pretty sure the "hpa" tag represents price after student discount. weird that you saw it without entering edu info though..

 

whats weird is i log into my HP educational account and I don't get the HPA tag anymore. I got it the day I ordered my envy from HP but now I no longer see anything else discounted...I saved about $300 by using the discount, it would be exciting to save another $300 using that coupon hehe...then maybe I could upgrade to the raid 0 ssd without feeling bad )

 

Some of you guys on the forum may disagree with me, but I find the Envy Beats edition to be a better value than the original Envy 15. You first asked about looks, and I personally think this machine is sexy for lack of a better word. While it is a finger print magnet at times, it still looks sharp. Also, in most lighting you have to strain your eyes to see the fingerprints. So most of the time, if I am not looking for them, they don't stand out. Now, I do part time DJing so I do take advantage of the headphones. The Envy Beats Edition does include the following by default:
-Beats Studio Headphones (MSRP 300USD)
-Native Instruments Audio2DJ External Soundcard (MSRP 120 USD)
-Native Instruments Traktor Duo DJ Software (MSRP 90USD)
-Gift Card to Beats (USD 10)
-Default External DVD Drive (50 USD)

Add them all up and it comes up to be 570 dollars. Now the basic config for the Envy 15 is 1299, while the Beats Edition is 1799 dollars. That is a difference of 500 dollars, so you technically save 70 dollars. You also get in what MY opinion is a better looking machine. Then again, I am electronics racists, as most of my electronics tend to be black . It also has a neat beats theme which comes preloaded. Now, I regularly use everything that came with it. It was not a difficult choice for me with the being cashback which essentially made up for the 500 dollar price difference. Hope this helps.

 

actually same here. lol, i think its b/c the csr took off the hpa discount and applied the $300 coupon instead haha

 

Well for an audiophile like myself, who used HDJ-1000 headphones, Creative EMU0202, NI Komplete, Cubase SX, and Traktor everything you listed is totally redundant and therefore a waste of money, at least for me. I would only be paying for a cool looking laptop and thats not worth $500 to me ...not to mention I am sure there are far better headphones one could purchase for $100-$300 and still be saving money. Just thought and if thats stuff you need then yeah, good deal

 

I have two of those same DIMMs sitting here, waiting for a host.

 

I totally understand where you are coming from, and I would not have bought the Beats edition if it wasn't for that Bing Cashback check for a grand which is coming next week. So this laptop cost me around 1700 dollars after all is done and said, and that's with the i7 820 upgrade, and the SSD, and the extra RAM.

 

That's on the i5 model. The i7 model has four DIMMs slots; two of which should be easily accessible.

 

Yeah, thanks alot. That was exactly what I looking for Even though I don't DJ, I quite fancy the Beats headphones and I think that the external sound card would come in handy. I have a nice Bose setup at home and playing music directly from my current laptop does them no justice. Also, if you say that the Beats Edition looks better than the original envy (which I really like btw) then I think I will end up getting the Beats Edition.

Only thing left is to wait for the i5 processors to come out and see how they compare with the i7's in terms of battery life and performance. I am not too bothered about the switchable graphics though usb 3.0 would be a great addition.

 

An interesting read about the switchable graphics debate in Arrandale.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-core-i7,2443-2.html

 

I'm really hoping this means that perhaps drivers will eventually allow switchable graphics support on the Envy i5s :O

 

I think I'm going to reorder but this time no i5. Now with 820QM, Dual SSD, 4GB RAM (upgrade to 12GB on my own), Anti-glare screen. No DVD/Blu-ray, no extra battery.

 

+1 HP...its not their fault nor their remedy to use the integrated graphics...thats all ATI!

Now if we can just ensure everyone gets usb3 we'll be back to where we were 20 pages ago.

 

The article seems to suggest it's a driver issue with the GPU... I wonder...

 

The only reason I would upgrade on my own would be to save money. From the little research I've done, it costs just as much to upgrade the ram and to the ssds on your own as it does to have HP do it. I wish I weren't tight on cash I want that SSD raid set up asap.

 

Which makes me think the "right-click" could be feasible if Intel and/or ATi implemented a switch in the menu upon the click.

 

Yeah and only using the integrated 9400m graphics card, which is weak sauce.

 

would it anger the i5 community if the Envy set it up where it automaticlaly used the IGP when unplugged as they're currently doing with the CPU multiplier?

personally I would want to run the multiplier at x1-x5 on the i7 if I needed to, when you need extra battery life, you need extra battery life, a 125mhz to 500mhz machine might last 5 hours...who knows...or maybe it'd just take 5 hours to access the start menu.

 

The IGP is more than enough for anything but gaming. So it makes sense to me, but I wouldn't mind having an option

 

Nah.

If you can switch between the 2 gpu's then there wouldn't be a way to entirely disable the dedicated from running. As long as there is a driver-level way of switching, of course.

 

Intel's official press release for Arrandale states:

Source: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20100107comp_sm.htm

 

LOL!!! ROTFLMAO!!

You guys have to read this from FredFrenzy, aka Mr. Envy via HP:

"This is correct and as designed - turbo mode is disabled. We do this on many of our notebooks. Not only turbo, but the maximum speed are disabled while on battery. The maximum speed is not possible on battery power, the battery is 52watts only (and the system needs ~110 watts for full performance). We do the same for graphics when unplugged - drop the power consumption and performance. For graphics, this is configurable in the ATI driver."

He thinks the battery is "52W". HAHAHAHAH

That's all I needed to know about that guy. Geez, HP. You could have put a monkey in his position and the monkey would do a better job!

Someone needs to explain Watt-hours to him
hahahah:::wipes tears from eyes:::hahahah

Well, I won't take one word as truth from this guy....

 

sigh...probably usb3.0=3 usb ports to him...

Edit: Not to mention the 6 cell battery is 79.5 Wh according to this thread...which if its true, and he meant to say 52 Wh not 52 Watts then thats wrong information too...sigh...

 

lolz

maybe they added one more USB port to the new i7 ENVY 15 so it has USB 3.0, while the i5 ENVY 15 has one less, so USB 2.0, not counting the hybrid USB/eSATA port of course. Perhaps USB 4.0 could be out soon :O

 

As a corollary hp? What I gather is they decided it was better to just limit what one could do with their laptop given certain conditions, aka lazy. How about they act decent and make a well rounded power plugin for the power options in windows where, brace yourself, this might blow you away, power saver mode would keep the cpu underclocked and on one core while, maximum power would keep all 4 cores open and ready to roll, and all this regardless of where the electrons are coming from...just a thought.

Its the small stuff that makes a customer happy...I mean anyone can open a restaurant but the guy who makes sure your glass is always full of water is going to win over customers more than the guy who hides in the kitchen while the customers try to figure out how they can get some water. This is the kind of stuff that makes apple so successful, the stuff just works, and concerns over small things are taken care of. In all honesty what each of us is worrying about with this laptop is so minute and could be cleared up with one sentence on the hp webpage, and it would behoove HP to be transparent in their updates, and offer the most options possible in the easiest to use package as possible while keeping reliability issues to a minimum. Until they figure it out its about retaining customers not just getting a quick buck there really will be no competition worth speaking of between various computer companies.

 

6 cell is 53Wh and 9 cell is 93Wh both at 11.1V -- that's right off the the bottom of the batteries.

 

They have lost me as a customer. SAD

 

oh nice...do you know if they have a slim ac adaptor for the envy 15? I was looking for one in the accessories and all i found was the option to purchase another 120w adaptor or a 180w adaptor.

 

for what reason?