*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 2*

Believe it or not the actual (normally useless) owners / users manual actually has the instructions on how to un-RAID the drives. Yeah, the thing thing came loaded on the SD card...

IIRC, you need to hold down the 'Ctrl' button while rapidly tapping the 'I' key during boot up, this should get you the RAID BIOS options menu.

 

My 1st gen seems to have gone rather significantly warmer after I flashed the BIOS F.24 and applied the latest graphic driver update from the NBR Envy 15 Latest Driver page. The fan is almost constantly noticeably louder but, rather totally counter-intuitively, it really is just warmer.
Similar finding anyone?

 

I have a gut feeling that mine is warmer too, not sure since I changed location. Upgraded to F24 but still running original ATI drivers.

 

f24 is cooler for me (gen2 though). also updated to 10.6 alpha driver, no temp changes there.

 

been awhile since i've posted on this thread:

Since yesterday it seems that my bass levels have dropped dramatically. I checked the HP Beats proggy and the EQ settings haven't changed along with either of my music players (Winamp/iTunes).

Anyone else have similar issues?

 

Question for anyone who has un-Raided their X18-G2's - with 2x160GB instead of the Raid0 320GB, how do you organize your drives?

Are you able to fit all your OS and applications on one of the 160GB drives and use the 2nd for data? Did you create any partitions on either drive?

 

Your sig makes me drool uncontrollably....

 

Yes to the 1st and no to the 2nd. You'll get 149GB usable on each individual drive. If space is an issue on your boot drive you can get back about 15-20GB by tweaking things like; disabling hibernate, turn off page filing, reducing virtual memory (with your 16GB you don't need v.m.) and reducing space allocated for retore points etc...

We just discussed some issues regarding un-RAIDing the drives on the 2nd gen thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=450884&page=443 I posted some links that have some good info about setup and performance etc.. Hope it helps.

 

Yes, both BIOS after F18 have made it a bit warmer (same as F04 and others) but F18 did noticeably reduced the temps.

I haven't updated Graphic drivers yet since I got bored of failed tests for a week or so during the release of 10.3

 

Has anyone tried the 10.6 drivers on the Gen1 Envy yet. I am still getting the black screen of death. And it's slowly driving me crazy.

 

how do we configures the keys on the keyboards ?
can we customize them?
or customize them for individual programs?
i find it a chore to press FN-F4 when i want to lock cells for excel formulas.

 

There is an BIOS option to activate the F1-F10 Keys to be the primary keys instead of using the media keys as the primary keys during startup.

 

Hello Guys:

Im exchanging my Envy 15 after 12 days of ownership due to the misterious display or video card shutting off without any specific reason. I spoke to a service representative and apparently they say its a hardware related problem.

The specs of this defective unit are as follows.

I7 CPU 720QM, 8GB RAM (667MHZ ???), 1920 MATE DISPLAY, 500GB HDD, EXTENDED 9 CELL BATTERY.

Here are a couple of snapshots from CPU Z.

Can you guys verify the memory was running at 667 MHZ instead of the supposed 1066 or 1333 MHZ ???. Maybe Im reading this thing wrong.

 

667Mhz is 1333Mhz, you need to multiply it by 2x

 

Not surprising, an Australian reviewer got a MBP to overheat by running the i7-620 under full load. This puts the cooling system of the Envy 15 in perspective.

It's also pretty clear evidence to why a quadcore MBP isn't a possibility using the current unibody case design.

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/172791,macbook-pro-helps-core-i7-hit-100-degrees.aspx

 

are there any deals going on like the one a couple weeks ago? im looking to get one for about $1000

 

Has anyone tried running Windows 7 32bit instead of 64bit? Is there any other limitations other then memory access when runnning 32bit?

 

I tried Win7 Enterprise 32-bit when I first got mine in December but some drivers or software was not available in 32-bit version. Otherwise it did seem to work OK.

The only reasons as I see it is if you need a clean install and don't have 64-bit Windows available, or if you need to use a software that won't work on a 64-bit system. I guess some people still hold onto XP but I hope we're past that here.

 

@larsv
The reason im asking is because most people say games run better on the 32bit system.

 

the envy 15 really is a cooling marvel in my opinion. I know other i7 models stay cooler, but not ones that are this thin and have a high quality graphics card. and no wonder apple couldn't squeeze in a quad i7. really loving my all copper heatsink/fan assemblies on this thing.

by the way, anyone been able to tweak the voltage on their 4830/5830? i know it can handle higher temps, think its a power issue is all.

 

I had this "blank screen"/crashing problem as well with my first unit, received Feb 1. It seems to have affected a number of people who bought Envy 15's and the only way to resolve it is to return for refund and get a replacement, which is what I did. So far, I have not experienced this issue at all with my new unit.

 

Thank you Moviemarketing for your repply. The replacement its supposed to ship back on May 19. Hopefully it will not have the same problem.

 

@johnbots, Are you the only one who has flashed with F24A without bricking the PC? What is your config? I may try flashing but hesitant because of all the bricking.

 

I flashed the BIOS and it did not my brick my system. However I still get the Blank screen.

I purchased mine at the beginning of January and this blank screen has continuously gotten worse.

I think I rather just a refund thank turn my unit in, and buy a cheaper laptop that will stay on for report writing .

 

I flashed my system after a clean install and I am not having any problems.

 

i flashed mine earlier with the f18 i think and got a blank screen. external video still worked, so was able to flash it back. if you ever get a black screen, check to see if external still works before sending it off.

 

My system came with F.17 and I have flashed it with every bios update (f.18, f.19. f.1b, f.24), and no problem yet. I have the Gen 2 i7 720 model.

 

Could someone please make some in-depth comments on their experiences with their HP Envy 15" with the 1920x1080 panel and HD5830?


Currently I'm on a MacBook Pro 17" running Core i7-620M and GT330M and I'm not sure whether I should be keeping it or not, as I'm using it for Windows7 only and find the aluminium body to scratch way to easily, after soft use in three days I already start to see signs for noticeable scratches to the aluminium surface!

I also find the touchpad to work rather choppy with Windows7, it's either over-sensitive or the whole left / right click thing doesn't want to work as I want to.


Same goes for the iSight webcam, the Windows7 drivers seems bad optimized, I get noticeably worse video quality when using it in Windows7 compared to OSX.



So I'm in a situation where I have the HP Envy 15 1190EO for quite a bit less than the MacBook Pro 17", I feel like paying a premium price for the MacBook Pro when I have no interest in using OSX, along with the Windows7 drivers lacking some optimization and the high build quality fells little sort when it gets scratched this easily.

 

IF you had the system since January how are you going to return it for a refund? It thought it was only 21 days when you can actually return a system.

 

I also have F24 and I have updated all BIOS that came along the way; fortunately for me everytime it went smooth.

 

Sure, I have a 15" Envy with the i7-820QM and the 1920x1080 (glossy) with the 5830. It is definitely faster than a Macbook Pro 17" running bootcamp. People have complained about the Envy b/c the CPU throttles and the notebook gets very warm, but the dirty secret is the Macbook Pro i5s and i7s get hotter and they limit their CPU as well. As for the aluminu, scratching, even the Envys are not impervious to nicks and scratches (none on mine so far, and mine has the glossy black paint job).

I like OSX ok, but I play games a lot. I'm excited to see steam for Mac coming out, maybe I'll look into a new Macbook Pro down the line. But for now, the envy 15 has a far superior graphics card for gaming, there's really no comparison there. The four things I like about the Pro right now: trackpad is awesome, battery life, internal drive (but not blu-ray so not a big deal), and the Edge to Edge glass. Bottom line in my opinion: if you don't need 8 hour battery life, stick with the Envy. You may want to wait on the Envy 17 actually with the 5850 card though.

 

how would you compare the Envy vs the Sony F?


I currently have the sony F and it's a bit on the heavy side of things.

Battery life isn't that important .. i mean 2 hours for high powered laptops is normal, but i would get the i5 with the envy ..

 

I like the Sony F, but again the Envy trumps it in terms of graphics horsepower. As for your Envy, my humble recommendation is but one with the cheapest CPU you can get, and upgrade the CPU to an i7-620 yourself (they can be had for about $250 which is a steal on ebay) if you want power and great battery life (the 620 is a low-power consumption chip like the i5s)

 

Actaully the 620M is very power hungry, almost as bad as an i7 720Q, it uses 10+W more at idle and 15+W more under full load compared to the 540M. For the extra cost it makes no sense when you can get the 540M from HP for a $175 upgrade cost. Here is the comparison: Notebookcheck: Review Intel Core i3/i5/i7 Processors ?Arrandale? Also I believe the ebay chips are all still 'engineering samples' not actual production versions. IMO it is not worth it for a ~5% increase in performance over the 540M and much less battery life.

 

I don't think so, both the i5-540M and the i7-620M both has the same 35W TDP and architecture. It is just that the i7-620M has another multiplier unlocked an another unlocked L3 Cache. I doubt it can much worse to levels of the i7 Quad.

 

Read the power draw graph on the link above, all identical machines except the different CPU's. They even comment about thier surprise at the i7 620M's much higher power draw, especially at idle...

Quote from notebookcheck:

" ........the i7-620M CPU reveals itself as being especially energy devouring. The CPU treats itself to about 15W more, with up to 64.7W under load, than the i5 colleagues. The test system also needs around 10W more in idle mode with 30W than the configuration with a Core i5 chip."

Note: The 64 & 30W numbers are for the whole notebook, not just the CPU.

 

Can you post or PM me your temps for Cores and GPU. I've disabled the fan in BIOS and it seems more stable (no freezes... lockups) but the fans wind up more often. I'm on F1BA BIOS.

 

I have an i7-820qm so wouldn't do much good. my fan is set at always on. I swapped out an i5 for my i7 myself and cleaned and applied diamond 7 thermal compound.

 

Hey johnnobts, you said in some earlier posts that you upgraded the ENVY 15's screen yourself. Do you know if it'd be possible to upgrade a glossy low res screen to a matte high res screen? Also what brand / store would you recommend? It seems like the default HP matte screen has a bit of a blue tint so I'm hoping to avoid that. Thanks.

Edit: It seems that the blue tint on the matte screens might be HP's attempt to compensate for the following type of degradation: Special Report:
Long Live DLP?

 

The blue tint on the HP envy HD screens is simply that they use the generic windows sRGB defualt color profile which, with the LED backlighting, gives you a very 'cool' (blue tinted) color temperature. Once you calibrate the display it looks great, 1000% better.

 

Thanks for the advice! I have my own profile for windows but it doesn't carry over to certain games that change device when they switch to fullscreen. Win 7's default options are nicer than XP's, but the new way it renders things prevents software overrides in these special cases. Ah well, I guess with time, the LED will naturally start to get warmer.

 

yes you can upgrade the low res screen to a high res matte one, if you can find a matte screen. I bought a glossy high res screen from screencountry. It was $150 at the time. I didn't see them offer a matte display, you can email them. HP Parts probably has them too, but you know they will rip you off regarding price.

 

Actually LED color temperature is very stable over time so don't expect to see any change due to that. Also I am not sure what you mean by having 'your own profile for windows'? I use Spyder3 elite calibration system and it somehow uses the .icc profile for all applications I run unless I select specific apps to use there own profiles. I know win7 has a way to select which color profiles are used by any apps, unfortunatley I don't know how to use it since i have never needed it, it sounds like your 'games' are overriding your windows profile, I know this can be changed just not sure how you do it.....

 

@JJB:

Does Spyder 3 work with the default light sensor on the Envy? I've heard of conflicts w/ the custom light sensor that they use. By my own profile, I mean one that I eyeballed under the "calibrate" settings from:

Change color management settings

Pulling down the blue channel helped the color quality substantially. I've definitely read about color degradation in LEDs, I guess the amount would depends on what type of back light the ENVY uses.

If I keep the color management control panel open when I play Crysis, windows will beep and alt tabbing into the color management windows will reveal that the hardware profile has been refreshed when the game loads; so it almost certainly resets my settings. I have no idea how to force Crysis to use my settings in full screen.

@johnnobts:

Do you see any blue-ish tint due to the LED back lighting w/ your new screen? I'm just wondering if it's due to the LCD panel or the backlight.

General Question:

Has anyone tried the Unigen Heaven 2.0 benchmark? I can get my ENVY to consistently crash by running the thing at full HD res and turning on and off tesselation and /or wireframe. Also, GTA IV seemed to have some stability issues as well. Just trying to see if I have a bad card, that's all.

Edit: Looks like the Heaven 2.0 benchmark issue is well documented. GTA IV seems fine so far w/ 10.4's, but I'll report back after a few more hours of gaming.

 

LED's do not perceptably shift colors over time. The color (wavelength) is generated by the specific voltoge applied to the diode itself and should stay constant (+/- .5%) until it fails after 10,000+ hrs.

Spyder3 is a professional color calibration system that creates custom .icc profiles based on your specifications. I have 2 or 3 profiles posted on this thread for download (don't have links handy on this computer) which should be much more accurate than your 'eyeballing'. This would be just the actual .icc profile itself, my envy uses the spyder software to manage color profiles and completely overides all other calibtration on the system.

I have no idea about conflicts with the light sensor as it was the first thing that I disabled when I got my Envy, it's completely useless and uneccessary. I never even installed the driver for it after I did a clean install.

 

hey guys is hp envy worth 2000 $ or should i go for dv6t or xps16 (compramise on the graphic card)

 

I'm guessing the ENVY uses a blue-LED coated w/ phosphors to generate something close to white light instead of an RGB system. The light from the p-n junction itself doesn't change much, but the epoxy enclosing the p-n junction, the phosphor layer, and the panel itself may degrade over time causing a perceived color shift for the user. I've heard that yellowing of the LED's light does occur and is caused by yellowing of the epoxy casing from heat. I'm actually hoping this will happen to the ENVY's LED since windows doesn't consistently enforce my custom icc for every program.

I'll try some of your Spyder tuned icc's, thanks for the info.

 

I really wouldn't pay $2k for the ENVY. You should wait for it to be on sale again w/ a coupon before you buy, I got mine well equipped for about $1050. A good alternative is the Studio 1749 which is quite a bit cheaper when not on sale and can be configured w/ an HD5650 (which I'd say is better than the options for either the dv6t or the xps16 last I checked but worse than the 5830 on the envy).

The actual cost of these laptops is elusive, you have to go coupon hunting to avoid paying too much; I almost never buy a laptop unless there's a substantial ($4-500) coupon offer. You just have to be patient, there's almost certainly going to be a couple more coupons in the 4-500 dollar range this year for either Dell or HP which you can find by going to a site like gotapex.com or spoofee.com .

 

Yes, I would try to keep an eye on Bing cashback for the HP store, it has gone up to 25% then down to 5%, then back up to 10% I believe.

It really depends on what criteria are relevant for your usage. Do you use a lot of graphics intensive applications, like Photoshop, DVD/Blu-ray authoring, video editing or 3D games? If you are using your laptop primarily for word processing then I would suggest to buy something much, much cheaper.

I considered a lot of different brands, but in order to get a laptop with a decent SSD, GPU, 16GB RAM, USB 3.0, 1920x1080p HDMI out and a relatively slim form factor (even with the slice battery in), unfortunately, the Envy 15 was really my only option.

 

Got my Envy, reinstalled windows and now I have a few questions/problems:

1) The track pad double tap of the corner to enable/disable no longer enables after I disable it. I have to plug a mouse in and go into the driver settings and click enable there. What's the deal?

2) I installed the drivers for the function keys and they all work fine, but I don't get the pop up bar that displays my volume changing any longer. Anybody know the software that enables that?

Any recommendations on software that makes the laptop better to use that aren't listed in the official drivers page?

Also, i'm already feeling massive pain at the lack of two finger and three finger tap. I'm used to my cheapo ASUS that allows two finger tap to open pages in a new tab, and 3 finger tap for a right click. Is there anyway to enable this? It will be shocking to me for such a high end laptop and high end touchpad to not have these features.