*HP Envy 15 Owners Lounge! PART 2*

After using the keyboard for a couple days, it's not bad. Looks cheap but it feels really responsive.

The trackpad is the best I've used, I would almost hazard to say it is better than the one on the MBP. At least in Windows 7. =P

 

Just unboxed mine. It was cold also but I'm also in CO where we've had some cold weather. It wouldn't start right away so I did the unthinkable and read the instructions. It says to charge it until the little light goes white. It's charging now.

How long does it take to charge?

I'll post my impressions of the screen but I'm currently using a 5 year old Dell D610 so pretty much if it starts I'm going to be impressed. Like my cars, I run my laptops until they are painful to drive.

 

I haven't kept a laptop longer than 6 months

lol

 

I was playing borderlands last night for about 3-4 hours at full settings, it ran so smooth, graphics were outstanding, and at 1080p I thought my eyes were going to start bleeding with the pure pleasure of seeing it. I m glad I bought this laptop, and really would recommend it for those gamers out there that dont really care about battery life. Its a mobile gaming rig, not a laptop (get a netbook if you want more battery life).

 

@sleey0 - Is that because of your avatar? You haven't dropped one in the pot have you?

 

i'm thinking of using my 50 dollar coupon on this:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/product/computer/categories/cd_dvd_media/1/accessories/VV827AA%23ABB

i can get it for 3 dollars after coupon + 50 dollar credit... can't really think of anything else to buy with the credit

 

Link not working.

What is it?

 

just a dvd external. as much as I know i won't use it, it's still good to have just in case.

 

woohooo! Went home for lunch and the fedex guys were in my garage and i scared them when i opened the garage door.

Brought this puppy inside and it was awfully cold

First impressions:

Build quality is great but not quite as good a MBP. but then again the price was nowhere near a MBP either

Booted it up and OMG, HP really loads a bunch of unneeded crap on this thing. Doing fresh install as I type this 

First thing I noticed is that the USB is extremely slow on this thing. It took almost 8 minutes to copy over the 456 MB SW folder to a USB 2.0 memory stick. I don’t use USB too often so it’s not going to be a problem and I am sure updated drivers will fix it.

So far not regretting my purchase!

Will update after more use

 

Hey all! Just got my Envy 15, and so far I love it!

The only issue I have is that the fans (im guessing they are the fans) are pretty loud. My computer is making a small buzzing noise.

So, is this expected? Will it go away? Should I call and have it replaced? Thanks in advance!

 

A few others also have the buzzing noise.

It may be a cable hitting the fan. You can open it up an see. Mine is whisper quite so it shouldn't have any noise like that.

 

The "feel" of the laptop isn't as high quality, I think that's just the material it was made from, feels thinner and coarser, but it's strong.

 

That buzzing noise is from the 7200rpm hardeive located at the right palm wrest. I also noticed that the hardeive gets unpleasently hot. SSD or bust!

 

Would opening it void my warranty?

 

I gotta listen pretty hard to hear it, if you're in a quiet room it's noticable.

I've been studying with the laptop on, so it was noticable haha.

I can't tell while gaming cause I have earphones on.

 

There aren't any stickers or any way for HP to know.

As long as you don't break your system, you are good to go

 

mine did to at first but after it warmed up a littel they seemed to quite down.

of course mine came off the truck in about 0 degree weather

 

I was thinking it may need a little time to warm up, but it's had an hour now.

Where can I find instructions to open this thing?

 

HP's website has a service manual for the 15t-1000 which is the same to open.

 

I'm a bit nervous removing the rubber feet.

Are we sure there's no way for HP to know you've opened it up?

 

Other than letting your guilt be known over the phone, there shouldn't be.

 

I am positive.

Just opened mine last night and it was very easy.

 

Kinda like your kidneys

 

I didnt' buy my kidneys so I wouldn't know

 

Since no one has responded to you yet, heres why:

Your hard drive is bugged/defective. I would return that to HP asap.




So I just unboxed the envy, went to class with it, now sitting in the office and mulling it over. The keyboard layout is a bit .... ick to me. Do you guys use the keys in the left hand column at all? I'm considering disabling it. Haven't had a chance to game, will reformat first. I thought the 2gb card was nice, allowed me to store the backup drivers on it.

Another question, does anyone use/tried the quickweb feature? It seems ok but i'm probably not going to keep it when I put the machine back together. Are there other HP programs besides the webcam one that are definately needed/ useful to 99.99% of people?

 

So, you guys doing clean installs. Where are you getting your drivers?

Should I image this thing before I even boot it up? So that I can have a factory restore cd just in case? Was that one link you guys have basically what that does?

 

Drivers have been uploaded by me and can be had with the link in my sig.

Someone else here posted them individually, too.

 

Rep for you, sir.

 

You can also find the drivers at C:\Swsetup folder

 

If you haven't already reformatted! lol

 

i have a question. my screen randomly dims.. it has always been plugged in and th power setting is high performance maxed.. I always have to adjust it but it dims on its own later..any ideas?

 

Turn off adaptive brightness in advanced power settings.

 

It's in the power settings.

Programmed to dim at 5 minutes or so.

 

I think you should try a clean install. I've tested out the Gen2 USB ports and they work well. I've transferred over 25GB of data from a external USB HD and had no problems. I haven't tried the eSata yet but on the USB 3.0 I get a near sustained transfer rate of 100MB/s or almost 3 times USB 2.0. I'm guessing it'll actually Bench higher but I'm satisfied.

 

What was the price on the 620m? I'm not really planning on any change

 

$250...........

 

For those of you with Gen 1 machines and the horizontal lines issue, have a look here and send in your serial numbers -

http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/HP-E...els-on-Envy-15-1080p-Screen/td-p/49987/page/7

 

Has anyone found solutions to the poor Wireless performance? Gen2 still has the problem. I get fluctuating bandwith between 5-36 Mbps at a distance while my other laptops get a more consistent 48 Mbps at the same spot in the house.

 

I don't have the right sized screwdriver to open this up. I called HP and they said the best they can do is have it sent in for repairs, which will take about 1.5 weeks.

Has there been any confirmation as to what causes this noise? Is it a a wire? Should I get a screwdriver myself and try to open it?

 

You mean other than you announcing what your doing on a public forum??

 

Well I did a little testing on the battery. Made sure system was fully charged, switched to battery at 11:30. Didn't do anything super taxing. Ran at the default res of 1920 x 1080. I mainly launched a copy of Adobe reader and had it read a few pages of a pdf, set screen to about 75% brightness and enabled the 3d screensaver.

Had Wifi and bluetooth off for most part but did run it for a bit while I worked with Linksys to get my Wireless-N router to work with and see the computers on my home network. At 3:20 it was saying down to 17% (Battery 1 at 44% and bat 2 at 2%. Now recharging and will rerun the test again tomorrow after I recharge the batteries.

 

Is that with the 6 cell or the 9 cell?

 

I just checked and after my clean install of win7 I can now set the power plan 'low' and 'critical' battery levels as low as I want. HP had these locked at 7% minimum, so I set them to 2% and in theory gained another 5% of usable capacity.

 

The more i play with this the more i like it.

I should never have brought it to work. When i go back and forth from the envys display to my dell D830 display it makes my dells display look really dim even at the highest brightness.

The other thing i like about it is i can pick it up with one hand without it folding like a piece of pizza

I am so glad i go the ssd's a reboot take like no time at all

 

Wowwww. I received my laptop today and somebody else's laptop. 2 boxes delivered. That guy is a California destination and I'm just across the country. Anyway, I called FedEx and they are picking it up again to deliver. Thats stupid on FedEx part to do such a mistake. I wouldn't want to be that guy.

The weirder part is that both have the same tracking number so that guy is looking at his laptop online and it will say delivered. I cant imagine how freaked out he is.

 

LOL that guy must be having a good day.....

 

Dude, you are a good man.

some folks would have kept it

 

A question about the HD in these Envy's...

I ordered my laptop with a single HD. I decided to order the laptop with just a platter HD because I plan on upgrading to SSD when new Intels come out (supposedly) in Q4 2010.
It was my understanding that the laptop could hold (1) 2.5" HD or (2) 1.8" HDs. However, I have seen many people post that the SSDs HP has included in the 2nd Gen Envy's are the Intel G2 SSDs. As far as I can tell, those have a 2.5" form factor. Is there something I am not understanding?

I'm looking at page 53/131 of the Envy 15 Maintenance and Service Guide ( http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01911053.pdf ) and I'm not sure how two HDs fit in there. If any one could illuminate me on how the internals are set up (or even better, provide a photo) I would appreciate it greatly.

 

Someone posted up a link to the 1.8" Intel G2 on Buy.com

 

The drives HP uses are X18-m G2's, which are intel 1.8" ssds.