HP Envy 17 - coming to the US in May 2010

Thanks for that picture. Yea, when I was looking for pictures of the bottom, I wanted to see where the vents are and whether or not it looks like there is a place for a slice battery- doesn't look like it. Although that would make it the only envy without a slice, and I remember hearing that hp australia was telling people that they were going to come out with a slice for the 17 a month after the initial release. But hp Australia are also the people who goofed up putting the envy 17 info up on their site way too early and then took it down but were supposedly still selling it by phone. So I wouldn't be surprised if they were wrong about there being a slice for the 17. That 'big butt' battery as you so correctly called it seems like it would be fine for actual usage, but would make it very awkward to fit in a bag. Awkward to the point where you might have to take the battery out just to transport it.

 

No slice battery? Here's hoping that HP made a good lucking extended battery (but I don't see how that will be possible). The slice battery was excellent innovation by HP.

 

looking at the bottom...I don't know how Envy slices attach...but on my Elitebook, there's a port on the bottom that my slice battery connects to.

I see no such port for that on the picture there...nor is there mention of a port in the service manual.

can someone with an Envy confirm that their slice interface plug is on the bottom like Elitebooks? if so, we can close the door on hope for a slice and move on.

 

Don't worry it's on the bottom, in the middle I think. The Envy 17 doesn't have it anywhere, so no slice battery.

 

I don't get why companies don't just put the kabosh on the speculations like panel contrast by publishing detailed specs on that. That or just send one of the guys that worked on the lines and chose the components to forums like these to set the record straight... at least after a launch of the notebooks.


Also I do not see the benefit of not having the option for higher quality panels on notebooks. wading in the elitebook 8740w forum and you find SCORES of people happy to hand over upwards of a 500 dollars premium on a better display panel.

What gives?

Whatever it costs, all they need do is price it above the added cost, and it will prevent defectors to competitors where the omission of a certain threshold of panel quality is a deal breaker.

Maybe there is a cost to simply having the option for a lower volume but higher quality panel.

 

I agree completely. I wonder if anyone is listening.

 

I was just flipping through the manual for the 17. Page 12 and 14 have some pretty good views of the envy from the side and wow, this does not looks like a very thin computer. I'm talking some serious junk in the trunk compared to the other envy's. It's about 50% taller than the 17'' mbp at it's highest point according to the specs in the manual.

 

Speculation:

There must be some cost of having more options and less streamlined options.


Look at the new pavilion lineup, the touchpads, the new netbooks, the keyboards and pavilions and the newer probooks. VERY similar if not the same parts.


It seems HP is trying to streamline and make its notebook parts more uniform (which is fine if it looks great like this new set does).

My guess is that there must be an added cost, or simply less cost savings to having multiple keyboard types to one main component in the lineup, and that more specific parts means less uniform cost reductions and savings on manufacturing.


The solution is simply to increase the number of notebooks premium partsare allowed to be on. So for example, allow an option for the radiance display to be on all hp laptops, but make the price jump of adding it to a normal pavilion HIGHER than doing so in a special lineup like the envy series.

Some exclusivity is warranted, like graphics parts. But I don't know. I am not in the weeds of business models and cost and these types of decisions. But I would be really interested in finding out what goes into these decisions.

 

^ could be the case. Maybe they've simply found that the market for paying $300 premiums for better displays just isn't there?

My Vaio AW was the last of its kind from Sony. It's RGB LED screen pumped out 137% of the Adobe RGB spectrum...but it was a $500 premium over the normal version of the laptop. apparently, they didn't sell enough of them to keep them around...and I suspect we who would pay hundreds more for a premium display are a great minority right now. The last 15 months or so has seen a race to the bottom. Sony dumped all their high-priced computers save the Vaio Z and now most of their compuers are under $1,400. HP and Dell also collapsed their prices. Even Apple's prices are about $200 less now than in the past.

If the demand was there, I'm inclined to believe the option would be there too. Sadly, there just aren't enough of us who are willing/able to pay more for the better screen. So we're left to either settle for less, go with a MacBook Pro, or find ourselves with a Workstation computer. Those really shouldn't be our only options...but it's where the market is now. Netbook crazy.

understandable given the caliber of GPU and the need to accommodate up to that high-end quad i7 + cooling.

 

You can always get your screen from the 8740w. If you don't mind paying the premium it's the best screen you can get. Sony hasn't done crap as i think their whole notebook line is being rethought. So you have the elitebook.

I will be very interested to see what you end up with. my gut is--you don't NEED a comp now so you will wait for something wild and crazy. Even tho Apple JUST updated, I think there might be some new updates in November/October. You might see some new screen tech. Altho, you might see something worse. A move from 17 1920x1200 to 1080. I may have the last 1920x1280 Apple will ever make! sons of es!

 

With the HM55 chipset the Envy 17 would not support any RAID configuration. It would have to move up to the HM57 or QM57 chipsets to support RAID and IGP. The PM55 in the Envy 15 supports raid but does not support the IGP.

 

true. at the expense of portability (weight, battery life will be laughable).

yep. they completely changed vision...and they did it literally overnight. oh well...I'm sure they made the move in light of the global economic situation. Can't make money being high priced in the Windows world unless you're going to put a lot of money into marketing yourself as elite. which they weren't interested in doing.

I won't wait long because the waiting game is for suckers. If I've learned anything else in the 20 years I've been buying computers, it's that waiting for what's just around the corner will become an unending experience in frustration.

I just locked in 3 new projects totaling about $35k of new income over the last 3 days. I'm gonna have to go on the road starting probably late next week. This will likely force my hand earlier than I would have liked. I may be forced to get the MacBook Pro because (a) the Envy won't even be available to order for another week or so, and that doesn't include shipping delays or wait lists...and (b) the 8740w elitebook with DreamColor display has been delayed until *at least* June.

Not 100% sure yet if I'll need to pull a trigger now or if I can try waiting...will know more on Monday...but I'm going to be on the road working for about 2 weeks kicking butt and taking names...but my humble 1280x800 elitebook tablet with it's sad little PATA drive (my only functioning laptop at present) won't help me get the job I need to do done.

Sometimes you can spend months preparing to make a decision...carefully narrowing down your options. Stressing out about details ad infinitum. Then out of the blue, life can swiftly remove all but 1 option...and suddenly decision-making becomes clear and easy. If I had my way, I'd probably be humming and hawing well into late June. :-/

 

Can anybody enlight me here? What is Quad-core 740 and 840?
And what is dual-core 450?
Google gave me nothing.

 

Look... man.... Mabye you didn't need to go throuh all that to address the point...? Heh. I think you are putting too much thought and effort in into this - just focus on the end result you are trying to achieve. Honestly, I read your post and I didn't really get the point you are trying to make other then that you require a good quality display. Totally fair, and the display is my main driving factor for any computer purchase.

let me touch on this point:

This is what I am talking about. There is nothing in this paragraph that shows a connection between high color gamut and display quality and color accuracy. What makes you think that it's the color gamut that made it "always obvious" (-ly) better, jaw-drapping, awe-inspiring or nut-bustlingly better then the screen you are sitting it next to? How do you know it wasn't calibration, brightness, contrast of the AW 290? My point is that it WAS those things and NOT the color gamut. In fact, displays with too high color gamut tend to have comprimised color accuracy as their blues and greens become too deep due to the wider spectrum coming from the backlight as the LCD panel itself was calibrated/intended for a "regular" backlight. In reality, higher color gamut actually comprimises color accuracy for this reason. In fact, to get a properly accurate and also have a high color gamut you need a recent high end pro display with a complicated and fully calibrated 3D LUT (multi dimentional array to map the greens and blues from a high gamut backlight to a regular gamut backlight) as all your software, your inputs and the colors they produce and procesess were intended for a "normal" backlight; normal gamut.
I deal see this kind of decision making regularly where I work, it can be a struggle and it is too common. That is, drawing and making connections that don't exist - such as high gamut = HQ display. In my cause it's not computer related stuff, though, and for stuff that has much $$$ impact.

It was funny today, ironically, for a couple reasons. I always laugh at the airplane analogies and battery life usefulness - as it just seems silly to me to spec one's laptop battery life based on something that they/I do on average once per year. But today I ended up on a plane ride for an unexpected reason, and as soon as I opened my Envy15 the older lady next to me (mid to late 50's) immediately made a remark about the system "Wow, really nice display." I had a chance to put it next to a new MBP and it looks much better. The view angles are actually better then average for a TN, too. But you hear nothing about the color gamut for the Envy15...
Despite the "crap" average battery life I was able to use the system as much as I wanted for most of the "3 hr" flight, even playing a lot of Portal - I discovered by leaving power play at maximum battery life and lowering the resolution in HL2/Portal to 1280x720, turning off AA I was able to keep a smooth experience with a MUCH MUCH slower drain on the battery, didn't even get warm with the CPU staying at 1133MHz and the GPU at 300/200 MHz. Plugged in, this puppy runs as 3033MHz CPU (with T-Boost) and 750/1115 GPU/VMEM, though.

Yeah, this is my main quarrel. The Envy15 is so slim, yet massive performance. The 17 will be majorly temping with the amazing features; 3 external displays, number pad, backlit keyboard, 120Hz display possibility, "Wide View Angle" display possibility (PVA/IPS), 5850, GPU switching, etc. But in the end my Envy 15 is just a little slower (seem my overclocks on this Envy? 58% on the core, 42% on the memory, stable! ) offers some less battery life with the 17's switchable. Yet I will pick up a while lot of thickness (manual says up to 1.5" in the back) while the Envy15 is 1.02" all the way.

 

I think 600:1 is actually above average for laptops. I think it looks pretty good for a lappy.

 

Any word on if this system will have sata III 6.0gb/s. I'm thinking of getting a Crucial RealSSD C300 and it supports SATA III 6.0gb/s read speed of 355MB/sec. Even on SATA II it's still the fastest SSD you can buy tho so i'll still probly get it. Buy the envy 17 with a single 1TB drive then buy the Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB and make that the primary drive with windows and all my apps and games and use the 1TB drive for bulk storage of my flac collection and 1080p video files. Please say this has SATA III tho.

 

So basically in one word, the Screen on HP envy 17 sucks, am I right?

 

Honestly, until we get someone to do a test with some sort of device designed to measure static contrast, take it with a grain of salt.


On my desktop I am still using my trusty and legendary NEC 20WMGX2 AS-IPS display.


rated at 470cd/m2 (yes, insane)
and 700:1 static contrast ratio

The latter seems low by many standards boasting upwards of 1000:1 static contrast, and yet it still blows most of those out of the water in terms of clarity. The monitor I had before was only 500:1 and it seemed so dim and pathetic, but it was dim. It was pathetic.


I am not sure what all the details are that go into display quality, though more contrast seems better almost always, but there are times when not being the top of the heap in one specific area is no issue at all, like my NEC.

 

Contrast ratio is a good indicator, but not the only indicator. Plus, on the videos I've seen the screen seems fairly vibrant. It would be weird if HP put good screens on the Envy 13, Envy 14, Envy 15, and not the Envy 17, no?

 

You maybe right, but the reps in the videos talked about how amazing the radiance display on the 14 is, but nothing with 17's display... just like the switchable graphics, that is not a good sign, I think I m gonna wait for the 14 instead.

 

There is also the X factor of 3D touted on the HP blurb for the Envy 17. The truth is out there.

 

the envy 17 uses the hm55 chipset which DOES support arrandale graphics switching. Sooooo if you have an arrandale chip with the built in IGP on a chipset that supports the IGP then how can the envy 17 not support it?

 

The same happened with the envy 13 vs the envy 15


In fact, the 13 was rated at 400 nits if I recall correctly, while the 15 was at 300. It was noticeably brighter.

 

I found that the 14" , 15" and 17", all three have 300 nit. So if the 14" has the radiance display and it has 300 nit, imo the only difference is going to be the color gamut.

 

I posted this in the owner's lounge already.. but I'll post it here anyway. This is so sad - noteookcheck reports that HP is dropping BOTH the Envy 13 and 15
Guess I should jump on the 15 inch pretty soon then. Sigh.

Here's the link - Notebookcheck: NBC Onsite: HP Notebook Lineup 05/2010

 

and data sheet for both the 14 and 17
http://www.hp.com/united-states/personal_again/datasheets/envy14_17_ds.pdf

 

A pre-configured Envy 17-1008tx has popped up on HP's Singapore website. It comes w/ i7-720, 8GB RAM, 1920 FHD, ATI 5850, 2x1TB HDD, BluRay ROM. The price of 3699.00 Singapore dollars converts to 2641.20 US dollars at Friday's closing exchange rate. FWIW, this three spindle system w/ 2 HDDs and BluRay is spec'd at 3.41 kg, which is 7.52 lb.

By way of comparison, the same site lists a preconfigured Envy15 w/ i7-720, 8GB RAM, 1920 FHD, ATI 4830, 1x500GB HDD, BluRay ROM for the identical price of 3699.00 Singapore dollars. You can't buy that exact pre-config model in the US, but backing the price deltas iinto the nearest US pre-config gives a US price of $2425 (ignoring the current $200 promotion). This suggests there is a least a $200 markup in this price Envy going from the US to Singapore.

Also of interest is the "New!" listing for an Envy Envy 15-1111tx pre-config that has a 640GB disk, which is only recently available in the US configurator. This suggests that perhaps the Envy 15 is not being discontinued soon as some have said.


HP Envy 17-1008tx Notebook PC (WY371PA) specifications - HP Home & Home Office products

 

AJ- I don't think you gain much weight on getting the 8740w actually.

Battery life-I don't know..but weight? I think it's REALLY close to 7.5--
surely very close to 8.2

 

great specs for the price.

 

Any of the 8740W or 8540 owners. Can you tell me the weight of your laptops. I am very confused here. I am looking to a buy a laptop either this month or next and here is what I am considering:
1. Envy 15: lack of internal drive, excessive heating.
2. HP 8540W: primary concern is the weight - low end graphics card.
3. HP 8740W: primary concern is the weight
4. Dell M6500: I bet it is pretty heavy.
5. Alienware 17x: max memory 8 GB instead of 16GB like in all the above laptops plus too heavy.
6. Envy 17: Max mem 8 GB instead of 16GB.

 

8740w is approx. 7.8lbs.

are you doing something that needs that much memory or power?

 

3D modeling and some virtual machines for 2008.. I would like to carry it to work everyday.. on a motorcycle..

 

given it's the same weight as the envy 17...but with nice screen. get that dude.

 

How does 8740W compare with dell M6500?

 

Okay.. tell me this:

ATI FirePro M7820 graphics with 1 GB dedicated GDDR5 video memory

OR

NVIDIA Quadro FX 3800M graphics with 1 GB dedicated GDDR3 video memory

 

You mean Envy 17 or 8740W?

 

ati 5870 vs gtx 280m

 

8740W comes with either M7820 or Quadro FX 3800M

 

well some applications require CUDA, and thus the 3800M would be nice. But if you're actually getting it as a gaming laptop, the M7820 is better.

 

He was telling you that the Firepro is the Radeon 5870 and the Nvidia quadro is the Gtx 280m

 

Sorry.. my bad..

Dreamcolor.. where do I select dreamcolor.. it only gives WUXGA 1920x1200 and WSXGA 1680x1050.

 

The dreamcolor2 panels have been put on hold for no. I think you should go read the 8740w owners thread and ask any questions you have over there.

 

I'm still waiting to see the Envy 17's battery life numbers.

If it's the same as the 8740w...then yes, 8740w + DreamColor 2 is the only combo that makes sense for me on the Windows side. but even then, I'm giving up battery life...which does matter to me.

sadly, the DreamColor 2 is MIA for another month if not more.

we'll see what happens.

 

alienware m15x with 5850 is out, I guess I'm turning back to alienware... envy 17 is nice but due to my bad experience with envy 15...

 

dont expect to game on the go, the battery life blows on alienwares. battery life is tempting me to sell mine and get an envy 17

 

I agree, but I play game only when I m sitting down at a place has power plug, so I don't really care about battery life.

 

What makes you think the envy 17 is going to have good battery life?

 

just looked up the m15x on Dell's site and maaan do they nickel and dime you. base price $1200 only has a core i3, 3GB RAM, geforce 240m, 250GB HD, etc. get it up to equivalent Envy 15 specs and its at least $500 more. that gets you a beefier chassis and GPU but also +4 pounds.

 

looking at your sig, that m17x has to be sucking down over 200W at load. not sure any laptop battery can keep up with that for long.

 

I was thinking how strange things HP are doing.
They gave us the backlit keyboard and the powerful GPU, they also removed the annoying keys from the left....all these thing are great. But why the hell they removed the slice (better cooling maybe, but 14" has vents on the bottom AND a slice. What's so difficult in making a slice with holes which match the vents). The second stupid thing is putting an ordinary display. I've read the post about their marketing plan for the Envy collection. But 17" is a lot more bigger than a 14", so I don't think there are a lot of people who want to buy big laptop, BUT they will buy the much smaller because of the display. And the same thing won't happen if the situation was 17" Radiance and 14" sh*t display.
And the third thing is the storage mystery(for me).

So now, if the 17" has the HM55, can it handles 2 SSDs or just one because of the lack of Rapid Storage Technology + RAID. Because the PM55 and the HM57 have these "extras".

p.s. English is not my native language, sorry if there are a lot of mistakes