hp envy 17 question

i'm interested in this laptop (HP ENVY 17-1010NR) but the listed res for this laptop is 1600x900. there's another screen option available when i configure which is 1920x1080, but both configs look like they have the same video card. if i ordered the HP ENVY 17-1010NR, would i be able to set a resolution higher than 1600x900 ?

any advice would help, thank you

 

No. To get the higher resolution, you're going to need to buy a laptop with a higher resolution screen.

 

so the screens are different .... ok. i was hoping this wasn't the case but i guess they wouldn't charge the extra 100 if there wasn't a hardware difference

 

price-wise, everything looks ok for me, 1500-1700 is what i'm looking to spend the way i want it configured, but the only thing holding me back is no blu-ray burner. at least now they offer internal drives on the 14 and 17, so maybe they will be adding the burner in the near future. i also noticed they've issued some coupons in the past for the envy line. so i think it's best to wait until blu-ray burners are available for it.

 

According to the Envy 17 Maintenance and Service guide, it does not support blu-ray burning. That could possibly change in the future, but for now, it's BD-ROM only.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02160120.pdf

 

that means that i'd have to wait for a refresh of this notebook, which could be a year. my next choice is a vaio F series ...

thanks for this pdf ... interesting info to have if i did get the envy ...

 

I hardly see the need for blu ray write capable drives, since the best form of storage now is to use HDs... We used CDs and then DVDs, since the price per gb was just too high, when there was a cheap alternative.

and you can actually get a 1tb drive in 2.5'' form factor, making that the portability of it is just as good as a DVD, dare say even better since carrying that much DVD is just too cumbersome, even if they were blu ray

 

One benefit to the Envy 17 over the Vaio (if you select the configuration that includes USB 3.0) is that you would have access to extremely fast blu-ray writers, such as this external Buffalo USB 3.0 model I use with my Envy 15, which burns BD-Rs at up to 12x
???????????/?????? BD-R/RE?? USB3.0? ???????????? | BR-X1216U3

I do a lot of blu-ray and DVD disc authoring projects for work and this saves me a great deal of time compared to the internal blu-ray writer on my desktop.

 

yeah you use a bd burner because of work, I wonder whats the use for domestic

 

I agree 100%. I think for personal media consumption, digital files are much more convenient than discs. However, there will always be some folks who like to collect physical goods, and I think the Blu-ray format will stay with us for perhaps another 5-10 years.

At the moment, unless you are watching pirated 1080p material, the only way to get feature films in a comparable level of quality is buy buying or renting a retail blu-ray, as the compression used for HD streaming services such as Netflix, AppleTV, etc., are not quite at that level of quality. Even with the significantly smaller screen on the Envy 15, I can absolutely tell the difference between watching a DVD and watching a blu-ray, so a blu-ray reader would be preferable to a DVD reader on any laptop over 15" IMO, also you can run an HDMI cable out to your projector or HDTV.

However, I think you are also referring to the storage of digital files on blu-ray discs in general, which, given the cost of BD-R discs and the convenience of hard drives vs. optical media, I would agree, is pointless unless you need to burn BD discs for work or some similar purpose.

 

that is actually what I mean

when we face that the media for us to burn costs so much more than what we get in terms of storage against digital media, the possibility for you to burn those discs for domestic use is much less appealing than the hype that comes of it.

But reading that BD material? that's a whole another story, if you want the quality thats where this is at.

 

you may not need a blu-ray burner, but i do. so i won't buy a laptop without one.

 

it may be a possibility for me to get an external writer ... but don't mind the slower 2x or 4x internal writers for my needs, which are more home-centric rather than work-oriented.

 

lets see: HD home videos (i have a 1080p video camera), image an entire OS installation on a single disc, back up music/video libraries on less than 5 optical discs....

i wonder what the domestic uses for a dvd burner would be ....

 

I still get all that in a 2.5'' drive with MUCH more space, I still hardly see the domestic need for it

glad that you have a 1080p camera, will you give it to me?

 

Hard drives eventually fail, sometimes unexpectedly. I personally don't use Blu-Ray as storage and backup, but when BDXL (128GB) comes out, I will likely jump in to the game. Back up all the important digital media files you have with just a few discs, then make copies and keep one in your safe at home and one in your safe deposit box (note: US Government has access to safe deposit boxes under Patriot Act so keep no personal finance or business records there!) and you are good to go. I feel a bit nervous right now only having hard drives as back up. Disk is the better medium term storage medium until 1TB portable SSD's obsolete them. But as no current laptop Blu-Ray drives will be able to write BDXL anyway, it isn't a concern for me in my laptop. I'm just getting the DVD drive.

 

i've been a pc user for 20 years, i have NEVER seen a hard drive fail ....

 

i may buy the envy 17 with the least espensive hdd, then add an ssd. just checking to see if this is possible to do, i would think so because the laptop has dual drive configurations.

not interested in hp's offering because i can get a 128GB for less than the 160GB, then move the original hdd to the other slot to use for storing movies/music/etc.

just hope it's not a real hassle to do. are all ssd's spec'd the same, or do i need to look for certain specs supported by the notebook ?

 

be sure to buy one that comes with 2hdd, without it you'll have to buy a caddy.

I have been a pc user for 20 years too, I have seen hd fails.

the thing is with dvd the life expectancy is less than 5 years, and this is in one of those expensive boxes.

with hdd if your concern is fail, buy a NAS and use raid 10, its that simple, for easy transport use a stick or 2.5'' hd. I do it, actually after I bought the NAS my life has changed. I format my drive every month, with a period of installation after that of 2hrs, pretty simple no data loss

 

I use dropbox for my most important files that I might worry about losing (hope the dropbox "cloud" doesn't crash). I also back up to external HDD and shared office Raid. Excluding a collection of MO disks that are somewhat of a standard format for printmaster audio tracks, I dont have the patience to back anything up to optical media and then dig around to find it if I need it some day, regardless of whether it lasts longer. All the materials I receive from third parties on optical media we log and archive in our vault but we also save everything to the office raid and those are the files we always access.

 

my reasoning for ssd is speed. been about 2 yrs since i last bought a laptop, so while shopping around this time, going to buy something that will keep me satisfied for another 2-3 yrs. as for the caddy, can that be bought as a spare from hp ? or else id have to find one on here or ebay.

still researching ssd's and their reliability with windows 7, regardless, i maintain 2 backups of my stuff on 2 seperate physical discs (one internal, the other external)

 

You need to buy the bracket off HP and apparently its $80 (just bit of metal + a cabel)...

 

not if you purchase 2 hdds

 

if i buy the single 500 gb drive, the laptop costs 100 $ less. honestly, i'm not paying hp 80 $ for an hdd caddy. if i can get one on ebay or a laptop parts store for less, i would.