HP Spectre 13T-3000

I posted about my temporary work around for this above. I'm pretty happy with how it is running with the CPPC drivers gone.

I too researched and looked at many other Ultrabooks. There are Ultrabooks that have even higher resolution screens, lighter, faster, etc. But I think this one is the very best rounded. Doing everything not just well, but very very well. With the exception of a firmware issue and audio jack hiss of course . The reasonable price is just a nice extra.

 

Hi fellow Notebookreviewers, just wanted to share a few things about my experience with the Spectre 13t 3000 (FHD, 4500U, 802.11 AC, 8 GB DDR). I got mine on Tuesday but haven't had the time to really play around with it. Here are my main thoughts so far:

-Windows 7: I gave it a fair shot to install Win 7 Pro because Win8 is UNBEARABLE. Made a backup flashdrive of the recovery partition, made a flashdrive with Win7 Pro install files, went into bios, checked settings, turned on legacy mode, and rebooted with the flashdrive in. After pressing a key for the setup to start, things were looking good, but then, after clicking on "Install Windows", the setup requires a driver of sort, apparently linked to storage (so controller or SSD itself) because it shows up right as setup is looking at disks during the install process. I don't know where to go from there...

-LED leakage: I have the FHD screen, and it suffers from pretty obvious light leakage during boot and while watching movies. On mine, the leakage is at about 30% of the top length distance (L to R), but also in the left bottom corner and about 30 or 40% of the bottom length distance of the screen. So basically 3 separate "spots". It's not a deal breaker, but it's rather disappointing in my mind.

-I didn't notice the hiss on the headphone jack so far, though I may have heard it last night, so I'll have to investigate further.

-Fan: the fan is quite annoying, but nothing really unbearable. Not a deal breaker for me, but definitely could have been a lot better (like the Macbook Air for example). Sometimes the fan gets a little spastic, it will go to max, stay there for a second, then drop to a quite mode. Even during gaming (Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, which both run well without AA and below FHD), the fan was annoying but only slightly, as its noise gets drowned out by speakers.

-Throttling: Mine came with the latest bios version, and has been good in terms of throttling, whether it's benchmarking or gaming. I'm sure extended stress testing will force throttling, but that's true for just about every ultrabook and laptop out there aside from those specifically made for gaming. In my gaming experience (Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2), the FPS remained stable for a given view and I didn't notice sudden drops or erratic behavior.

Some of these issues are repeats of what others reported, but I think it's important to share so that we can see how widespread they are and what hardware is affected. At this point, I'm 90% sure I am going to send it back to HP, partly because of the screen bleed, but mostly because I have little hope that Win7 can be setup. I hope somebody might have suggestions on that front, because to me Win8 is a dealbreaker.

At this stage, I'm looking at getting an alternative laptop, which is a bit larger but also better in many ways (Win7 Pro as default, better battery life, discrete GPU, VGA and 3 USB, RJ45) but less stylish by a long shot (whatever, my current laptop is a Lenovo T500 so I'm clearly about substance over style...): PROVANTAGE: Acer NX.V8SAA.002 TravelMate TMP645-MG-9419 i7-450U 1.8GHz 8GB 256GB SSD 14" W7P/W8P

 

I've had my Spectre for about a week now, and I did not want to leave the folks here behind, so I am checking back in with my review:

I have the fully loaded model: i7, 2560x1440, 8gb.


Here are the pros:

The body is gorgeous. It's sleek, sexy and cleverly designed. It's also made entirely of aluminum. (The one exception is the hinge, which appears to be made from plastic, but I can't confirm this.)

The fan noise, in my opinion is not a deal-breaker. I have heard it maybe once or twice, and it's perfectly acceptable. I suppose if you have the hearing of a dog it will bother you, otherwise you will be just fine.

The system itself is very snappy. Every task I have done from installing and running MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and other software to unzipping large 1gb+ files has been buttery-smooth and fast. It handles multiple programs like a champ. Of course, I haven't tried video editing or gaming on this thing, but then again, if I was looking to do those types of tasks, I would get a desktop for that.

I tweaked the mouse to my liking, as I didn't particularly like the default settings. I really wasn't digging the right and left area controls, as I was bumping into them accidentally to often, so I simply shut them off. I am also not a fan of "tablet-style" (reverse direction) scrolling with a mousepad, so I changed that too.

I haven't been able to test the battery consecutively to confirm the 7 hours claimed by HP, but my estimate so far is around 4h 30m with highest brightness and running multiple applications that receive push data from the internet. (such as MS Outlook, and an array of the new Windows 8 apps.) It could be that I have yet to fully experience the battery, as sometimes it does require several charges before getting to its full capacity, and it can also be that I am underestimating it because I am not actually clocking the time, but this is my initial estimate.

Here are the cons I have found so far:

The 2560x1440 is not sitting well with certain programs (although Windows itself handles it nicely) Namely, Google Chrome (yes, even after all the tweaking), and Adobe Photoshop (Adobe responded that they are working on this, but as of now, the menus are tiny and barely readable).

Overall, I think that at the price (with the 20% off), this is best in its class.

I should note that I am coming from using a MBP for about 5 years and a desktop Windows machine at work. When it came time to get a new laptop and saw this one, I simply couldn't justify getting a new MBP or MBA when this one runs $500 less and offers the same or better speed.

Overall, I highly recommend this machine.

 

Windows 7 is also the primary reason I am leaning towards the Dell XPS 13 (which also supports Linux), although like the HP Spectre 13T-3000 there are trade offs.

As far as Windows 7 installation goes, the following might help, even though it is referencing a different machine:

Re: Installing Windows 7 on an Spectre XT Ultrabook 15-4010nr Options
‎07-25-2013 07:08 AM

Hi, Adriano:

Yes, your notebook is so new that your W7 installation media may not have the SATA driver for it.

Below is the link the the SATA drivers for the newer Intel Series 7 and 8 chipsets.

The first file listed is for W7 64 bit.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=22676&keyword=Intel+Rapid+Storage+Technology+(Intel+RST)&lang=eng

Download and extract to a usb flash drive, and have that plugged into your PC when you boot from the Windows 7 installation media.

Use the advanced installation options and add the driver. If you check the box to include only compatible drivers that is the easiest thing to do.

 

Oops.. i spilled some apple cider on the keyboard... everything seems to be working fine but I'm not sure what to do now. I flipped it over to help let the keys drain out but im hoping it won't cause any long term effects

 

It does not appear that you have researched this laptop prior to buying, and now you are disgruntled.

If you were looking for discrete graphics, and don't mind having something bigger, then I can't understand why you would buy the Spectre. There are plenty of options out there, including the Envy line and the Lenovo Y510p that offer discrete graphics and a better processor.

Secondly, Windows 8 has been around for a while now. Many people have accepted it, and many are unhappy. A little Google research will show you how to make Windows 8 look and act like Windows 7 in just a few steps.

Frankly, your review is irrelevant here. Your beef is with Windows 8, not with the Spectre.

 

Unfortunately (like in my case), many corporations still *require* Windows 7 (regardless of how much you can make Windows 8 look like Windows 7, drivers can still be an issue). At this point I have an XPS 15 boat anchor that I would love to replace with an ultrabook, but for me at least the HP Spectre 13T-3000 and Dell XPS 13 are the top contenders. Anything that can't run Windows 7, is appreciably more expensive or is larger than these particular form factors is a complete non-starter.

 

Thank you very much for the info, Laptopquestions, I may try this out and report back, but I'm a little hesitant to go all the way because I don't know if HP will mind when/if I send it back. I would restore the original OS but installing Win7 requires wiping the partitions from what I read, so the restore partition will be gone.

Does anybody know what HP's policy is on that front?

 

Yeah, I know the feeling (on the corporate front), although i also prefer Win7 by a long shot as well so in this case the two are aligned.

 

Yes, just read it. Nice work! This isolates the issue to HP firmware incompatibility with the Intel CPPC driver, no doubt. It will be interesting to see if there are any other side effects of the work around with hibernate or other power management scenarios impacted by the absence of CPPC. From the description Intel provides about CPPC it does not seem likely but who knows until you check everything else out. It is interesting that the CPPC driver/software version installed on my system has a release date of 6/30/13 and HP shows their updated version on their website as 10/18/13. However, the CPPC software in both cases is the same build number of 1.0.0.1013
If you needed to add the CPPC software back, would you be able to do that from "add/remove"?

Earlier today I did the HP Synaptic driver update. I now see as been mentioned already, I have the unrecognized Blue Tooth component in device manager. Looks like I need to roll back the Synaptic driver update as there is no update available I can see for the blue tooth drivers. Have you used the HP Recovery Manager to do a driver roll back to an original factory version?

EDIT: Rolled back to the previous factory .17 build from the updated .18 version with no issue through the device manger rollback option. Blue tooth functionality is now restored.

 

I'm sorry you feel that way about my review, but hopefully you're an outlier. My beef is partly with Win8, but also about the Spectre itself (to a lesser extent of course). I can assure you that I researched this laptop as extensively as reasonable given that I expected the coupon would end fairly quickly (though in some cases, i didn't find answers because it's so new).

Dedicated graphics wasn't a requirement, but it's a nice addition given how useful GPUs are becoming these days for many tasks. VGA and RJ45 are both still pretty useful, but not required so the Spectre qualified and was in the right size/screen/price area.

The 2 laptops you mention both don't have FHD screens (a must for me). That's why I ended up settling on the Acer Travelmate P645, because it has it "all" (of the things I want).

What i didn't know about the Spectre was 1) how the keyboard feels (which is OK but a far cry from a Thinkpad or even other HP laptops I've used), 2) the fact that Win7 would be a pain to install (though it might not be, i need to try the proposed solution), 3) how much light leak there is on the FHD panel.

If HP told me I couldn't return it, I'm sure I would be a bit annoyed and then fine with this laptop for the coming 2-4 years, but since I have the option...

 

I have multi-booted many systems in the past (Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8.x and Linux) and have never been required to wipe out any existing partitions. That said, I always create (by re-sizing) any existing partition to make room for the new one so I still have the original system intact. If at some some point I want to get rid of one of the operating systems, I blast away that particular partition and re-size the remaining ones to use the freed space.

In all of these cases, the restore partition does not have to be touched and can be used to restore the system back to its factory state. This partition is always separate from that used by the operating system.

 

Yeah, I've done this many times over the years, most recently with Win7 and various Linus distros. Never had any problems, even mixing various partition formats, but I had read somewhere on an HP forum (from tech support guy) that the partition should be cleared.

I honestly didn't intend on doing it, and i'm glad to get a second opinion that agrees

I'll probably install Win7 tomorrow, though I hope HP won't screw me on the 21 day return (i'll of course restore Win8 stock if I resend it, but UEFI tracks all these things, like enabling legacy mode).

 

In case it might help, here is a link to downgrading the Dell XPS 13 to Windows 7 (although many would consider it a upgrade ), which should be similar. Assuming basic booting into Windows 7 succeeds, hopefully most of the other drivers can be tracked down.

 

I still haven’t tested hibernate too much with the CPPC, but sleep seems to work just fine. The lack of CPPC doesn’t seem to cause any ill effects for me and the battery life is great and more importantly, the CPU clock speeds are working right. You can remove CPPC via the add/remove programs, to get it back you can just download it from HP.
Intel Collaborative Processor Performance Control (CPPC) Driver - HP Spectre 13t-3000 CTO Ultrabook | HP® Support

I even tried CPPC drivers from Lenovo, they are all pretty much the same thing from Intel and all seem to have compatibility issues with HP system firmware. Installing this will bring CPPC back just like how it was when you first got your Spectre new so it is safe to play around with this.

I mentioned in my previous post that the only issue left with this fix was that turboboost seems disabled if you used the “Restart” button in windows. My fix was to use Throttlestop and set multiplier to your maximum turbo multiplier (30 for the i7 4500U), hit the turn on button and save settings and exit, you don’t need to have the multiplier checkbox selected. This unlocks the turboboost setting on battery. In order to automate this, I used the task scheduler to automatically start Throttlestop every time the system starts. I also edited the .ini file in Throttlestop and added the line “ExitTime=1”. This causes throttlestop to start on every boot up and auto exit after 1 second.
With these changes (remove CPPC and configure throttlestop to autostart), I have no throttle issues of any kind and everything behaves as expected. Remember that the use of throttlestop alone isn’t enough to fix this issue. Unless you remove CPPC, you sometimes get the situation where your multiplier will get stuck. Even if you change this multiplier to say 30, you just get stuck at 3 Ghz and your CPU won’t slow down even during idle, not the right behavior there.

 

Yeah, if these drivers you linked earlier work, I'm pretty sure the rest of the install and boot should go fine. Drivers will probably be a mixed bag, lots of Intel hardware where drivers exist, but then there are a few things like Beats Audio/sound card and light sensor that might not exist or might need some coercing.

 

I've asked this before but didn't get a response : how /where do I find my current BIOS version ?
I would also like to know which anti virus program has the least impact on speed ? Is activating the preloaded McAfee going to slow down startup from sleep ?

 

Also, at the risk if sounding ignorant , where is everyone getting all their processor speed measurements re : throttling issue ? Is there a built in app on this notebook or is this via a downloadable third party app ?

 

Windows Task manager will show them, if you choose the Performance details. Also CPU-Z (search for a download) is commonly used to display this info.

I was finally able to download (from Intel's website) and properly install the Intel ProSet Wireless drivers version 16.60. I used the 'full' version (a driver-only version is also supplied; maybe the full version supports widi stuff??). It is probably coincidence but I disabled realtime virus scanning in a last ditch attempt to get this driver installed (I've never really seen a scenario where that caused me problems before) and it worked.

Don't know if this will have any effect on the BSOD on resume from hibernate (though I haven't experienced it yet since getting this level to properly install). The link to their driver update utility is provided at the bottom of the add/remove programs screen when you highlight the installed Intel drivers.

Their utility is actually pretty handy for checking the latest level of driver vs. what is installed in your machine for the oddball chipset drivers. I didn't have any luck (yet) in getting their Bluetooth driver to install (it's a later version than what is on the hp.com site). There is also an updated graphics driver which I haven't tried to install.

 

If you go to the manual driver search and look up the dual band 7260AC adapter the driver installation includes the Bluetooth. Then, if you go back and do the automatic driver search, it will show that there's a wifi-specific driver update that will install without taking the Bluetooth 4.0 feature away. I'm not sure what the PROSet does, as there is no link on my machine after install and no utilities, like in Windows 7.

 

Mine was like that when I first got it, but now it's fine. I think the hinge just needed to break in a little.

 

My personal favorite has been HWiNFO64 because 1) it doesn't have to be installed at all (just saves time), but most importantly, 2) it lets you easily log various CPU and GPU variables into a .csv file for easy analysis in Excel. Start logging at the beginning of a gaming/burn in session and come back later for analysis

 

Well, regarding the Win7 downgrade and the 21 days return policy of HP, I contacted the sales team at HP today and they told me point blank that HP will not accept the machine in the context of the 21 days return policy if the OS has been downgraded. Of course, this might not be true (in my experience tech support is notorious at contradicting itself) but given this, I'm glad I didn't do it yet.

That also means I won't be able to provide more info on the process/challenges. Has anybody else who decided to keep their Spectre gone through with the downgrade? If so, can you share about the experience?

 

So I'm running into an issue trying to update the graphics drivers... I uninstalled the HP drivers, both from the add/remove programs dialog as well as from the device manager, but when I reboot I end up with the exact same version as what is available on the HP site and the Intel drivers fail to install telling me that I need to get the version from my manufacturer. Is there a step i'm missing?

 

That's fairly standard. They're not going to accept the machine back if it's not in "like new" condition. If you create a recovery disk you shouldn't have an issue restoring it though.

 

Agreed, though I assume that any machine returned will have its SSD fully wiped (at a minimum) so which OS it came with has little meaning to HP. But anyways... I suspect that HP can still tell what went on through the UEFI logs, even after the original OS is restored.

Or am I just being paranoid? I know that the log in the UEFI already reports that the computer was loaded into legacy mode (but that could be explained as a rookie just playing around with the BIOS, maybe?)

 

Thanks for relaying this summary and solution. Sounds like the way to proceed to until HP can catch up :thumbsup:
I have not used Throttlestop but I will download it and get this set up. Perhaps the tech you spoke with was short on knowledge and the next bios update will fix. It all comes down to a really basic issue of proper CPU performance which is why I have a hard time understanding how this could have gotten past their basic checks before it went to production.

 

No problem

I think for most, just getting rid of CPPC for now should be enough to resolve the issue. If you demand having turboboost capability on battery you can do the throttlestop thing too, but not a huge deal honestly. Not going above 1.8 Ghz on battery isn't too noticeable for most uses and does help battery.

I too am a bit shocked that this made it past HP's validation. I of course don't know exactly what is wrong at the firmware level but I can't imagine this being too difficult for HP to fix. I hope for a quick and easy fix so that people don't need to go around applying hacks and bandaid solutions like this one. I suspect HP does know about this issue and are probably working on a fix, I don't have much faith that the techs have any clue about what HP engineers know and what they are currently doing.

 

Some more tidbits....

HP warns consumers: Don't downgrade Win8 PCs to Win7

HP has since contacted us to let us know it has revised the language in its Windows 8 FAQ post. The post now reads as follows:

Yes, customers can downgrade to Windows 7 and you will remain protected by HP product warranties.

However, HP has not tested all Windows 8 platforms for Windows 7 and we may not have your particular drivers available.

If you choose to install a different operating system (OS) and have a problem that requires HP support, you may need to restore the original OS to fully diagnose your problem

Readers will note, however, that while the new language certainly sounds friendlier, there has been no substantive change in HP's policy toward downgrades.



In the end, HP needs to restore the Hard drive to its original state prior to reselling. Leaving customer information on a resold system is a big no-no.

That said making your system a guinea pig might be more hassle than it is worth .

 

@ sootnsmoke: Thanks for your many helpful collaborations on this thread. I'm not sure if you're just a fair minded person inclined to give everyone the benefit of the doubt (for which my cynical soul feels nothing but admiration!) or if you've just not experienced the trials and tribulations of buyers of new models of consumer electronic products particularly laptop computers. To answer your query, there is no evidence that HP typically applies "basic checks before [new products] go into production!" In fact, it has been suggested by many in the past that the likes of HP, Dell and Asus - among others - see the buyers of the first 3-6 months' production of new models as informal "beta testers!" I think this is part of the reason HP has relatively generous return/replace/refund policies and are pretty liberal in even going beyond their written policies. This all said, if we're down to little more than a BIOS update to deal with throttling (the bane of every small box laptop maker's existence), I think the unusually high early build quality and performance out of the box suggests that HP - for the Spectre line, at the least - has been upping their game tremendously. This product, now that I've received mine (sorry, only spent enough time to learn there is a lot to like and found very little that gives me more than minor annoyances, but I will contribute my experience, benchmarks, etc. as soon as time permits), seems to be built to near Apple levels of quality and precision and, judging from the totality of owners' experiences shared on this thread, has a comparable dead/impaired on arrival percentage - which is to say, excellent! (Disclosure: I am a dyed in the wool Hater of that certain brand of electronic devices but that doesn't stop me from admiring their design and manufacturing prowess and when I say a product's build quality and freedom from major defects from day one, that is high praise indeed!)

@ stackPointer2.0: It's hard to give you all the credit you are due for your superstar analysis and resolution of the throttling problem! I hope others will follow me in giving you a much-deserved +1 rep for all the help you have provided us and how many potentially nervous "returners" you have converted to confident, happy owners with virtually no significant complaints, plus the assurance that there is nothing "seriously wrong" with their Spectre 13Ts, and even those who feel they really need to have their cpus spool up to nearly 3.0gHz in turbo mode - NOW - can achieve that by simply uninstalling their Intel CPPC software for pedal-to-the-metal plugged in performance, then a little more fancy footwork with Throttlestop to achieve the same under battery power. And to think that this is just a "temporary" wor)karound that you came up with when clearly a fairly simple firmware update should be easily capable of "curing" the entire problem - for my money (and time) I'd be just as happy to leave things as they are, unless there are unforeseen problems that may come down the road with CPPC disabled. Which leads me to the only points here that are not just congratulations and gratitude: 1) Remind me again what CPPC does and what its disabling could affect? 2) Was it you who said that letting the cpu throttle at 1.7gHz on battery is the way some mfrs design ultrabooks of this class to perform for the sake of power efficiency at largely no noticeable effect on performance for tasks typically done on an ultrabook running on battery? Well, even if it wasn't you who said that, I am inclined to believe it is not an uncommon industry practice, (especially with ultrabooks, that trade heavily on their tested "battery life") and I'm planning to follow that approach myself and not do the Throttlestop hack, as it has always been my practice to reduce maximum processor to well under 100% on battery for the "power saver" profile, so you might say it is already set up to do that without my even having to go into power saver mode. Thoughts?

Again, many thanks for all of the awesome contributions so many of the members of this forum have made, and continue to make. I have been a fairly regular NBR-er for over 4 years now and have participated in threads for every major laptop purchase I have made and some of them - notably the Sony Vaio "Z" forums - attracted some very talented and generous folks who raised the level of performance of these "classic" models to higher and higher levels, with BIOS and registry hacks and so much advice for software settings, non-OEM drivers, etc. It made it so that you felt like you had an extraordinary resource to help you quickly solve all problems encountered and a resource to learn a great deal about both hardware and software. Well, this thread is off to an even more impressive start and one of the key differences is that, with just as much knowledge and sophistication in certain areas, the people in this thread seem like the kind of people I would like to know IRL, that are just trying in earnest to give or receive help (I know only enough to be a little dangerous technologically, but I do have a great deal of experience dealing with what you might call the business issues - getting treatment you deserve, getting more than "policy" necessarily entitles you to and, in particular, the ins and outs of dealing with HP's culture.) What I'm saying - in no more than 5,000 words! is that this thread, and - you members - are what convinced me to buy a computer I really didn't "need" (same can be said for most of the dozen or so I've puchased in the past 2-3 yrs!) but I knew I wanted to get with the program (unintended pun) with W8 and to be a little more "future proofed" in my daily driver's hardware. But, truly, I didn't just buy a computer, I bought into a community and that is perhaps the thing that I'm most excited about.

To sum it up, if I had any concerns at all about this model because of some of the initial problems reported I quickly shed all such concerns upon seeing the awesome community that was developing here, and that feeling just keeps growing.

 

For those of us whose machines came with BIOS F.09, HP have posted the F.13 update!
HP Notebook System BIOS Update (Intel Processors) - HP Spectre 13t-3000 CTO Ultrabook | HP® Support

 

I was wondering that too; I just noticed there is a link to "Intel PROSet Wireless Tools" in the Network and Sharing Center. It provides a few interesting utilities (wireless adapter packet statistics, diagnostic, and event logging). Shows things like adapter power usage, transmit errors, etc.

 

Thank you for your kind words lovelaptops. I’m glad you’ve found my posts helpful. I know how frustrating it can be to have issues with systems like these, so I feel that pooling our knowledge and experiences together in a community like this is the best way to go.
As for CPPC. This is how intel describes it:
“A new technology based on the ACPI 5.0 specification that dynamically modulates performance vs. active application power. It reduces active power to deliver better battery life and allows deeper lower power states to be reached (compared to prior generations of Intel Core processor products).”
Clearly it is a combination of a driver running in the OS and the lower level firmware somehow working together to better manage the processors power state. Since it is part of ACPI 5.0, it is relatively new and I am unfortunately not too familiar with it. I suppose I could learn more about this by reading the ugly and wordy ACPI spec here: ACPI

I am quite confident that removing CPPC is very unlikely to have any concerning consequences. Sure I would rather have a system with a working implementation of this feature than one without, but in the case of the Spectre, it doesn’t work half the time or more and ends up completely ruining the processor power management. So between no CPPC and a broken implementation of CPPC that causes the processors multiplier to lock, I would take no CPPC 10 out of 10 times. I have found my battery life is excellent without CPPC.
I was not the one who made the comment that the CPU throttling on battery was deliberate but I do agree with this claim. Once you remove CPPC on the spectre you will find that the multiplier locking problem will be gone (the processor is no longer just stuck at one frequency). On AC power, the processor behaves 100% correctly and can idle at its lowest frequency or turbo to its very limit. On battery, SOMETIMES it will not have access to turboboost (so it gets a maximum of 1.8 Ghz on the i7 4500U), but this isn’t always the case. If you do a full shut down and power on the system via the power button (as opposed to a restart from Windows), even on battery you can reach the turboboost. The strange and inconsistent nature of turboboost on battery on this machine leads me to be a little skeptical that this was all by design. In my opinion though, even if turboboost never works on battery, it is ok with me. I would rather have the extra battery life and many other laptops implement such policies on battery anyway. For those who are dying for turboboost, you always do have throttlestop.
My recommendation for most users is to just uninstall CPPC for the time being and be done with it. When HP’s official fix comes around, it should be very easy to get CPPC back and flash a new BIOS. All of this is available for download on the HP website.

 

StackPointer 2.0 -
Thought I would mentioned that I was looking at the configurable settings associated with the "Power Plans". My machine at the time had been started from the power button first thing this morning when I was reviewing the settings. I have not uninstalled the Intel CPPC software yet. Well, I found that there is a CPPC "aggressiveness" setting that proportions how heavily weighted CPU performance vs battery conservation is set at. Did you happen to work with those settings on your system? The CPPC impact can be enabled and disabled there through a pull down menu. The CPPC aggressiveness setting for operation under battery power was set to 100% in the Power Saver profile and CPU performance would cap at 1.8 as discussed. At 100%, full weighing is toward battery conservation. As soon as I reduced the CPPC aggressiveness setting to lower percentages, turbo boost would respond accordingly while operating under battery power. I have not spent enough time with this yet to see if it is consistent or varies according to system power start/restart method yet. Let me know your thoughts.

 

I actually saw those settings in the power profiles. At the time I encountered them I was already stuck at 1.7 Ghz and changing the settings to 0 or 100% aggressiveness had no impact for me. I believe the high performance profile by default is at 0% already. I could be wrong, but altering those settings for me did not resolve the issue.

 

I saw an i5 on geekbench that was scoring as high as the i7's. Anyone have any safe tips to get some extra performance?

 

Using the HP default power plan I don't seem to be experiencing throttling on my i7. I haven't run any benchmarks, but using the Task Manager I can see my CPU speed hitting ~3GHz when in heavy use. This is with the F.13 BIOS and keeping cool sense installed but disabled.

Does anyone have any more instructions about getting the official Intel graphics drivers to install? I'm having occasional issues with Diablo 3 (desktop being messed up/some things not rendering after I exit) and I wanted to try the updated drivers to see if I could fix it...

 

stackPointer2.0, can you check two things for me? I have uninstalled CPPC and, like you've shown, it seems to be sticking at the 1.8GHz under battery power. I am still noticing CPPC errors, however, in my system log. Can you see if you're showing the same? There might still be something left over, even after uninstall of the driver/program. Also, one possible reason that "sometimes" the laptop shows 3GHz under battery power is if you unplug it from the AC. I might try later but one thing to test is that if your computer is plugged in and working properly and you remove the plug the turboboost function may stick until the next time the computer restarts (or perhaps wakes from sleep)? I think I read about this happening on other laptops in the past.

 

Thank you. I don't know how I missed it but it worked. Still not as convenient as having button in case of long selection, but we have what we have.

One more comment about laptop itself. After using it for a week I still like it however, I see a spot in the center of trackpad . I don't care much but it looks like they covered trackpad with some sort of paint.

 

Here's how I did it, and someone else posted on it a while back too. Uninstall the Intel Graphics Driver program (although I would download the file from HP in case it doesn't work). Go into Control Panel and open device manager. Find the Display Adapter and manually uninstall, choosing to delete the driver if prompted. Restart the computer. You'll know it worked because Windows will load the generic driver and your screen will be very bright. Go to the Intel site and navigate to the automatically detect feature (you'll need Java and use a browser other than IE...as IE didn't work with that java applet). It should discover your graphics card and install the most current ones. You can also manually find the drivers under the Intel HD 4400 option but the first time I tried it it didn't want to work. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm using Intel's graphics drivers and wifi drivers. I also updated the Rapid Storage driver. I noticed that there was an updated MEI driver but it said it was for desktops so I didn't install it.

 

I've kind of noticed that too, but not in the center, I've noticed a little discoloration already in the left and right click areas. I used some gentle electronics cleanser and it made it better but didn't completely go away. Maybe someone here has a recommendation for a gentle cleanser for removing finger prints and stains from the trackpad.

 

Did anyone test either an i5 or European model yet? Does it behave in the same way with respect to throttling?

 

I have the i5. I've seen similar random frequency lock issues (not strictly a throttle, as in limit, but really a failure to properly dynamically adjust the CPU clocks in response to workload-- sometimes the cores will be idle yet still stuck running at a frequency higher than they should be, so battery life suffers.)

 

Unfortunately as soon as I reboot after removing the driver it reinstalls the same driver... I'm not getting the generic Windows driver, I'm getting the HP driver back.

 

I know that you ultimately were able to buy the 13T with the 20% coupon. Congratulations!

I am re-posting this comment as a "public service" to all would-be new buyers of the great Spectre 13T. Pardon the underlined typing; I really want this to stand out:

To all prospective buyers of the HP Spectre 13T: For the foreseeable future (this being written on 1/20/14) Do not be discouraged if the 20% off coupon appears to have expired (again!) when you decide to pull the trigger It will either reappear within a day or two, or you will be able to get the discount honored by calling in the order and asking the sales agent for the discount,

Not only has the coupon code been reinstated already half a dozen times in the past two months, after at most a couple of days turned off, but HP has long had a policy and practice of being very generous with discounts when you call in your order, particularly if a long-standing discount appears to have just expired. (It won't hurt to create a small but moving story of what happened in your life to prevent you from completing the order while the discount was still in place. ) If you happen to get a sales agent who won't budge, say thank you, hang up, redial and you're likely to have better luck the second time.

Good luck. We welcome you to join our "club" here on NBR

 

Why not just disable it in the power profile you are using?

Thanks, Jim

 

Sorry to post a few issues in dribs and drabs as I encounter them, but I'd like to nip them in the bud and find out if they are common, easily remedied, or not common or fixable, and possible reasons to consider a return if they bug me enough. I will submit a complete "review" posting as soon as I have enough time to put it through all its paces.

1.) Track pad issues:

a) I have the palm rejection set at max and 0 seconds for it to take effect, but still I'm finding my cursor flying all over the place in the middle of typing.

b) this sounds petty, but we all have some OCD in us when I tap on the trackpad to register a click (but not trying to actually press to click) it makes a cheap sounding noise, as if there is too much space between the underside of the trackpad and the surface it makes contact with, even with a light tap. It's just an unpleasant and cheap sounding noise, when I use tapping as a way to type quietly, as the keyboard largely permits otherwise. It also just feels very $400 Toshiba-like!

c) Scrolling seems awfully slow at its fastest. With the settings set to the fastest speed and the highest level of coasting it still is an annoyingly lengthy process to get from the top to near bottom of a long web page. Can't remember last time I had a Synaptics touchpad that did not "fly" when all the scrolling speed settings were on max.

2) Intel WIDI. I use Widi a great deal for wirelessly projecting video to my HDTV. I can't find any Intel Widi drivers nor a way to launch Widi by searching the computer. Does this wifi card (7260AAC) not support Widi? Do I need to download drivers from the Intel site?

3) Screen brightness. I love every aspect of this screen except its maximum brightness, which seems a lot lower than expected from a modern high end IPS screen, lower by a good measure than the 340 nit spec written in the owner's manual. By eye I'd say it looks more like about 225-250 nit based on many screens I own that have been measured on notebookcheck or Anandtech. I have the QHD screen and I have the ambient light sensor disabled.

That's it! Pretty good list of the worst things I've encountered on a new laptop that's a new model. Still, #1 could become a deal breaker if I can't fix it, #2 is also pretty much a deal breaker if I can't get it to work and #3 is just a disappointment, not bad enough to reject the product, but I'd love to hear that some find their screens to be extremely bright at max settings while others have my experience, suggesting either that there is variation and it's worth rolling the dice for a replacement. Alternatively, might it be that the QHD screen is not as bright as the FHD? Typically it takes brighter backlighting to "push past" high pixel density in LCD displays, so if the backlighting of both screens is the same, the FHD is likely to be much brighter. I don't mind a little "backlight bleed" if that is the price to pay with the FHD screen if it delivers a much brighter display.

Any feedback appreciated. Thanks, Jeff

 

Here's what happened when I tried doing this. After I uninstalled the Intel Graphics Driver program and the Display adapter in device manager (I did choose the 'delete drivers from computer') and restarted, I did get the 'bright screen' and noticed that the display adapter was no longer in the device manager. However, by the time I was able to get the new Intel driver installation underway (by the way, for me IE worked just fine with the Intel driver detect utility; I didn't have to install Java-- just allow the activeX control when prompted) I heard the 'new hardware discovered' sound and the machine automatically re-installed the previous level of driver. This was followed by the screen going back to its original brightness, and sometime later I got the message saying the device driver wasn't validated for my machine. I tried several times (even canceling the unwanted automatic driver re-install as soon as it started) but I couldn't get around this behavior. I even went into the advanced system settings for hardware and disabled the 'automatically get the device app and info from your manufacturer' to no avail.

The only way I was able to finally get the latest version of the Intel drivers to install was to download the .zip file, extract them, and update the driver manually by going through the 'have disk' path (I couldn't even let it search for the driver on my machine-- it still insisted that the best version was already installed). Anyway, I think the hassle was worth it. I notice that this version (.3345) allows PSR (panel self refresh) to be enabled, which I believe is a feature new to the QHD display technology with embedded DisplayPort 1.3. I didn't recall this option on the earlier driver; it should allow for even better battery life when the screen display is static. And to top it off, I'm no longer getting the "missing entry in Btmshellex.dll" error message on startup with the updated Intel Bluetooth driver... strange, but I'll take it.

 

I find the trackpad does take a little getting used to; max momentum doesn't seem fast enough for my taste either. I don't really have a problem with stray cursor movements while typing with the default rejection settings; maybe its just the way I type. I allso notice the somewhat hollow sounding clickpad noise; again, I'm getting accustomed to it since every other aspect of the hardware is better than expected.

The QHD screen can't be pushed as bright as my Lenovo T400s, but I'm OK with that as long as the battery life is as insanely good as I've experienced recently; again personal preference comes into play as I always cranked down the display brightness to get decent unplugged runtime. Even with this machine I'm happy with the brightness set at near half max (haven't tried using it outdoors yet, of course).

Re: widi, go into the modern UI and just type 'wireless'. It should come up with a 'connect to a wireless display' item. I don't use widi but I was able to get my machine into the 'searching' state.

 

Regarding the clickpad having a bit of a "tap" when you tap on it, that's fairly common with clickpads. I've used a Y510p and an Inspiron 15 7000 recently and they both did that. I think it's just the nature of a clickpad vs a touchpad + buttons.