*HP dv6t & dv7t Select Edition / Quad Edition (6XXX series) Owners Lounge*

Just issued a return on my new dv7tqe so I can get the one with the 2 gig Radeon 6770m and the Full HD 1080p screen.

They are giving me a full refund and paying for return shipping as well (apparently this is normal practice).

 

So, I'm a pessimist and could be wrong...but I'm gonna say no.

I think historically June and July are the more (if not most) expensive times to buy as back-to-school season creates a large coherent demand and need not seen at other times of the year. There are great promotions, but not quite as good as say September or late winter/early spring. For example, the dv6t had a better deal (33%) in April and January ($500 off).

The XBOX promotion also makes me doubt new promotions as it's still unclear who is paying for the xbox. The limited scope of the promotion (and it's front ending) suggests that the retailer has to provide a significant sum to participate. This intimates to me that the retailers won't offer other significant discounts (at least the ones participating...others like Lenovo, well have to see).

All that to say, I think if you need a laptop by the time the summer is out. Buy now. You can always return it later (if the return policy allows). Or wait until September...or the release of the Ivy bridge.

 

Glad you noticed that. I'll definitely be sure to make sure mine has the quad core processor in it once it's delivered. Mine says it's being built as a "select edition" but has the quad core processor in it...

 

Since you all brought this up, I went back and checked my order - it says select edition as well. I am going to be really unhappy if it arrives and it is not correct. I am going to do a chat or phone sales (since mine was a phone order) to check on it.

 

So I had my chat...the person told me that they are doing away with the quad edition name and they are calling all the dv6t's select edition. I asked her why the website showed "dv6t quad edition" until the order is place and she did not have an answer.

She assured me that the specifications will be correct - beats audio, lightscribe, etc.

 

Good to hear. That's essentially what they had told me, that my laptop would be on par with the "quad edition".

I think it's probably for the better to just have one dv6t and let people customize it as they wish, rather than all the different versions (which can be confusing on their webpage). The only benefit to the quad edition would have been the "ready to ship" laptops that were prebuilt instead of requiring a three week custom build.

 

They do still have a quick ship model.

 

Let us know what you find on this.

 

Actually, issues of excessive heat have surfaced. Some have even reported it here on this site. I am sure you will come across them after alittle searching; perhaps "googling". And money was never a concern with my purchase. Hell - in addition to shelling out $1700 (includes the 33% coupon, I used), I also bundled it with about $1300USD of addtional accessories. I mean, really... this is a high-end performace system to begin with. If you intend to "cheap-out" on any aspect of it, then you ought to be looking elsewhere. The display, in it's current 1366x768 iteration now is itself HD by today's standards. But these are just my own preferences. I just really like the idea of a quiet and cool system that can pretty much handle damn near anything I decide to throw at it. Perhaps if gaming where my thing, I might be alittle more concerned with onboard disk space and higher resolutions. But no. Actually the biggest let down for me was the lack of a backlit keyboard. I can live with that too.

 

Don't worry, it is common practice by HP to label the Qe as a select edition...

oops, didn't refresh my browser before i submitted this ha ha...

 

I am looking into buying the Dv6t qe with the 30% coupon. These are the specs I have:
dark umber
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
2nd generation Intel(R) Quad Core(TM) i7-2630QM (2.0 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) w/Turbo Boost up to 2.9 GHz
1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD 6770M Graphics [HDMI, VGA]
FREE Upgrade to 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
640GB 7200RPM Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
No Additional Office Software
FREE Upgrade to Norton Internet Security(TM) 2011 - 15 Month Subscription (activation required)
30% OFF! 9-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery (over-sized) - Up to 9.75 hours of battery life +++
15.6" diagonal High Definition HP BrightView LED Display (1366x768)
FREE Upgrade to Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone and HP SimplePass Fingerprint Reader
Intel 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R) with Wireless Display Support
Standard Keyboard
HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

Other forums I posted on just led to Hp hate or overheating concerns. So I decided to try an Hp owners forum to hopefully get some actual valid input from people that own this machine.

Are there any issues that are a major deal breaker for this laptop?

Yes I know I have the 720p screen selected, I have astigmatism and my eyes are sensitive to light, so I usually have it on 20-30% brightness anyways.
Is the 720p monitor THAT bad or will it work for my situation?

I am planning to use this for college/gaming.

How is the battery life with the 9 cell battery using the integrated graphics?

Does it heat up a lot while playing games to an uncomfortable/harmful to the systems longevity amount?

Are you overall satisfied with the build quality of the laptop and would recommend the purchase of the Dv6t qe?

 

The HP 90W is lighter, but not much smaller. It is still a brick. There are, however, many slim 90W out there that have a USB port as well that go for under $50.

 

If they're sensitive to light, then you may be able to turn the brightness of the 1080p screen down, but are they sensitive to tiny text as well?

Though the 1080p's lowest brightness setting may still be brighter than the 720p's lowest. Nobody knows for sure since nobody has the screen yet.

 

Does anyone here have experience with OCZ SSDs? I'm seeing their 180GB and 240GB drives for $290 and $375 with little searching. The specs say it's 1.1cm tall. I assume the dv7 will fit this?

I plan to buy one of the above for a primary OS drive, and don't want the trouble of purchasing a caddy for a cable. It seems the simplest way to do this would be to order a dual drive combo from the store, then fit my choice drives [and RAM] when it arrives.

P.S.: Few questions: How many RAM slots does the dv7tqe have? Also, has anyone run Ubuntu or any other linux distro on theirs? What did you do about graphics switching? Battery life under linux?

 

Deal is on again from 6pm-midnight PDT today (9pm-3am EDT). $24.99 with free shipping. Some reviewers complained of pre-torn handles. Nothing wrong with the two I bought five weeks ago, other than the hidden buckle is sort of fiddly to operate under the flap. The buckle is still faster than a zipper would have been.

Newegg.com - Wenger Black 17" MYTHOS Computer Case Model GA-7496-06F00

Newegg.com - Shell Shocker Deal. Exclusive Jaw Dropping Savings on PC Components and Electronics.

 

Picking one up ! Thanks !

 

Did you end up doing the Minimum Restore Image? If so how much space did it eat up om your drive?

 

Thanks. But do you have a password on the bios, or just Windows? What I was asking, is there an option in the bios to let you reboot with no bios password. I'm talking about a bios/hard drive password lock, NOT the Win7 password. I like to lock the HD rather the OS. On Dell's, there's an option to let you reboot with no bios password required again. Of course, this option doesn't work if using a Windows password. In particular... the dv7tqe.

 

How do you get it for that price with free shipping?

 

By waiting for the sale to start at 6PM pacific time.
If the $24.99 doesn't show on the product page, go to the Shell Shocker page.

 

I played with that before I returned mine.

There are 4 partitions on the drive

199MB Reserved
16.7GB Recovery
OS remainder, depends on drive size
103MB Tools

25.2GB Minimal Recovery
32.3GB Factory Recovery

I didn't have Blu-ray so you would add maybe a hundred megs for that software.

 

I was talking about the BIOS(UEFI) password. It unfortunately asks you on a restart. There were two options in the BIOS:

Power on Password and Administrator password.

The Power on Password when set would ask at power up and restart.

The Administrator password was just to get into the BIOS.

I had the DV6TQE BIOS ver F07 but I would guess the DV7 would be the same, maybe someone else will check.

 

Hello all! Quick question : Why does the SD card reader on my new DV7T QE not "see"/read my 16 gig SDHC cards, but sees/reads my regular 2 gig SD cards? DO I need to get some kind of update? How do I do this/ check this? Thanks in advance, this is stressing me out to no end!

 

I'm not sure but it could be a driver issue. Do you have the the latest drivers? If not I recommend going to HPs website and download the latest one and see if that fixes your problem.

 

So if I am understanding you correctly the minimal Recovery of 25.2GB would be added to the 16.7 Recovery Partition and the 199MB Reserved plus 103MB tools for a grand total of 42GB. I an assuming that after I make the recovery disk set I no longer need the 16.7 Recovery partition and can delete it. What is the 199MB reserved and the 103MB tool partitions? Can they be deleted also without effect?

 

I'm told that regardless of drivers some hardware can't address the big cards. I hope that this isn't the case with the readers we have in these units.

 

Yea I definitely hope this is not the case. That would not be very cool if I couldnt pop in my High Capacity card from my camera to dl the pics. Would have to dig to find the cord stashed away somewhere in my room.

 

I was able to use my dv6tqe to read the 32gb card I use in my camera with no problem. I was anticipating problems since I have never been able to use the reader on my old laptop so I was pleasantly surprised.

 

That be weird, if they don't work. I know for sure the older models can read the 32GB SDHC cards.

Are you using Windows 7 SP1? If not. Download details: Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB976422)

 

Yes, if you keep the default partition layout. I just put the different partition sizes there for anyone who was curious.

The 199MB Reserved partition is a Windows 7 thing, it usually defaults to 100MB though. That reserved partition is actually your active partition that contains the boot files. You can use Disk Management to assign a drive letter to the reserved partition if you want to look at the files on there(hidden files). It contains a boot folder with your BCD datastore and the bootmgr file.

I believe some of the UEFI utilities look for a partition with the label of HP_TOOLS and uses it for certain things. Here's a quote from one of the downloads on HP's site:

"HP BIOS Update must be run from a FAT or FAT32 partition with a volume name of "HP_TOOLS". This installer will give you the option to install to the HDD or a USB drive. If you install to the HDD and the HP_TOOLS partition is not present, the installer will prompt you to create the HP_TOOLS partition. If you install to a USB drive, the installer will rename the partition on the USB drive to HP_TOOLS. If you use a custom image, you can create the HP_TOOLS partition manually with type FAT32 and make the volume name HP_TOOLS. Caution - The UEFI partition is not protected and can therefore be deleted. - Backing up the computer using the Windows® Vista® Complete PC Backup does not back up the UEFI partition. For these reasons, HP recommends that you do not place additional data on the UEFI partition. Because the partition is not backed up, corruption or failure of the partition will result in loss of all data on the partition, plus loss of UEFI functionality. You can find more information on www.hp.com/go/techcenter/startup"

There's all kinds of scary stuff there, but it's *probably* safe to delete the partition. I did for my SSD install and there weren't issues. I would likely need to use a USB drive to install those types of updates though. If you have recovery disks it should be safe to remove the recovery partition and reclaim that space for your main OS partition.

 

There is a Windows Update for both the card reader drivers and for Windows itself to support 32GB and larger cards. I'd definitely try that. It's probably included in SP1 like Falco152 suggested.

Download details: Update for Windows 7 (KB976422)

KB976422

 

Hopefully someone else can check to see if their SDHC cards work. Would be a real -off if the hardware on our NEW HIGH-END laptops could not read these cards, which are now basically STANDARD cards for newer cameras!

 

Great information and nice link. Thanks for the info and taking the time to respond.

 

Just ordered my dv7 yesterday!

Win 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
i7-2630
2GB 6770
8GB RAM
1920x1080
Blu-Ray

1 6 Cell and 1 9 Cell
LoJack 4 Year
3 Year Accidental Warranty


All for under $1500 including tax!

 

Hey guys, I just ordered the following system. I was wondering if anybody could post some temps.

HP Pavilion dv6t Select Edition customizable Notebook PC
• steel gray
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit with Service Pack 1
• 2nd generation Intel(R) Quad Core(TM) i7-2720QM (2.2 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) w/Turbo Boost up to 3.3 GHz
• 1GB GDDR5 Radeon(TM) HD 6770M Graphics [HDMI, VGA]
• 8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• 640GB 7200RPM Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• No Additional Office Software
• FREE Upgrade to Norton Internet Security(TM) 2011 - 15 Month Subscription (activation required)
• 6-Cell Lithium-Ion Battery (standard) - Up to 5.5 hours of battery life +++
• 15.6" diagonal Full HD HP Anti-glare LED Display (1920 x 1080)
• FREE Upgrade to Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
• HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone and HP SimplePass Fingerprint Reader
• Intel 802.11b/g/n WLAN and Bluetooth(R) with Wireless Display Support
• Standard Keyboard
• HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope

I am really excited to get this, but am a bit worried about high temps. I currently have the dv4-1313dx, and it gets really really hot and if the one I just ordered is anyhwere near that I am just going to mess around with it for a few days and return in. I would really appreciate if ya'll could post some temps, idle and after taxing, and perhaps just after using the internet for a bit.

Even anecdotal evidence would be appreciated. I ordered this over the Sager NP5165 because the Sager is apparently terrible at heat dissipation, I am wondering if my system is quite as bad.

 

Thanks for taking the time and checking. Wish it would work though... it really helps when rebooting remotely.

So these newer laptops have UEFI's now? That's cool! Might be nice to see a few snapshots of it.

 

Didn't mean to cause confusion, I was just using the terminology from that particular update....

HP Bios Update UEFI HP Pavilion dv6t-6000 CTO Quad Edition Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

You would need an EFI System Partition on your boot drive if it was an UEFI motherboard. I don't know if it is(or will be with an update) capable of a UEFI boot mode like some of the Elitebooks. Pretty sure it's just a plain old BIOS. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I don't have the laptop anymore to look at.

 

Does anyone know if you can restore to a partition on an external drive connected on USB? Anyone tried it yet?

 

On a side note, if you work with photography and have never looked at EyeFi, it is a must. It is so convenient to not have to transfer pictures anymore using EyeFi.

 

Wow I have never seen those before, pretty cool concept I must say. Going to have to take a look further into that.

 

Seems gimmicky at first, but they are worth every penny. You don't realize how convenient it is until you have it. We use them here at work, and every picture taken from a camera is automatically downloaded to a folder on our network drive. Videos we take are automatically uploaded to a server for some of our overseas people to process at night. Pretty handy in the workflow. You can even setup a local network, so that you can wirelessly transfer direct to your laptop like you would if you had a cable to a DSLR.

 

How is gaming on this notebook? Does it overheat? Are the fans too loud? Personally, i'm looking to not really do anything more than some steam games (CS:S, TF2, Portal, Stalker: Call of Pripyat) on a notebook which is why i'm also considering the macbook pro 13.

 

When I had the dv6tqe for 3 days(2630, 6770M) I played some COD:MW2 on Steam. The fans weren't very noisy but I think it did get moderately warm(definitely not hot) after 2 hours of gaming. I'm using a Cooler Master with 3 fans that I had bought for the Alienware M17x I had and returned.

 

A Mac book 13 will definitely not compare to a DV6T w/ the 6770m. It simply doesnt have the graphical horsepower to achieve anywhere near the same frame rates.

 

Guys, i've got 6gb of ddr3 memory, 4+2, isnt it preventing memory from working in dual mod? Should i make it 4+4? Will there be any pluses?

 

It won't be dual channel if 2+4 but you probably won't feel it even if it was. I think it's just HP's way of getting rid of all those 2gb RAMs.

 

So I am looking at buying the dv6t right now since HP is offering a pretty hefty discount. I want to use it for some gaming (I read the 6770 can run the witcher 2 in low-med settings), mostly school. This thread, my past experience with my old HP laptop and what I read on the internet in general is giving me cold feet though. I see people trash HP a lot it seems but then I read a lot of "top laptop brand" articles and they are consistently 2-3 this year coming from a low ranking last year. So have they stepped their game up? Do a lot of people have issues with theirs or are they pretty solid for the most part?

The whole recall issue I read in this thread too has me worried but to be able to get a laptop with an i7, amd 6770, 1080p display, blu-ray, etc seems too good to pass up.

One last quick question. If I do buy it, is their extended warranty worth it?

 

I recommend all students etc. to buy theirs from Costco if they can, you automatically get the 2 year warranty as a Costco customer and get some sort of Concierge service.

BTW, does anyone know where to get the exact specs on these machines? Theoretical bus speeds, etc. I'm putting in a new hard drive and it is only 3.0 GB/S, is it even 6.0 GB/S capable?

 

A little good news for the ones who want to add a second hard drive in the dv7. Newmodeus is now offering just the sata cable for $28.95 + $6.90 shipping. They currently it on backorder til 7 JUNE. I know this is an expensive price for a cable. I'm sure within 6 months, it will be at least half price. Got to get mines now, because I want to use my 1TB for internal storage.
dv7tqe 6000 series 2nd HD SATA Cable