*HP dv6t Select Edition (3XXX series) Owners Lounge*

This sums it up perfectly.

I'd like to note, that while I wish the resolution was better, I returned it because of the low brightness and washed out colors. The screen on my previous laptop was a fair amount better (this laptop is old enough where most of the computers had decent screens), and maybe with more time I could have adjusted. I also needed to move it around a lot and so an external monitor wasn't worth it to me, and wanted the more graphical power of the Envy 15, otherwise I would have kept it.

 

Well, it's too late for me to return mine, but I totally dig my dv6t. All the screens I've had on different laptops were super crappy and the m11x I had...don't get me started on that. Anyways, the only thing I can really do is get a anti-glare filter for the screen sometime in the next two weeks and I'll be set till this thing burns down. Other than that, totally satisfied with the performance, price, weight, everything about this laptop. I wanted an E14, but after reading about some quirks it had, this machine seems like the best fit for me.

 

Funny thing. This is the best screen I've had overall (my old CRT competes, but this one just destroys it in terms of brightness and and picture clarity), and yet it still annoys me due to the vertical viewing angles, or lack thereof. Still better than my HP G60 though...

 

for those of you who recently purchase dv6 with Blue Ray Drivr, does the tray have the BD logo on it?

because afaik, all the BD tray should have the BD logo, but mine doesn't, although it is a BD drive, but just wondering because the Select Edition one has

i know it's a minor thing, but it just matters for me

 

Just registered because I wanted to thank the posters in this thread. My Dv6z SE should be arriving Monday morning, and making a nearly twelve hundred dollar investment in something I couldn't see beforehand has spent the week making me very nervous.

This thread was not only a good diversion from the 'refresh the HP page over and over again until they've shipped it, then switch to refreshing the fedex page' game, it gave me some idea of what to expect when the box does arrive. I may know desktop computers pretty well, but this is my first laptop, so having a source of information was helpful.

My specs:
HP Pavilion dv6z Select Edition
• AMD Phenom(TM) II Quad-Core Mobile Processor N930 (2.0GHz, 2MB L2 Cache)
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD 5650 switchable graphics [HDMI, VGA]
• FREE Upgrade to 6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• FREE Upgrade to 640GB 5400RPM Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
• 50% OFF! One 6 Cell (standard) and One 9 Cell (over-sized) Lithium Ion Battery
• 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Display (1366x768)
• TouchScreen with HP TouchSmart's intuitive multi-touch applications (includes HP TrueVision Webcam)
• LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
• Wireless 802.11b/g/n Card
• Backlit Keyboard with Fingerprint Reader

Got the touchscreen as a lark; don't expect to use it a ton, but thought it might be a fun little feature. Same for the lightscribe drive, since I didn't bother with anything fancy on that count when putting my desktop together.

Wanted the SSD since I do plan to game a little on the laptop, but since the laptop is going to see a lot of use, and I need a good amount of storage, I just couldn't justify the size tradeoff. Fortunately, I don't play anything that really requires that extra bit of speed. I think Dragon Age is about the most intensive thing I'll be subjecting it to, and I don't really need it to work on max quality settings. I have my desktop for that.

I do actually have a question, after all of that rambling... What kind of power savings, if any, do people find with Granola on the Dv6? Am I better off just going straight to undervolting?

 

Yeah, mine has the logo right next to the indicator LEDs. Maybe we just got different drives.

 

The worst part about Dragon Age is that performance of the game decreases the longer you play it. I have two SSD's from different companies and both increase loading times the longer I played it. I finally beat it and immediately uninstalled Origins and Awakening. Outside of that, the SSD's totally changed my computer using experience and I can't be without one.

As far as the touchscreen gimmick / tool, someone said you can see the sensors at certain angles, but this is also true of my LG Dare phone. So it bothers me sometimes, shouldn't be that bad I guess.

 

It does say blu-ray disc at the forward section of the tray face plate.

C.

 

Likewise, mine says blu-ray drive right next to the indicator lights.

Are you asking if there's a logo on the select edition, or a logo on the regular DV6?

 

This ATI driver is getting on my nerves. It constantly "stops responding," and considering the fact that this issue remained even after updating the driver, I fear it might be a hardware issue. *sigh* If it keeps up, it looks like I'll have to go through the tedious process of a clean install to confirm. The problem is that I don't have any drives to back-up my data on.

 

I have removed most of the bloatware from my laptop, but sometimes when installing programs, it stalls for 3-5 minutes, I can open up my task manager but as soon as it opens it doesn't respond. i5 450. Did I get the bad one in the batch?

 

Can you explain step by step of how you been updating your radeon drivers?


For mine, it's been pretty stable with minor annoyances.
I only just do a complete uninstall of previous driver and use only the HP version of radeon driver since i have switchable.
I don't like doing a direct update due to weird behaviors with amd radeon drivers.

 

Hm. I wonder if not uninstalling first caused is why the issue hasn't been fixed. :X

 

I finally am getting around to setting up my new HP dv6tSE. Right off the bat I am having trouble opening two Firefox browsers. On my HP XP laptop, I was always able to just double click on the Firefox icon and a second Firefox browser would open that I could drag over to the remote display, thus having an internet browser with a title bar on each display. Does anyone know why I can't do that with this laptop? My Dv6t has Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit, i5 450, SSD Hard Drive and 6 gb ram.

 

You can either use hold down ctrl or click middle mouse button to create new instances.

Tab by group vs Global Tab

 

It's because of how Windows 7 works. Just right-click the Firefox icon on the taskbar and then click on the "Mozilla Firefox option.

 

I noticed an issue with my dv6 tonight where the battery doesn't seem to be sitting flush... the plastic piece around the battery bay almost looks warped/bent and if you press anywheres near the top casing above the F9/F10/F11 keys you can hear something snap like a clip is loose

 

That battery thing seems to be a common issue. In fact the keyboard thing is, too. If you can and it really bothers you, you might want to return it and reorder.

 

Really? I mean it's not that bad Im just a bit concerned as to whether the issues are going to get worse... I could return the unit and have another one transferred in (purchased at a brick and mortar store) but then again, if these issues are common, whose to say the next unit wouldn't do it too? Have there been any fixes for this or does it just seem to be a common manufacturing flaw?

 

I had a situation where my fingerprint reader was not being recognized....so I downloaded and reinstalled the updated driver and it seems that now the fingerprint reader is being recognized and works ok however the light is not working on the reader...it would show white before when prompted to swipe your finger...now there is no illumination at all...any advice on the problem and/or a fix? Has anyone had this same situation before?

Thanks

 

Wow, there is now a crazy $300 coupon for this laptop (so $450 off total thanks to the $150 instant rebate). You have to make the configuration at least $1399, but that still gets you to $950 minimum. With the coupon you can essentially get a free SSD + Backlit keyboard + $5, for example.

 

Thanks! That was ridiculously easy.

 

No problem. I love to help.

 

actually asking about both

my disc tray's door on my dv6 doesnt say anything, it's plain, but it's a Blue Ray

i ask the HP Technician, he said only the Lightscribe one will have the BD logo

im asking this because i know every BD disc tray should have the BD logo, but mine doesnt

oh and my model is the Optiarc BD ROM BC-5500H

i checked on google, it's from Sony

idk, does anyone having the same Model as mine?

i hate it that it doesn't have the BD logo on my disc tray, because it just make it visibility more awesome with that logo

here is what i mean

 

Well, I'm returning my dv6t SE today and hopefully getting it exchanged.. wish me luck

 

For another Dv6t or are you jumping ship from the dv6 camp lol.

 

Hey guys, I'm really concerned about the physical design of my dv6tse on my right hand side where the optical drive is, it looks like this


Does yours look like this? I was gonna return it today just because of that but than i saw the picture up in this page, so I was wondering if they are all like this or it's just the latest ones

ty

EDIT: also, my roommate just got his dv6tse with the 512GB VGA and no touchscreen and it's not as close as warm as mine (1GB 5650, i5-450m, ssd), is that normal?

 

Got another dv6t - just got home with it, havent unboxed it yet... had to drive an hour and a half to the city and back to get it exchanged because the other store doesnt carry them in stock...

 

@icechelsea Well the amount of heat the laptop gives off depends greatly upon wether you have the dedicated graphics card on or not. Your roomate's laptop would be cooler (temp wise) than yours with the gpus enabled, because the 5470 is not as powerful as the 5650. At least, I think thats how it is.

 

well, mine runs on the intel graphics and his on the ati, and mine is hotter :S
by the way, why did you return yours? and what about the picture i posted? :$

 

Yeah, my DV6T SE's Blu-ray drive looks like that as well. Originally, I was kind of annoyed but I eventually ignored it. I'm guessing it has to do with the sloped shape of the aluminum not matching up with the Blu-ray drive's front shell.

As for the other person without the logo - you got an Optiarc?

My DV6T's Blu-Ray drive has the logo on it but the manufacturer is from HP, who I'm pretty sure doesn't make their own BD drive.

 

@icechelsea

My DVD drive was like that, too. It still worked fine, so it wasn't a problem for me.

 

thanks 8:35pm, by the way, on my roommate's laptop (looks like there's gonna be a lot of comparations from now on ) when i press the volume up or volume down button, something like a window pops up in the middle of the screen and tells the current volume level, on mine, there's no visual notification...
Is it because of the driver it self or it's an app or sth? he has older audio drivers than me....

 

I returned mine because the screen looked like I paid $10 for the laptop. The vertical viewing angles were near-nonexistant, and the colors look washed out regardless of brightness and calibration settings.

 

Well, I don't want to jinx anything but so far so good - checked over every inch of my machine and haven't found anything wrong, just getting it set up now, will stress test the hardware and check the LCD for bad pixels and such before declaring it perfect. One thing that stands out to me is the screen, it's quite a bit brighter than the last unit (which was dim compared to my Studio 15 even at max brightness whereas the new one beats both)

 

And another question...

Is there another way to hookup the laptop to say, a receiver, without using HDMI? HDMI out is great except that it kills battery life and produces unnecessary heat when I just want to hear audio.

 

If you just want to hear audio, the simplest solution would be to buy a decent aux cable. You can plug it into the audio out jack and then into your receivers aux input. However, I don't think you will be able to configure the output to 5.1 by doing this, but I may be incorrect.

If you need an aux cable, check out monoprice: HDMI Cable, Home Theater Accessories, HDMI Products, Cables, Adapters, Video/Audio Switch, Networking, USB, Firewire, Printer Toner, and more!

They have really solid inexpensive cables for just about everything.

 

Hi

can any onr explain wat is the diffrence between ati site 10.6(r wat ever the version is) drivers and hp site 5650 8.75 drivers and how to install 10.8 ati drivers from ati site in dv6t se ???

plzz replyy

 

Well, I actually already have the headphone jack to RCA input covered. it sends out stereo audio fine.

However, this machine doesn't have any form of "HD" audio out, except by HDMI? Some PCs have S/PDIF but as far as I'm aware, this PC only outputs DTS/Dolby via HDMI.

Wish I could somehow listen to audio (through the receiver) without switching to ATI.

 

I had a situation where my fingerprint reader was not being recognized....so I downloaded and reinstalled the updated driver and it seems that now the fingerprint reader is being recognized and works ok however the light is not working on the reader...it would show white before when prompted to swipe your finger...now there is no illumination at all...any advice on the problem and/or a fix? Has anyone had this same situation before?

 

Try uninstalling the software and the driver and reinstall them. The software can be found under SWSETUP\DFPR, or downloaded from HP's website.

 

didnt HP make hybrid Blu-ray/HD DVD drive?

anyway, should i be happy that i got Sony Optiarc model BD? or the other way round? cause i know Sony is better, but what's keeping me off is that they dont include me the BD logo on the Tray

lol

i know whining of not having a BD logo seems like stupid for some reason, as it almost doesn't matter except for making it visually look better that people know that there's a BD in your Laptop

but that's just the way i am, i'd be questioning alot if i have a different stuffs from the same Laptop model that i dont have and every body else does

if i may know, what is your BD model?

oh and @ Icechelsea

is your's BD? or DVD RW?

 

Did any of you guys upgrade to the newest ATI driver(8.752.1.0)? My current drivers are working fine, but I don't know if I want to update... then again, I haven't done anything too graphically intense, so I don't know if there's a problem or not.

 

hey guys how can i check my bios version?

EDIT: nvm, found it

 

So, after having endless problems with the Radeon driver on YouTube, I figured that what I had to do was uninstall and reinstall it. Well, I did, but Now I can't manually switch graphics. -.- Just perfect. This is that last time I'm going with ATI, even if it means choosing a weaker card.

Anybody know how I can get it back?

 

I'm assuming you installed the ATI driver (8.752.1.0) from hp's site? Did you uninstall the old driver before you installed the new?

 

Yes. That's what's causing the issue.

... Well, that's what I thought, but now I think that installed the old driver. -.- Let me check...

How do you check which driver you have installed?

 

dxdiag or in device manager....there are more ways...

 

A really old version is installed, it seems...

How, exactly, am I supposed to install this? Do I have to uninstall the old driver? I seem to get stuck after doing that...

 

Yes, you need to do a full removal of amd radeon drivers. Most easiest way is to do a driver sweep
Guru3D - Driver Sweeper

Restart

Install new driver