*HP dv8 Owners Lounge*

Go for it and let me know what you find out. It is certainly that fast!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Have you looked on HP's website?
I can still buy one today?
HP Pavilion dv8 and dv8t series | HP Official Store

 

With all due respect, No, you cannot. Viewing it and buying it are two completely different things.

Please see my post from a few minutes ago:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6818195-post4950.html

 

I guess we posted together and I didn't see your post.. sorry....

I wonder if its available through any of the stores?
Of course you can no longer get a custom built one.. but are they available through other stores?

I may have to consider selling mine!... LOL!

 

It was unfounded in this case at the time I posted. Unfounded means without any visible basis for support and, up to the time when I added that edit, you hadn't provided anything but an "unfounded" statement. That was not a reflection on your veracity (as you are taking it) but, rather, a statement of fact and reinforcement of the previous request for supporting information.

That, in itself, would not surprise me... When I ordered my SSD the order was accepted ... when I called about it, the rep told me it wasn't available anymore and said the order was cancelled. I re-entered the ordered and didn't call and the SSD arrived 2 weeks later. Sheesh!

I configured it but stopped short of adding it to my cart.

That is truly a sad development ... thanks for explaining the reasons for your OP.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

As he said in his second post, it's no longer through the HP Store (in the US)....

Can't imagine why you would want to sell yours tho' --- can't imagine what you'd prefer?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Yes, I did.

Apparently not! (I really doubt that you would if you could. )

DV8 10/09 to 10/10 R.I.P.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Well stated sir. I yield to your well-stated case.

 

You're very kind! As with almost all typed communications on the internet, they usually appear harsher than intended. That was certainly the case this time. I was torn between feelings of sadness at the development and frustration at not having more information available.

Were you given any explanation for the action by HP? Any indication what they plan to offer to replace the best current 18.4" laptop <formerly> on the market?

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Not really, other than stating that as of today, they have decided to no longer have an 18" offering.

Quite disappointing, to say the least.

 

Well the discontinuation of the DV8 is just a real shame, unless HP comes out with something better and also a similarly great value.

I must say it makes me value my now unobtainable (or almost unobtainable) unit all the more.

I would like to at least see them offer the option of getting 1920 x 1080, 15.6 and 17 inch displays plus discrete graphics with 1GB video ram, on some other Pavilion laptops for a modest extra cost, but I'm not holding my breath. The Envy's have never really satisfied me with what I perceive to be their relatively limited connectivity/ports etc., but I haven't looked at the specs of the latest models. Anyway, they were always kind of expensive for what one got.

 

In the absence of a replacement offering in the 18" class, HP is abdicating its leading position for some reason. I can only presume that the category is not profitable enough to justify their continuing the product line.

Very sad for all of us who own and enjoy these machines. They're not inexpensive but obviously a large number of us feel they are worth what we paid for them. In fact, in the 8 months or so that I have followed the DV8 Owners Lounge, their cost has been one of the least discussed or mentioned issues with the product.

Yes, as you put it, it is a VERY DISAPPOINTING turn of events.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

We don't agree on a lot of issues here, Peter, but I think we are together on our reactions to this development. As you suggest, in the absence of a new and better offering from HP, I also feel I will treat my DV8 with greater care and appreciation for its value in the future.

It has been the best all-around laptop package I've ever owned and it is a very sad day when HP has discontinued it.

Like you, I am very glad to own one and would be at a loss for what I would buy to replace it with from what is currently available today.

Without any Press Release or explanatory announcement by HP, it is not yet possible to grasp what they based this on and all we are left with is idle speculation.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

FWIMBW, Costco.com still has a few DV8's available (well at least 1) configured as follows for $1,499.00 including shipping and 2 year warranty:

* Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor at 1.6GHz
* 6MB L2 cache
* 1333MHz front side bus
* 8GB DDR3 SDRAM (2 DIMM)

Drives:
* 1TB (7,200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
* SuperMulti DVD±R/RW drive with Double Layer Support

Graphics & Video:
* 18.4" Diagonal High-Definition HP Ultra BrightView Infinity Display; 1920 x 1080p native resolution
* 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M Graphics

Communications:
* Wireless-N Mini Card
* Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN (RJ-45)

Audio:
* Built-in Altec Lansing speakers

Keyboard:
* HP color matching keyboard
* Touch Pad with on/off and dedicated vertical scroll up/down pad

Personalization:
* Integrated Webcam + Fingerprint Reader with HP Imprint Finish

Expandability:
* ExpressCard/54 Slot

Ports:
* 1x 5-in-1 Card Reader
* 4x USB 2.0 ports (one shared with eSATA port)
* 1x HDMI Port
* 1x IEEE 1394 Firewire Port
* 1x Notebook Expansion Port 3

Operating System:
* Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

(I don't think it will be available there for very long as they might only have one or two of these left.)

 

I guess that's a good deal for any fence-sitters out there. Nice find!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Just to let u know I've abandoned the TV upgrade as no one seems to have all the parts needed... I say all but all I really need is the TV card and internal cable, but I cant get it here or over there in US... and I've tried loads of suppliers...

I'll survive... Thanks Woods for all your help tho...

On another note, has anyone raided the 2 hard drives... The BIOS doesnt seem to have raid support so the Intel raid software probably wont be able to raid them, (I noticed the Intel software is sitting there but might just be to get AHCI features enabled) and I didnt want to convert the drives to dynamic right now to set up software raid... I was thinking RAID 1 incase a drive died, but not sure if its worth the hassle... could be quicker to wack a new drive in and do a restore... Like to know if anyone has done it tho...

Not shocked at the news of the DV8 being discontinued, as over here it is £999 now with free 2 years warranty... Thats what made me buy one after months of looking as they were nearer £1300 with 1 year warranty... I noticed a few onliners had stopped listing it too... Its still available to buy online here... Be interesting to see if there is something in the pipeline to replace it...

Gotta say its by far the best laptop I've owned or even played with... and I've messed with more than most would get the chance to,,,

Even if u gotta keep polishing it every 5 minutes and the screen is like a bathroom mirror when the suns out...

:O)

 

When I first got my DV8, I tried everything short of hacking the BIOS (probably the only thing that will work) and had no success. I converted my drives (twin 500gb Seagate Momentus) to dynamic and RAID options were still grayed out (unavailable). Apparently, HP REALLY doesn't want us to run RAID on the DV8.

I decided to go to SSD and am very glad that RAID was not workable since SSD has worked out far better. It's much faster than RAID-0, more reliable in use, and uses far less power running on battery than HDDs. Periodic cloning with Ghost makes backups that provide simple and reliable protection against the unthinkable corruption, virus wipeout, drive failure, etc. Besides the performance disadvantage of RAID-1, there is no statistical basis for anyone to expect that the failure of the primary drive will not corrupt the secondary drive.... In desktops, the preferred setup is RAID-5 where the statistics are viable and favorable but that's not likely to ever work in a laptop.

Hope this gives you a guide for a practical path to pursue.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Wishful thinking..... maybe they discontinued it so they can release their 20"!.... yea, thats it!

Anyway.... unless they figure this out... looks like I'm spoiled with my big glorious 18" desktop replacement screen.....

I won't be buying another HP laptop if I have to drop down in size.

 

Hi phil

I had a quick google and couldnt find anyone who had raided their DV8... oh well... was just a thought whether it could be done. I saw the Intel raid software on the DV8 hard drive so I thought thats what it might be for...

On the raid1 thing tho... I run it on my desktop ASUS P5wDH from the onboard ICH7 controller ... 2 raid1 setups for data and os (2 mirror pairs)...

Raid 1 actually gives a performance advantage for reads but a slight hit on writes... I've yet to hear of a hardware failure on one mirror drive corrupting the second drive... seperate devices on seperate channels ...

Raid 5 has a performance advantage for reads for the same reason as raid 1... it can read simultaneously from more than one disk, but writing out the parity info makes write performance kinda poo...

As loads of drives need loads of throughput, raid 5 is not great for desktop use... Mainly servers with dedicated large fast cached controllers and fast interconnectivity...

Raid 5 main advantage is that its easier to expand a volume by just adding more disks and expanding the array...

 

Certainly a sentiment I agree with. Why would anyone buy a smaller one if they had an 18.4" DV8 !

Download and try Chrome yet? We are really looking forward to your report here!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

NO reason to raid when you have SSD as an option.... One SSD is cheaper than two Hardrives anyway and much faster and much more usable since that leaves a bay free for a "real" backup. "another physical drive"

 

I agree with the sentiment regarding superiority of SSD over RAID in our laptops (particularly since, as I just posted, you can't do RAID in our DV8's).

However, no one should consider SSD less costly than two drives. I think you've way off on that, Alan! I routinely buy pairs of Seagate 500gb 7200rpm drives for less than $160. I got a good deal on my Samsung SSD at just over $300 for 256gb. No way that is cheaper!!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

YUP, Adi! No RAID on DV8 as I explained earlier here.

Not to beat it to death but my comments were targetted at your laptop goals for software RAID ... Desktop setups you described were HARDWARE, right!? (none of the issues I mentioned would apply to dual channels with hardware RAID)

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Hi Phil

I know... I was just correcting your comment on corrupting of the secondary drive should the other mirror half fail, and raid5 being preferred setup in desktops...

 

When HP Pavilion dv8 will have a USB 3.0 & a better video card such as nVidia 460 GTX?

When the new models usually introduced? in Christmas may be?

 

Never, because the DV8 has been discontinued.

Don't know about any new models yet. It is not yet known if HP will introduce another model with the 18.4" screen size.

 

Trying to correct, maybe. there was nothing wrong with what I wrote as it applied to software RAID-1... The fact is that when any primary starts to create corrupted files, they are mirrored to the other drive in RAID-1.

RAID-5 clearly the desktop preference (if drives are available and the controller supports RAID-5) over RAID-1 when performance and rebuildability (if a drive should fail) are considered.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

DV8 was less than a year old in the market. I think it was announced in Sept. 09 and made available in late November. My guess is that new models are announced on that timeline for holiday sales and marketing. At this point, HP has announced nothing new in the 18" category and certainly nothing that they would characterize as a DV8 replacement.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Software or hardware raid1 , if a drive fails the mirror will be broken and the failed drive marked as bad, leaving the functioning drive to carry on in single mode...

Considering your changed argument that a primary creating corrupted files that would be mirrored to the secondary, any corruption if uncorrected by the ECC mechanism would also mark the drive down as bad or out of sync.

Just to refresh your memory, your original statement was:

"Besides the performance disadvantage of RAID-1, there is no statistical basis for anyone to expect that the failure of the primary drive will not corrupt the secondary drive.... In desktops, the preferred setup is RAID-5 where the statistics are viable and favorable but that's not likely to ever work in a laptop. "

Drive failure has now changed into corruption, but the answer is nontheless the same...

Raid1 provides enhanced read speeds so no disadvantage there. Slight write penalty, but not as much as that of writing parity in a raid5 config.

Failed Primary is very unlikely to corrupt the other half to a mirror pair. Once failed the drive is marked offline and no longer active until replaced or marked back online which will initiate a rebuild from the good drive..

Raid5 is preferred in servers, not desktops.

Also if a desktop PC completely dies, either one of the mirrors can be plugged into another PC and the drive can be accessed as a regular ACHI device. Try doing that with data that you want to get off from a raid5 array.

 

See I didn't set out to argue or debate RAID variants with you! You seem to want that and I'm just trying to help someone who seemed to need help on their DV8.

Certainly not worth that distinction when my point was to contrast with your
laptop. In thirty years building and deploying RAID systems, I made no such distinction and generally called them desktops when contrasting them with laptops. Generally, more desktops used as servers have RAID 5 because more advanced MoBos are chosen for them while more MoBos chosen for home desktops can't support RAID 5. I have deployed many desktops of each configuration for both workstations and servers!

Yup, Hardware RAID-1 is faster writing than Hardware RAID-5 while Hardware RAID-1 is slower reading than Hardware RAID-5. So what - neither will work on DV8! Ha! Ha!

You seem to just want to make distinctions (which I won't exchange nuances on RAID further here on this forum no matter how wrong I may think you may be) that weren't relevant to the issue of RAID on DV8.

I think I conveyed correct information to you outside the scope of the topic - I have seen many corrupted RAID 1 systems that had to be recovered from cloned backups.

Good luck with your DV8 "RAID1 system", Adi, as that WAS what I responded to help you with.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Hi Phil

Nothing wrong with a debate on raid... Its not outside the scope of a computer forum and usually ends up as a learning excercise for everyone...

In my 20 something years working in IT the number of people who I have met who could readily admit when they got something wrong is very few. Its something that you dont seem to find in other professions. Glad to see that you guys are not so different from us this side of the pond. :O)

I wont even mention that I could connect to a raid 5, 6, or 10 appliance through the gigabit ethernet of my DV8... :O)

Anyway, Thanks for your help and I'll let you get back to matters more DV8...

Adi...

 

I agree that it's not outside the scope of "a computer forum" but it WAS outside the scope of what you raised and what I responded to.

There is probably a RAID forum here and, perhaps, it would be worthwhile there to delve into all the various RAID variants and their pros and cons.. It's not my place to say - I only say that I wouldn't continue to debate a hijacked topic on that with you here.

In the brevity of our exchange, very little was said that was actually wrong though some incorrect inferences were taken before statements were expanded for clarifcation. Since I was focused on the DV8 aspect I was brief and didn't fully explain in my comments all I would have said if they weren't peripheral to what I considered was YOUR key issue at the time. When you "jumped" on those as tho' they were the complete explanation of a statement instead of an incomplete remark, I decided from your attitude, that it was unproductive for me to debate such things here.

Indeed, I saw things we see differently that weren't so different when "aired out" (as distinguished from "changed" as you put it). I just prefer not to air them out where they are probably off the thread topic (not to say that nothing off-topic hasn't been discussed here before ) here and IMO not applicable to DV8 for the most part.

With benefit of hindsight (being 20-20), IMO, it probably would have been much more interesting to me, at least, and probably others here, if you had responded (instead of the s/w vs h/w flaws of RAID 1) on the topic of accessing RAID through ethernet from your DV8 ... In fact, I've done something quite similar using USB and an eSATA devices.

I still think your best bet for the DV8 is to go get a 256gb SSD for it.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Hi Phil

Like I said earlier, in IT people tend to find it difficult to admit when they are wrong.

Not wishing to "hijack" this DV8 thread, I will leave you to concentrate on matters DV8 and not deviate :O) from that subject...

As regards to ethernet connectivity, just plug into a SAN or a NAS and your good to go...


Have a productive DV8 evening...

 

Like I said, all that was wrong were your inferences that someone was wrong.

Yes, I know that. Just thought it would've been a better topic (than what you chose to focus on IMO)

I still think my suggestion to you of an SSD instead of RAID now is a good one.

Regards,
- - Phil

 

The Redundancy aspect of raid was what might have been of use to me, in case of a hard drive failure. The general performance of the laptop is fine for me with a mechanical hard drive.

We only ended up focussing on the raid bit when I corrected your misconceptions.

The ethernet connectivity is the boring part. If you follow the cable back a NAS or a SAN will be at the end of it... With a bunch of raided drives inside...

I thought we agreed not to hijack this thread any longer... I think it has ran its course now...

Have a good evening...

 

Hardly. :rolleyes2: But now I understand that it was indeed your inferences that became the basis of your erroneous belief that I had expressed some misconception.... I guess we see it differently despite my efforts to reconcile those views.

Enjoy your DV8 and your evening ....

Regards,
- - Phil

 

It appears that you "understand" my inferences as well as you "understand" the mechanics of how raid works...


Enjoy your evening too... :O)

 

I'm so sad that I just wasted three minutes of my life reading this Lifetime Movie the two of you have penned, in the hopes of finding something interesting therein. Are you two done? LOL.


And yes, I realize I am now opening myself up to being berated by the both of you, but at least I'll have some personal stake in the conversation... so... go ahead.

 

who is Keyser Soze... Does he exist... :O)

And what do you know of raid that you havent read from the bottom of a coffee cup...

 

LOL... glad to meet another "Usual Suspects" fan.

And I assure you, I have no intent nor desire to enter into the RAID discussion you two were having (although I am certainly qualified to ).

I was merely sticking my nose where it didn't belong in the interest of humor... and to let the two of you know that "we" (the collective group of onlookers) were (sort of) enjoying your bantering.

 

Dont just spectate...Participate...

Lets have a vote on who is correct in this matter...

I vote for Adi... But I'm biased...

We could also have a poll to guess who will get the last word in too, but as its 2am here I dont have time on my side... :O)

 

Clearly better than you seem to understand the language of RAID...

Enjoy your weekend!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

It appears the word "clearly" has a different meaning over there ...

And now raid is a language?

What exactly did you do for those 30 years while you were supposed to be working in IT...?

 

Good plan! - I knew you were a sensible fellow. :laugh:

Good of you to check in again. Good luck with Adi ...

Maybe he'd sell you his DV8 if you're still in the market for one... (it can't do RAID)

Regards,
- - Phil

 

Only to you, apparently ... I guess it doesn't surprise me that you might be having difficulty with it. :laugh: LOL!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

You seem to make a lot of incorrect guesses...

 

Except where you're concerned!

Regards,
- - Phil

 

There you go again... still guessing wrong... You are consistent if nothing else...

Would you like to take another guess about how raid works... stastistically speaking if you keep guessing you will likely be correct on something sometime...

Then again... :O)

 

You two should go to prom together.

 

You could be right.. but I was talking two hardrives raided would give you basically one drive thats faster without space for a backup. By buying an SSD instead, you can have faster speed "and" a backup!

Hard to say which is cheaper because as you say raid it is not even possible and if it was your comparing one SSD drive plus one hardrive with "what would take 3 hardrives" to do the same thing and it would still be slower... plus one would have to be an external drive since there was no more space to get the same functionality and would so be really clumsy for a laptop.

But a negative is you wouldn't have the same storage space with the SSD compared.

I've got everything loaded on my SSD drive and its still only 57gig.
Only 141 gig on my D Drive and that has all my backup stuff...

So for my application its a no brainer.... one SSD plus one Hardrive for backup gives a much better value than the other options.
"Much faster speed than HDD raid and a safe place to store and backup to thats not on the same logical drive..... thats worth tons in a laptop.

A luxury I've never had till now.