New Pavilion DV7/DV6 available this spring unveiled!

So let me just make sure I understand: what's the deal with the new dv4? Asia only? Do we just not know for sure if it'll come to the US?

 

Nobody has found a way around this with the HP discs?

I know when you order recovery discs with some laptops (other than HP), they come with "Easter eggs" that allow you to do a clean install.

 

Great this cooling system looks far better than previous.

#1 = CPU contact area
#2 = GPU contact area

#3 = Heatsink cooling fins

#4 (no label) There is a smaller second heatsink with cooling fins above number #3.

Two heat pipes comes off the CPU, one to #3 (shared) and one pipe to #4 (dedicated).

One heat pipe comes off the GPU and is shared with the CPU on number #3


This cooling system should work well when the dedicated GPU is switched off, and running the IPG (on CPU graphics). Both heatsinks will be unloading the heat from just the CPU only

 

awesome analysis - where are you able to find the service manual for the new dv6s? i can't seem to find them online on the support website?

 

Asus was including almost completely clean OS discs until late 2009, and Dell has at various points-used to always. The M15x I had briefly came with a clean (or essentially clean) OS disc, even though there wasn't the option for it and the rep claimed it woudn't, so....hopefully HP's discs are pretty similar when they have them.

I guess as long as they're not too gunked up and can be installed on ANY size or type of drive, that's probably fine too.

So tired I can't remember what else I was going to say...

 

Are you sure that you don't have 1 and 2 switched? It makes more sense that way. #2 isn't big enough to cover the VRAM.

 

According to the Service manual:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02718431.pdf

It looks like the bluetooth module is not integrated onto the wireless adapter.

However on Intel's website, the description for the 6230 wireless adapter states:
"Intel’s advanced 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth combo adapter for business and home. The Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6230 dual band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz), 2x2 adapter delivers up to 300 Mbps¹ bandwidth, extended range and unique Intel-only features including Intel® Wireless Display, and Intel® vPro™ technology support."

 

This may or may not be old news, but I dont understand why I didn't read anything about this in the forums.

Intel Brings New WiDi Innovations to CES

only I believe it's the "2720"? offers widi and a few other advantanges beyond speed.

 

I spoke to an HP technician for a minute, and he told me that when you order the laptop if you want you can do a search in windows for recovery minimal or something and that it would reinstall windows without all the bloatware. I'm not sure if thats what everyone is talking about but it seemed somewhat usefull info

 

it is okay.

however, many of us who bothers for a clean install also would like to have separate partitions for windows and other data. this, to the best of my knowledge, is impossible with anything you do from the HP recovery discs, simply because both the minimal factory and the normal restore both creates 4 partitions on your hard drive, taking up all of the basic partition spots. creating another one on top of that would turn the disk into a dynamic partition, which is just messy to deal with...

 

FOUR partitions?!? I just want one :-/ (and on a smaller drive than the one the system ships with...)

 

well, yeah 4. it by default, creates the 200mb systems partition (completely useless unless you are using drive encryption), normal partition (C , recovery partition (25gb ish), and hp_tools partition (all those diagnostics tests)

only if i could get rid of the systems partition >_> and swap it for a separate partition for data instead... but i think that would screw up booting up because the boot record is all there...

 

Can you still in stall onto a smaller drive? (i.e. an SSD)?

Without a clean install, I've been kind of figuring I'd be stuck buying another copy of Windows.

 

WARNING: I have not done this myself, just throwing out some options...

If you don't mind blowing away everything and reinstalling, I would think you could probably:
(1)take image backup of the drive as-is.. you can do something like boot to a utility cd, or maybe ubuntu, and do an image dump of the drive to an external drive. I would probably do this if I didn't have the DVD recovery cd.
(2) download win 7 and burn to dvd (legally)
(3)remove partitions
(4)create partitions you actually want
(5)do fresh win 7 install from the ISOs that you downloaded

Alternatively, you could consider backing up the hp_tools stuff to cd and blowing that partition away. Then you could resize down the c: partition with GParted, and create the data partition you want.

 

o i meant, the choice is either to wipe the drive and start from a clean install, or live with not able to create a 2nd partition for data. ideally, we should be able to keep the recovery and HP_Tools functions, as well as having 2 other partitions for windows and data. but that doesn't seem to be possible as far as i know.

 

I've heard about that. It doesn't get rid of all of the bloatware, however. HP's own crap is left on the system.

Why would you need a separate data partition anyway? It doesn't boost performance.

 

Yep sure as, #1 has CPU locking retention tab. The extra area on #1 heatsink plate is likely to cool fets.

 

Guys, I have some possibly bad news. See, I have suspected from the start that the reason they have separate select and quad editions is that only the select editions have switchable graphics. This page on battery life, which shows a big difference between dv6t SE and QE battery life makes this seem even more likely.

Untitled Document

I doubt that the quad core can cut a whole 45 minutes on it's own. There has to be another factor, and that factor can only be a lack of switchable graphics.

 

I could be confused by your post, but switchable graphics are confirmed

Correct me if I misunderstood your post.

 

it doesn't boost performance, but it allows you to reinstall windows/restore system partition image without affecting your data partition at all. for example, if my computer was infected by some random virus or trojan, i can completely eradicate it in 5 minutes by restoring my C: drive with acronis, while leaving my D: drive, with all my data (work, personal, pictures, music, game saves) intact. and i wouldn't have to spend like 3 hrs trying to purge it from every corner of my computer, or reinstall windows and all those programs to go with it agian.

the difference of switchable vs nonswitchable should be on the scale of 2 hrs-3 hrs, someone did a test on the envy 14 with discrete and integrated idling tests. 45 min is completely within reason as the TDP of the processors are 35W and 45W for dual and quad cores. even though this is a poor measurement of power consumption, at least it should be reasonable.

 

Agreed. Most 6-cells are right around 53 Watt Hours. It can supply 53 watts for one hour. Different loads have different efficiencies, but using that as our ball park it is the difference between running at aprox 8.83 watts for 6 hours versus 10.1 watts for a 5.25 hour duration. When you break it down like that, it is easy to see that the Quad Core could easily eat up that difference in power.

 

+1

45 mins battery difference between the lowest i5-2410M versus even the most basic i7 quad core sounds about right.

If it's switchable versus non-switchable, the difference is in hours...

 

does switchable graphics mean that the system will automatically switch between the cards depending on the activity, or is it manual? If manual, how is one to know which card would be optimal for each task?

also, i was reading the cnet review of the new xps 15, which has similar specs to the dv6tqe basic model i7 chip and i was surprised how much lower the test numbers were compared to the macbook pro with a similar *slightly better* chip. i wonder if this hp will perform better or worse than the dell, and why the test results would be so different between the macbook pro and the dell with similar chips...any ideas?

 

@first part: Ah. That makes sense.

@second part: The 6490M they used to test battery life uses a lot less power than the 5650. In fact, it's desktop counterpart can be passively cooled due to the fact that it's power consumption is so low that it doesn't produce much heat. It only taking away an hour or so is within reason. Besides that, why would the quad consume more power at idle, especially such a huge amount more? It makes no sense, since it shouldn't even have all core active on idle. I guess we'll see when they are in people's hands, but I can't think of any other reason why they would have a Quad Edition separate from the Select Edition.

 

document states "Battery life times use MobileMark 2007 battery benchmark."

Not idle testing.. so yea..

 

They wouldn't be...probably flawed testing procedure, or testing a lower end config, or that kind of thing.

 

I don't think you guys realize just how little wattage it requires to change battery times significantly. It only takes a few watts to change run times over an hour.

I don't know the details of the Dell 15XPS, but if it has a higher resolution display, that will require more power. If it has a back lit keyboard, that requires more power. Not to mention that no two chips (despite the tdp numbers) consume the same power. A 2630 versus another 2630 can and will vary.

Then you have to take the watt hours into consideration. Is one battery larger? They can both be six cells and still have different mAh ratings, which would change battery life. I can't stress enough that even a measly 2 watt difference can be an hour of run time difference.

If you are comparing to a Macbook running MacOS, that doesn't work. Since MacOS has a known list of hardware to support, they have it highly tweaked. Run that macbook on Windows7 and watch it perform just like the rest.

 

It's idle. Beyond idle, really. Why do you think OEM battery runtimes are always so heavily inflated?

 

Oh, I thought s/he was talking about system performance and not battery life, so maybe my post was pointless :laugh:

 

well, the 2-3 hrs estimate was when total battery life is about 6 hrs, so with discrete gfx is around 4 hrs (although i've never personally gotten above 3). that's about a 30-50% reduction in battery life. 45 min out of 9 hrs total, on the other hand, is only about 7-8%. no matter how little power consumption the 6490m takes, say 5W (considering 5650 is 14W ish...), it would reduce the battery life of the 100whr battery by about 30-50% (100whr/9hr ~ 11W, 5W/11W ~ 50%)

either way it's all speculation at this point, wait 1 more week and we should be able to find out the hard way. lets just say i hope you are wrong. (but then again, if idling on discrete vs integrated is only ~8% difference, i wouldn't really care about the loss in switchable graphics anyways)

 

So.. we can't trust the document?

 

I wish HP would be a little more clear on the switchable graphics thing. The DV7 brochure and service manual posted here both indicate switchable graphics, but who knows if that's for the QE edition. You couldn't get switchable graphics with a quadcore dv7t Select Edition anyways, because it uses the last gen processor. Just have to wait and see.
Anyways, some of my observations. There is no WiDi support and the eSata port is gone. It seems you can upgrade the wireless card in the future if need be. The battery compartment looks different then the last gen Dv7. The fan config seems to be a much needed improvement. I wish these things would ship so we can stop speculating.....

 

I read that the 2720 will be capable of widi. I posted a link I'm this forum I think on page 61.

 

The HP website lists the wireless card as just "Intel 802.11b/g/n WLAN". Does anyone know which card this actually is?

 

Is was "Intel Wifi Link 1000 BGN" on the 4000 series

 

Actually, maybe I was the one who didn't understand what he was saying. I reread it and I still don't know if he was talking about battery life or performance.

If he was talking about performance, then consider the source (Cnet) they are a joke. I'd take an Amazon user review over that garbage reviewer.

 

They just raised the price on the 6770m by $25.

 

There are 2 intel bgn listed, but most likely it going to be the 1000, since I doubt they give the wimax version for no extra cost.

Luckily, you can add your own internal dual band intel 6230 with ease of mind. Wish they posted that kind of info early on my version when 6250 were still available and not over $50 for a batch of 1 from trusted retailers.

 

Thanks for the responses. Any info on where to buy and how to install the 6230 card?

 

Told ya so. And it'll only go up from there.

 

The instruction to install the wlan is in your model maintenance and service guide. Just look for wlan removal and installation procedure.

 

After you put a GOOD SSD drive into your laptop, your life changes.

 

Is there a list of intel dual band cards that would work with this laptop or is there a way to tell if it would work by looking at the card? Sorry I am new to upgrading computers.

 

http://www.intel.com/products/wireless/index.htm
most of Intel's 6XXXs are dual bands just read the specs and look for 5.0 GHz

 

I bought a hard drive caddy (from newmodeus: 2nd HDD Caddy & Cable for HP dv7-4000, dv7-5000, dv7t SE,dv7qte [HP-dv7-4000] - $38.55 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks) the dv7qe from back in january. It seems the dv7-5000 and 6000 use different caddies (as per the part #'s and images in the respective service manuals). I just returned my old dv7 for the new one. Am i out of luck for the caddy? Will I need to get a new one or is there something I can do?
(The return policy with newmodeus is long expired)

Also anyone find a place that sells caddies for the new dv7s? HPs are waaaaay too expensive.

 

The dv7 page now shows a silver version of it. Interesting...

 

So there is nothing special I need to look for to make sure it works with the DV6, like size or anything?
Thanks.

 

You need to look for half height mini pci e. However, you still need luck to get it to work regardless of skill. ( I'm not kidding about this, HP does this crap)

 

this may sound like a newbe question. but the i5 processor i believe come with hyper threading disabled although all over the web its said it brings it active. is this correct? will there be a way to active hyper threading on the i5 if one wishes to.

 

It'll be active when you get it.