No backspace, enter, or space bar on ENVY - heard of this?

Hi there,

Sending my brand new ENVY back for service (on its first day...boo) but baffled as to what might cause this.

Everything works fine on the system except for a handful of keyboard keys:

Space
Enter
Backspace
Up/down arrows (left and right are fine)
Possibly alt (tough to test without the others)

Space bar will send a combination of characters, like zzc^X^Z if you press it a few times (often one press will send all of those characters, while other presses send nothing).

Is this just some electronics gone haywire, or is there another explanation for why this might happen?

I'm going to ask HP to extend my warranty for a year in exchange for not simply returning it - as my first HP purchase it doesn't fill me with confidence.

 

Common problem. Pinched keyboard cable. Send it in for a keyboard fix. Should take a turnaround time of 4-6 business days. Also, I doubt they will offer you a year of extended warranty. The most they give you is a 10% discount off the current purchase for you to keep it.

 

I actually did get them to add a year on. I already had a two year and they just did a cost differential, which seems to be in my favor as it completely excludes the long-term cost of the warranty to them, but it's what I wanted.

I already had the two-year (at $179) and I wanted the three-year (at $289) and the $110 difference was less than the 10% off my order I probably could've asked for.

Maybe this is a common problem, but I should hope that premium laptops being shipped out with common problems is not a common problem for HP. The service and support people I spoke to were excellent, so hopefully if I ever have to deal with them again then they'll be just as responsive.

 

There is no such thing as a 'premium' laptop. Just premium prices for a slick looking visual design. If you're swayed by that why not get a Mac?

Underneath the plastic frame, the components are ALL the same. And those components are assembled in the same factory by the same workers who build the $500 Compaqs.

 

A premium laptop is a laptop sold under a premium brand, where the expectation is a) you won't need service as often, and b) if you do need service, you'll get a knowledgeable person who is ready and willing to solve your problem and perhaps give you the benefit of the doubt if the need arises.

The components might be 'the same' in terms of 'made by the same manufacturers and assembled by the same people,' but whether it's the particular choice of components for a higher-end line or simply a superior design or build quality, 'premium' lines absolutely matter beyond what your fairly cynical comment would suggest:

http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

There is obviously a point in this market, as there is in most markets, where you are simply paying for style or a brand name (MBP). There is a lower point where your 'premium' brand actually has premium quality.

 

No such thing. Your 'service line' is the same service line I would call into for my G70 if I ever had to (not yet). When the ACD lines are busy, your call goes into the same queue as mine does. When the ACD lines are less-than-busy, your call *might* get priority handling depending on how the multiple phone lines are set up. By the same front line reps as I talk to. Believe me. One of my side jobs is to maintain ACD lines for a few consumer electronics help lines and that philosophy is universal among the people I work for.

What you expect for your money, what the maker implies you get, and what is actually delivered are all different things. The maker is betting that your premium machine doesn't have any more or less problems than a 'lower grade' machine. This is easy to do in a relative low volume product especially when you have a successful track record of selling add-on warranty extensions.

And let me get this straight: You popped for a $200 extended warranty even after buying a premium brand? I'll bet you paid for your order with a credit card too. HP loves folks like you. Pure profit.

A 'squaretrade' certification means that a seller of an item agrees to abide by a published refund/repair policy. It is a paperwork surety program only. Maker repair policies usually have enough holes in them to toss a server rack through. Think of how useless ISO9000/9001 is when it comes to guaranteeing the physical quality of a product. All ISO9xxx does is to verify that paperwork is filled out correctly and that everyone knows how to do that. SquareTrade is the same thing. Paperwork.

The only real priority support HP has on laptops is the corporate support numbers handed out to high-volume eliteBook buyers. And those machines cost more than your Envy so HP is still making it up with higher volumes.

You could have easily saved $500- and used that $$ for something else you envy.

Cynicism has naught to do with it. Real-world value for $$ is the bottom line and premium sub-brands made by a manufacturer with many many similar lines do not represent value for $$.

 

The Envy 15 is the second most powerful gaming laptop under 6 pounds in weight (the Envy is 5.17lb; there's also the MSI GX640 which is ~6lb), and you can get it with a 1080p screen at $1100. Go ahead and find something comparable for $600, because I want to see it; I would buy more than one of them in a heartbeat.

Also, the GX640 is about the same price, and you get the HD 5850, but the Envy has 1080p and longer battery life. The GX640 isn't "premium" the way you're talking about it, either.

 

The performance of a machine is unrelated to its 'premium' status as a brand name.

 

Bull.

Did you bother to read the linked Squaretrade report regarding the failure rate in premium lines versus consumer lines? Or did you just see 'Squaretrade' and figured I was promoting or relying on Squaretrade? I've never done any business with them and am not even a member. But they have an actual study on 'premium' versus 'everything else' broken down by brand. You're also just flat out missing the point: I'm talking hardware and hardware only.

I don't disagree that there are plenty of laptops (and plenty of cars and phones and everything else with a luxury market sector) where you're paying far beyond what the item is 'worth' in terms of performance alone just because of brand. The Macbook Pro is a classic example.

Let's look at the bottom line for what I paid and you can tell me how I could've had an equivalent item for $500 less, where 'equivalent' means the same or similar size, weight, and hardware -- we can forget for our purposes what the brand is, or what fancy metal the chassis is made of.

My order total was $2,553 for the machine in my sig - it-540, 4GB RAM, 2x120GB Intel SSDs (let's even assume they're G1s - they probably are), Radeon 5830, 3 year warranty, wireless-N, external DVD burner and a space 6-cell battery. I also (foolishly) paid $20 for recovery DVDs as I didn't know HP let you make your own and wanted to axe the recovery partition. I'll cop to $20 worth of idiot.

Subtract $110 for the free third year on the warranty.
Subtract $488.64 for the 20% Bing cashback deal.
Subtract $21 for the wireless mouse since that's not part of the product.
Subtract $75 since the mainstream laptops don't let you buy a spare battery (though you probably don't need one as much, either)

All told, I paid $1,858.53. I did use my credit card, for which I get 2% cash back and pay off immediately, though that's due to a sweetheart deal with Capitol One since I have excellent credit. Let's not even count that 2% discount, even though you threw in 'used a credit card' as evidence for 'idiot purchase.'

The closest thing I can find is the SXPS 16, which you can load up with 2 SSDs (For 256 GB instead of 320, but who cares) for about $2200 with the 3-year warranty. That does indeed suggest that the Envy is way overpriced, which is true, and which is why I would never have bought one without the 20% cashback (or perhaps the $300 coupon). The SXPS also has an inferior video card and weighs about a pound and a half more.

I worked in a hardware shop and provided corporate support for several years myself. I'm well aware of the distinction between the appearance of premium and what you're actually getting. I hope that HP makes a bigger profit on the Envy than it does on its mainstream line. The only question for me is whether or not the return for my dollars is real value or perceived value.

As far as extended warranties go, with failure rates around 20-25% after three years, and when the cheapest part that I'd have to replace is about equal to the $170 I paid for the warranty, that's a no-brainer for me. If I still worked in a shop and had easy access to cheap parts and people who knew the inside and outside of my laptop better than I will -- I run a business and so don't get to take things apart as often as I used to -- then probably that would be a different story.

If I go to HP's mainstream line, I can absolutely configure a dv6t for less than I paid for my Envy, but it's missing a few key things. I'm going to pick the options closest to what I can get on the Envy, which in most cases will mean the most expensive dv6t I can get. Let's take a look:

Total: $1,353.00
(Let's take off the Bing 20%, since that would apply here as well!)

New total: $1,083

# Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
# Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-720QM Quad Core processor (1.6GHz, 6MB L3 Cache) with Turbo Boost up to 2.8 GHz
# FREE Upgrade to 4GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm) from 3GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
# 500GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
# 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 320M - For i7 Processors
# 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768)
# LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support
# Webcam + Microphone
# Intel Wireless-N Card with Bluetooth
# High Capacity 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 320M instead of Radeon 5830 - I doubt I'd really care about this distinction since I'm not a hardcore gamer, but the 5830 trounces the 320M.
500 GB SATA instead of 2x120GB SSD - the SSDs alone would eat up the difference in price.
i7 720 vs i5 540 - Let's call this even, though you could certainly say the i7 is 'better.' I can live with that.
- 15.6" diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display (1366x768) - not comparable to the Envy HD display.
- Weighs 1.15 lbs more than the Envy, but has an internal DVD drive, which might matter to some people (doesn't to me).

All told, I could've had two of these laptops for slightly more than what I paid for my Envy, but they're not really comparable products. If I drop the SSDs and the high-res LCD from the Envy, that takes it down to $1500 land, or $1200 after Bing, and I'm still getting a better video card and a lighter laptop. Let's not even count the 'better speakers with Dr. Dre' since I can't really compare the two systems' audio, nor do I care much about that. LackofCheese has some good comparisons too.

All this hot air is not just me saying 'noooo, my purchase was a smart one!' (though it is also that). I'm mostly surprised that a 'Notebook Deity' with your obvious experience can't or simply won't differentiate between value for the money versus brand for the money. Perhaps you're right about most manufacturers' so-called 'premium' offerings -- my own experience calling on behalf of family members with mainstream notebooks is that it's a much more arduous experience. It's certainly been the case that I might encounter a first-level rep with a script even with a 'premium' line, but escalating has been much, much easier.