Question regarding the SB Envy 17 release and existing owners

I stumbled upon this forum after looking up a few different issues I am having with my Envy 17. Namely the level of heat it omits from the bottom (near fan) as well as the left-hand palm rest (i have a standard hdd and i'm guessing thats where it is).

Also my battery life *sucks* - I can get through about an hour or so of Hulu w/ the 9 cell battery before it hits 12%, in hibernate by the time it takes me to get the battery from upstairs and back down.

Finally, certain shades of grey (coincidentally one being my favorite background color for development) cause pixels to become blatantly visible and fly all over the place (like watching very, very small static).

I'm sure I am not the only one that has these issues and after reading the forum a bit, the heat issue is well established and while I don't know if I just got the short end of the stick with the battery, it's certainly not fun to have to be constantly plugged in.

Anyway, to the point - from what I've read thus far, it looks like the new Sandy Bridge drop is going to at least attempt to resolve some of these issues. Is there any speculation or word that they will be replacing/recalling the old models in exchange for them? I mean, my "laptop" should have a Surgeon General Warning stamped on the right side (it would darken if it were on the left..) and the fact that the battery lasts about the same length of an episode of Chuck doesn't really scream mobility to me. I already have a pretty sick desktop - I don't need another one.

Thanks in advance

 

For the shades of grey, it's because the screen on the Envy 17 is a twisted-nematic 6-bit screen. To display the 16.7 million color palette, it has to use a technique called temporal dithering. Temporal dithering is a technique to simulate shades of colors that the screen cannot display by creating "static." The overall color displayed from the dithered area is close to the color a true 8-bit screen would display. An 8-bit screen would display your colors without any dithering whatsoever. =

 

The heat issue has been discussed and when I had my Envy 17 3d it got hot but not hot enough to cause damage to my skin.

The battery life is normal for these types of machines. Actually with proper tuning, you should be able to squeak by over an hour. The Envy 17 is a desktop replacement and is thus expected to be plugged in most of the time. It's not meant to be mobile and on-battery for too long.

I seriously doubt they will recall them once SB ships. Afterall, there is nothing wrong with them, they just do the best they can with the current technology. If you need SB, send your Envy back (assuming you can) and wait like the rest of us... lol

 

I've never heard of that issue. Is it really that noticable or annoying? I'm buying an envy 17 3d next week and so far none of the issues i've heard about with the envy have bothered me, but that sounds a liitle off putting.

 

My CPU Idles at 65 - 70C, while it may not cause skin damage, its absolutely uncomfortable for both me and the CPU itself. Yes, can the proc handle 100C? Sure, but I've hit that and then some when doing simple image editing. Just because you may not have monitored it, doesn't mean its not an issue. From what I've read around the net, it is pretty common infact.

No, no it is not. Convincing yourself of that will only further this practice. Look at a MacBook Pro - it gets 6-8 hours of *development* life with a beefier CPU. I unplugged it 15 minutes ago and have been simply surfing the net (nothing else on) and I'm at 70%. Even if that is off by a few % it is still not acceptable by any means.

Yes, I've tweaked my settings, no I do not have it on full brightness, etc.

There's nothing wrong with them?
-Heat, there is *absolutely* no freakin reason why my machine should be cooking at 67C right now. That is a defect. Period. They claimed it would be, what, 35C? Lol.
-Battery Life - 2.5 hours my .
-Drivers - Display drivers crash pretty much 2-3x a day.

Right, cause Amazon will take back a laptop months after I purchased it.

I'm not trying to be snippy here, but do not assume that I am an idiot. It's generally not a good practice in life.

 

Btw, 67C = 153F incase the conversion made it seem like a nontrivial amount of heat radiating near my balls

 

It is for me now. It's strange, seems like it just recently started and its getting worse, if that's possible.

eafd - damn good explanation man, thanks for that.

 

Its the norm for that chipset unfortunately.