So... who else ordered an Envy 14 with Corei7?

Just wondering.

I appear to be one of the only ones.

Everyone else seems to have bought the i5 chips.

 

if for no other reason than to dispel the lies that I heard from an HP sales rep, can you confirm for me that your eSata/USB combo port is not USB 3.0?

 

I won't be receiving my envy 14 for about a week, but according to HP's website the machine contains:

"3 USB 2.0 (1 shared with high-speed eSATA combo)"

...so no USB 3.0

 

how are you liking it ? you chose the more powerful processor, u must need the juice ? don't think many will buy it with an i7 because given the size of the battery an i7 will drain it quicker than an i5.

i would buy it with an i5.

 

I haven't received my laptop yet, but I will post battery tests when it arrives.

If the life is too short I plan to RMA it for either an Envy 14 i5 or an Envy 13.

 

a shame these haven't hit best buy shelves yet ...
i would also swap out the dvd with a bluray burner. not sure wat hp was thinking putting out a high-end graphics oriented notebook without blu-ray playback or burning capability.

i wonder if apple's refresh of the mbp line will add bd-r ...

 

Apple had claimed at one point that the 9.5mm slot-loading BD drives were too expensive to include on the unibody MBPs, but I think Jobs has said since then that he "expects" (translation: "he wishes") BD media will die and be replaced by iTunes.

Not sure what HP's excuse would be.

 

i got the i7, but only because i do a lot of video editing. that's the only benefit i can see of i7 over i5.

as for the bd drive, i think its a cost related option, although i can't see why they didnt at least offer it as an expensive option and let the user make a choice.

 

I ordered the i7 740 before reading any of the E14 thread... Thats what i get for ordering on the 28th. Its supposed to be here tuesday the 20th. If the battery really is ~2 hours with my i7 i plan on returning it for an i5 and getting a SSD

 

Hmm.. I can't say which would help more but it's possible the SSD could make a lot more impact. Will you be encoding a lot of media and authoring, or mainly editing? I think the SSD has certainly helped me with Media composer and After Effects, and it is a lifesaver for huge image files in photoshop.

however, if you decide to keep it, there are a few settings you can tweak that help a lot with battery life, as long as you plan to do editing or intensive tasks primarily when plugged into AC. Basically, when i'm on battery, I just need my computer to last as long as possible so I can work on common, lightweight computing tasks without having to recharge.

Using my Envy 15 for example, which has notorious short battery life, at high performance, maximum brightness and really taxing the GPU, I only get around 90 minutes with the six cell and an extra 4-5 hours with the slice battery, for a total of 6 - 8 hours or so.

Here on these forums I learned one way to increase battery life is to adjust advanced power options for the "on battery" power saver mode as follows:

(1) set maximum processor state 20% (or even lower to stretch the battery further), and

(2) adjust the critical battery level to 2% (in order to do this you also have to adjust reserver battery levels)

(3) make sure powerplay is active in Catalyst settings; set screen, disc shutoff time as short as possible; no screensaver, etc., advanced system settings->performance->visual-> uncheck all the boxes

With these settings and by dialing down the screen brightness, with WiFi on but Bluetooth off, no RF wireless mice, not powering any external USB drives, but still doing regular work in Photoshop, After Effects, etc., but not editing 1080p video footage, playing 3D games or doing blu-ray authoring projects, I can get over five hours with the 6-cell battery before it automatically hibernates. With the slice battery in I can get another 7 -10 hours, for a total in this power saver mode around 12 - 15 hours. We have 2 slice batteries, so I could actually travel for a couple days without recharging if necessary.

If I need to do more CPU or graphics intensive tasks like video editing/encoding, etc., then I plug back into AC and go to town.

I imagine there are probably more advanced tweaks that some DIY person has created like reducing the number of active cores or something.

 

Just wanted to update you all... I just called HP and cancalled my order.

I decided battery life was an important factor and a benchmark shows the Core i5 520 preforms around a core 2 duo 2.9Ghz CPU which is enough for what I need.

I will be ordering my new HP Envy 14 with the 520 CPU in a few days... with the money I saved I opted for 6GB or RAM.

 

i would recommend going with the i5 450 as the performance difference over the 520 is negligible (.33 ghz of turbo boost, and few other things) and pick up an ssd as the performance boost there would be much more noticeable over the extra 2gb of ram

 

Thanks for the recommendations.

After reading this post (link below) I think I will still be going with the 520.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-compaq-voodoo-pc/495204-i5-450-vs-i5-520-a.html

As for the SSD... I need more drive space for the time being. I'm waiting for a 500GB SSD that is affordable.

 

BD is now the current standard optical format. not including in a new computer lineup would be foolish.

either way, digistor sells oem slot and tray bd burners ... i would just swap out what comes with the laptop.

 

I'm not so sure. DVD sales still account for 89% of the market. I guess the thinking is that Blu-rays will be superseded by downloads pretty soon. Anecdotal evidence from my local CD/DVD shop supports that too.

 

IMO physical media is just... old. Streaming (Netflix, Hulu, etc) is the future.

I actually would have rather had HP remove the DVD drive to make the laptop slightly thinner.

 

on the contrary, the digital media crowd is still small. how would you lend a movie to a froend or family member that doesnt have a computer handy or cant be bothered loading it up and watching it on a screen thats tiny compared to current tvs ?

also, whats the point of watching something in full hd on a 14.5 inch screen anyway ?

 

Anybody still have their i7 coming in, or received? One guy reported 3.25 hours of battery life with an 840qm, but I'd love to hear other comparisons!!!

 

Same argument could be made for any pushing technology... at one point you could say this for the phone.

HDMI out to a TV... (It is 2010... everyone should have one by now)

 

i am still a fan of optical media because it's hard-wired, cannot be erased (a movie for instance), can't be corrupted either. i have some trust for hdd's and ssd's, but optical discs are universal and there is more access to an optical disc player than a computer. in this forum and this country, there may be a large installed user base of pc and digital media users, but that is only this country, not the world.

 

Optical media for large amounts of data is slow especially writing. Solid state flash drives will get cheaper and probably will be the one killing optical media, not streaming. Streaming has a place as long as you have the bandwidth and access to it. Once your connection is severed it's back to a local physical medium. Steam and it's ilk sucks because I can run to the store quicker than downloading gigs of the game. Not only that but I have the physical media and not tied down with extra DRM. Unfortunately they're making it harder on the DVD-ROM copies making you remain on-line to play. Their greed will be their downfall.

I like watching movies through a STB and not a computer that will add noise and complexity to the experience. It sucks that Blu-ray won but hopefully it wont be around too long. Rewinding VHS tapes sucked. Popping in DVDs and watching movies quickly was GREAT. Loading a Blu-ray movie and waiting sometimes minutes sucks. Thank you sony and Slooooow Java.

Streaming movies sucks at peak usage. Try it next time there's a snow storm or when everyone in your neighborhood is indoors. The problem with Netflix is that they have old movies for streaming and don't support surround sound. Watching movies on a computer/notebook is ghetto when you have a comfy couch and a glorious plasma on your wall.

I just woke up from a nap and cranky.

Oh yeah, my i7-720 is sitting at FedEx and I'll be leaving shortly to pick it up and will pass on my observations about battery life.

 

Just curious, did you want HD-DVD to win?

 

It was implied.

 

It's impressive you managed to get that much out of a i7 with wifi on, you should post in the Envy 14 : Battery log thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/501066-envy-14-battery-life-log.html

I also posted in the battery log thread a intel wifi device manager tweak. Actually even if you set windows in maximum power saving for wifi, the intel card is still set at maximum performance in it's own advanced settings, and you can change that to a maximum wifi saving setting, sadly no one tried out yet both modes to see if there is a significant battery life gain. Check the thread.