Waiting for Envy 17 3D SB thread

hmm -- On the face of it, this is nothing more than a sales rep scheduling a call back. any rep can do that today, and any rep can pick any date they want for the callback date. The Date of February 27 has not been announced by anyone. Morever, on my last call to the same sales office one hour ago, the rep checked with the product champion for the Envy 17 and was told "end of february" with no exact date. That is more than we've been told before, but my point is this: that a sales rep scheduled a call back for Feb 27 most likely means that the sales rep believes with high probability that he can process the order at that time. it doesn't necessarily mean Feb 17 is the intro date.

that said, I do see some interesting intrigue here, in that February 27 is a Sunday. why? As I review the dv7t-quad introduction, these models started to emerge in the retail stores over a weekend, and appeared on the HP website around Saturday night or early Sunday morning U.S. time. So, and this is a stretch, if we accept that the rep knows something he shouldn't, and Feb 27 really is the into date, then it could be that this is the date on which we could expect to see the customizable order pages updated on HP's website, and that the brick-and-mortar stores might start to show availability starting the previous Friday, with SKU inventory leaks possibly emerging in the few days prior to that.

my read at this time is February 27 is still not strong enough to call it a credible rumor, because it comes from only one sales rep and we know that the sales reps don't have intro dates to give out. but I agree that the date is consistent with the evidence we have, all of which points to "end of february". So I'll call it "plausible" at this time, which I'll define, and continue to watch this one to see if the evidence strengthens or weakens, going forward from today.

I also note that this new evidence dis-credits the "April" foolishness that has surfaced recently. imho we have very strong evidence for "end of february" but whether that means 18-20 or 25-27 is unclear. its only a week

 

news as of Thurs 1/27

Evidence for an "end of february" release is strengthening. NBR member timcfox has joined the forums to tell us of one HP sales rep who promised a call back to order a SB Envy on February 27. We've confirmed that sales reps haven't been given intro dates, but we will continue to watch this one.

Busted/irrelavent rumors listed in gray font. I may drop them from the list, as they have probably served their entertainment purpose.

Here's the list:

credible: the information makes sense and the source appears credible
plausible: emerging information that may strengthen in credibility over time
not credible: the information is inconsistent, no references have been cited, and/or the source has not demonstrated credibility
busted: The weight of evidence indicates that the information is false


“Molly Athp” , an HP employee, posted on the “HP for Students –US” facebook page that "the Envy 17 is planned to get Sandy Bridge in late Feb.” Later, she gave me me a personal Facebook note saying that the "late February" date is not official but is an estimate. in my opinion, this adds to the credibility of a "late February" release, at least for the U.S. status = credible

NBR member andyguk has learned from the HP Store UK that they do not expect an SB refresh "within the coming weeks or months". and also mentioned that the U.S market is "more advanced in trialing newer products". The implication here is that some countries may lag the U.S. in new product intros and that the non-US countries may in fact be later than February. status = credible

dlleno and Kill Joe have suggested, based on the strength of comments from Molly Athp, those coming from the HP Sales call center, and based on how the Dv7t-quad was introduced, that we should hear from HP on or before 2/15 and that products could be available in some retail stores by the following weekend and available for online order by January 20. status=credible

timcfox reports that a sales rep has scheduled a purchase callback for February 27, which implies that the SB Envy introduction could occur over that weekend status=plausible

an unknown source on NBR postulated that HP would make an announcement on January 24 and even promised to order a Dell if there was no HP announcement by this date. This date seemed to catch popularity but has no basis other than someone's opinion. status=busted

jeff5886 joined the forums to tell us that he has a friend who is an HP sales rep -- who tells of an HP internal sales team conference call on Thursday January 20 8pm (no time zone given), and promises to give Jeff5886 any new information. status: busted.

 

dlleno is 100% right in this matter. I just got off the phone with HP sales, and being very polite I asked if the February 27th release date is correct. She said pretty much what dlleno mentioned. The sales reps are not given the exact date of the release.... although when I gave another gentle suggestion, she did mention that the February timeline is very very probable.

Yes, the April "foolishness" is just that. April? Huh, with Alienware and others already sending out their SB versions and 3Ds HP would be hurting more than they want to, although not sure if they really would be affected much with their big ol' pockets.

P.S. She signed me up for their newsletter which should tell me when the release is happening.... I told her I didn't sign up for it because I did not want spam. She understood, and assured me they won't sell my email, bla bla bla, ok right.


KJ

 

We don't know for sure, but I'm expecting 2-slots, 8GB max RAM (same as today's Envy) and generally the same case. We have not heard of a different screen so I'm expecting the same there as well. I can't comment on VT

 

Was so close to just saying screw it and going with the dv7t Quad SB edition....but I just checked the website and that laptop doesn't have the 1 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 port. And that's something I want in my next laptop...

Oh well I guess end of February it is for me..

 

cool. Glad you're on board with the rest of us..... I am betting alot that the wait will be worth it.

KJ

 

Lol I sure hope so. Talk to you later man. I'm so tired after working all day today.

 

Hey folks,

I'm in a 'holding pattern' as well.

I was 'this close' to buying an ASUS today, until I read about their poor customer service. Higher end laptops are tricky creatures...if I had a laptop out of commission for a month at a regional service center waiting for parts from Taiwan, I'd be pretty upset.

I also found out that my employer has pretty good HP EAP discounts.

Feb 17? I guess I can cool my jets until then...

 

i am still fighting with myself whether go with a sony F 3d or the HP SB.
I like HP's dual HDD and its next gen perfomance, but Sony just make their 3D screen sound so wonderful...
well, i am still pretty happy with my little m11x for now. feb 6 is around corner

 

I wouldn't count on a release date announcement for Sandy Bridge during the big WebOS tablet event. It could happen; I just haven't seen any indication that HP will use this event for that purpose, even though I hope they do...


and Kill Joe and TheAtreidesHawk : I see this as primarily a processor refresh, probably motivated in large large part to solve the cooling problem (at least I hope so...). So the big ticket items I expect are switchable graphics and advanced cooling, which I hope is more than CoolSense software -- it better have some physical cooling changes as well, such as vents, a better fan, or heat pipes, etc. or I for one will be disapointed. I can't see how they can maintain performance, run discrete graphics, and stay cool just by throwing a fancy fan controller at the problem.

I think there is also room for optimism around some new stuff, as the rest of the world (like Alienware) appears to be embracing things like USB 3.0 and HDMI 1.4. Widi is already promised, if I read the Jan 4 announcement correctly. Sandy Bridge Dv7-quads already support GDDR5 so odds are the SB Envy will too. Blu-ray writing capabilty is uncertain to me -- Alien's don't have it today I've noticed, and this may be a limitation of the slot loading drive, for all I know.

and HP could have a surprise for us too; one never knows.

It is curious that HP is one of the last to market in this genre. But as some have already pointed out, this could be by design -- let the others name the pitcher before HP designs the batting order. I can't see HP making big changes late in the development cycle though -- these intros take time to plan and once the train leaves the station its hard to pull it back to load somethign else. apologies for the excessive metaphore.

I also find it interesting that the Envy's have avoided the all-out gaming configurations, i.e. four-slot RAM and the baddest discrete graphics known to man. It just doesn't seem to be aimed at the hard core gamers.

the other thing that interests me as I study the possible configurations -- it is not clear to me from the Dell website that the dual disk configurations could be separate drives instead of only raid 0. What I like about the HP configuration is the choice to pair an SSD with traditional spindle 7200 rpm drive.

 

VT support is available through a bios setting but it is disabled by default (or was on the Envy 17 3D).

 

Today's Envy has only two slots and supports only 8GB max RAM. We don't know yet if this will change with the SB Envy 17 but I'm not yet convinced they will change the mother board layout, or support 8GB sticks. Assuming 8GB sticks exist for less than a fortune, one could conceivably replace existing RAM altogether and put in 8GB sticks and hope that it runs (note that >8GB is not supported. it may work, but its not supported)

you might want to keep your options open

oh, and I implied something earlier that is not true: today's Envy 17 supports USB 3.0 (I just read the manual. the USB 3.0 port is on the left side next to the headphone/microhone jack) ; I'd expect the new one to do the same

 

Lol perhaps HP will really wow us and put 2 of those suckers in there....

In a way I'm glad that we have all of February to wait. Gives me more time to decide on whether I want an i5 or i7 processor in the laptop. Cuz while i want a laptop to play Starcraft II smoothly I also don't want it to get really hot.

SO what do you think dlleno?

 

On Dell's Alienware, you cannot configure from the factory with two drives without RAID 0. However you can order with one drive and add the second drive without RAID 0. Or you can order with RAID 0 and rebuild the OS on one drive without RAID 0.

My thanks to BatBoy for providing me with those answers.

 

Don't know where you guys are living, but now in South Florida the weather is simply amazing! Cool, sunny, and its almost February and I'm anxiously awaiting the release of this sexy laptop.... I'm so looking forward to using the bluray once more, the 3D, trying out the HDMI 1.4, try out the coolsense, see if performance has improved...and of course crossing my fingers that HP will NOT UNDERCLOCK our GPU!!!!!
P.S. Enjoy the weekend fellow NBR members.

KJ

 

Mid-eastern Florida here, and yeah the weather is starting to pick up, was a bit cold earlier, but now it's getting there.

 

try new york here. Snow is crazy...too bad I am too busy this year to goto a ski trap...
sux a lot a55.

 

One thing I wish the Envy laptops would have: real EFI/UEFI boot mode -- that is, "Boot from EFI File".

Many (if not absolutely all) Sandy Bridge desktops have UEFI; the current Insyde laptops have UEFI, but are locked into compatibility-mode booting.

Now I just have to think of a "why" I should get an Envy 17 3D, when my 8530w still works fine...

 

I just called the "Reserve Now" number just to see if the Saturday reps might have more information or would be so bold as to tell us a date when others won't or can't.

No such luck. This guy was about as clueless as it gets; didn't even offer to call me back or do anything for me. So I guess we wait for the mid to end of February.

I wonder if anyone has contacts at Engadget or similar sites and thought to possibly prod them to gain more info from HP about a release date. Being that it would benefit both them as well as us, they just might get on that.

Or not.

 

new england, snow storms almost hit every week, terrible weather, and my college never closes for snow~

 

North Carolina here....our weather is mostly cold but every once in a while we get a warm day.

The waiting is brutal....

 

Must be Roll Call

I am in Saudi Arabia, cold and rainy up north, didn't buy the original Envy 17" but ready to spring for new, improved edition, time is no problem for me, got plenty of patience

 

Chip flaw in the Sandy Bridge series 6 chipset announced today.

From Dow Jones Newswire
"The company said in some cases, the serial-ATA ports within those chipsets may degrade over time, potentially affecting the performance or functionality of other SATA-linked devices such as hard drives and DVD drives. The chipset is used in the company's latest second-generation Intel Core processors. Intel (INTC:$21.22,00$-0.24,00-1.12%) said it has stopped shipments of the affected chip from its factories, has corrected the design issue and has started making a new version of the chip that will resolve the issue. Intel (INTC:$21.22,00$-0.24,00-1.12%) said it expects a "full volume recovery" in April."

 

link please wow I hope this doesn't delay HP... or indicate a problem with Dv7-quads already shipped

 

Intel Identifies Chipset Design Error, Implementing Solution - Yahoo! Finance

 

Seriously!!#!!1# They don't want to make a grown man cry! Lol, but yeah, I do hope that this won't push the late Feb date too much further now...ugh.


KJ

 

Looks like a volume recovery by April and I would guess they will be replacing existing machines first. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

More tech oriented news source
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/intel-hit-with-chipset-design-flaw-in-sandy-bridge-rollout/44257

 

lol do you mean about the chances of 4-slots worth of RAM, or whether or not Starcraft II will work best on i5 or i7? My personal read is that HP won't re-design the SB Envy motherboard to accomodate the additional slots, even though I hope that they do (and support 16 GB RAM). As for the i5 vs i7 question, imho the game developers are always improving and re-writing so it might be, for example, that if Starcraft II works better on an i5 today over the useful life of a laptop that one might purchase today, I'd expect it updates and newer releases to take advantage of quads, and for the newer (SB especially) laptops to manage cooling better.

 

wow; just read the two articles; thanks. so it impacts SATA performance, including disk drives... well -- what i think HP will do is continue as if nothing happend, and support the shipped laptops under warranty. Intro date will not be affected, and some customers will be affected but not know it. I'd expect a recall program. The choice we will have now is whether or not to wait until the bad material is purged from the mfg line, or to get one sooner and plan on doing the recall thing.

lets hope they are open and "full disclosure" about this, and don't depend on customers to prove degredation in order to obtain warranty service for this problem. we will need a clear test case with expected measureable performance, in order to know whether we have a "bad one" or not, and whether or not it has been fixed. Hopefully the problem will be bracketed by serial number ranges...

 

Or...just maybe...and I like to think this would be the best case scenario...

It's possible that this was something they had found before (weeks/months?) and they are just now reporting it. So the seemingly long delay in releasing the SB chips was due to them rectifying the situation, and the launch date of end of February will have the new versions of them. Probability? I'd say 50/50. Would rather not deal with a recall, since I went through the Nvidia 7600 recall from the 2006/2007 9000 series laptops and that was a disaster.

What would you guys say on this humble theory?

 

Probably a bit wishful thinking given they released dv7's with sandy bridge. I would say much lower possibility than 50/50.

 

True, good point. However...

Maybe it's possible they caught the bad chips right after release and that's why the Envy's weren't released around the same time as the DV7's. I only remain optimistic about this because it seems rather odd that the announcement that the Envy's were getting SB at CES was now about a month ago, and they are still not released yet. I know big companies like HP like to make a big splash and all, waiting for "just the right time" but could they possibly be doing the right thing in waiting until they get it right before release date?

I like to think I'm a perpetual optimist, but this may be my downfall.

 

Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Anandtech has a good analysis of the Sandy Bridge chipset flaw announced today. I was still in the process of deciding whether to get the Alienware m17 R3 now or wait for the Envy 17 3D refresh. It looks like I'll have a lot more time to think about it as Intel is immediately halting production of the SB motherboards and won't have the 'fixed' versions shipping until late February.

 

Well, hopefully dlleno is correct and this won't affect the release of the Envy 17 3D SB edition in late Feb.... keeping fingers crossed....

P.S. Even when I do order mine, I'll be sure to ask the rep if they fixed this issue. I do hope they will have a 100% answer in the positive. If not, I might have to speak with the special Envy tech number to confirm....although we do have a 2 year warranty which should cover us pretty well.


KJ

 

I heard that only affect desktop chipsets, not the laptop ones.

 

May the Force be with you!

KJ

 

just mho, but I wouldn't expect HP to work that way. I think they've planned on end of february all along, planned that the dv7-quads would preceed the SB Envy's all along, and this SATA issue on the chipset is just a bump in the road.

Its certainly possible that HP might decide to purge some inventory, and when the "estimated build date" comes up on the customize-your-own web site we will get some hints there. But I'd suggest there's already some motherboards in production and that the first few laptops will have the SATA disease... and we won't be able to tell exactly when the cutover occurs.

time will tell though. its still my opinion that customizable laptops will be orderable in late february -- and we will soon be discussing the 'estimated ship date' offered by the website and trying to devine what that means re: the SATA disease.

and this is all assuming that the SATA disease affects the mobile chipset as well. evidence is strong (imho) that it DOES, as I've seen nothing to suggest that the native architecture of the mobile version of the supporting chipset is somehow immune to the problem that Intel is reporting.

 

Here is an update!

Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset flaw: The fallout | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News


Great article. dlleno is right though as usual , lol. It can affect laptops, but with a caveat... I'll quote ...


"•Issue: Affects SATA ports 2 through 5, not ports 0 and 1. Most laptops have two SATA devices, such as a hard disk drive and optical drive that would be using the unaffected ports 0 and 1. That said, Sandy Bridge-based systems with more than a couple of SATA devices could potentially be affected."


KJ

 

Good clarification! However, not many laptops with Sandy Bridge even use more than 2 SATA II Ports on their motherboard, so it won't affect that many users. That being said, many of the hardcore machines that do use more than two are still in development within the time tables of accepting the Sandy Bridge duals.

+1 to KJ and dlleno for that clarification!

 

today's Envy 17 has an external USB3.0/eSATA port on the left side. With two internal drives configured, consuming 0 and 1, wouldn't this guarentee that the SATA disease will affect external drive performance?

 

Not sure to tell you the truth. Maybe it uses a special SATA port that is independent of the affect SATA Controller? Remember the combo has to also use a form of a USB 2.0 Controller as well.

 

Hmmmn I guess my only response to this....

Hopefully this doesn't affect the SB Envy 17.

 

I'm pretty sure the SB Envy 17 will be affected since the Alienware M17xR3 seems to be affected. Still waiting to hear from Dell on what kind of recall plan will be in place.

 

over in the dv7-quad section, NBR member JanusSoCal makes the implication that mfg delays are pushing out delivery until March, for orders placed now.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/7117350-post268.html

we could be seeing the first effects on raw materials that impact mfg. if the dv7s are pushed out to March, this could be reflecting availability of the "fixed" chipset. I still expect the Envy 17 be "available" late February, but that might mean orderable but delayed. it will be interesting to see what happens to physical inventories...

 

I agree this is most probable of a situation that it will be released to order and configure, but delayed to build until parts are in. That's fine for me, I just want to know that it will be available with an ETA of maybe a slightly delayed build date. I'm sure they are having meetings as we speak to discuss just that...or so we'd like to think.

 

For some reason I'm highly optimistic! I just feel that Intel will push the proper chips quickly to meet demands. Perhaps HP will take our orders in late Feb. for the SB edition of the Envy 17 3D and just ship it a bit later. I'm ok with that as long as I can spec mines out the way I want to, get a great deal, and know its gonna get to me at a certain date. Then all I have to do is keep busy, read, watch movies, work, and drink some iced tea!

Oh, and ride my bike!

KJ

 

well, my attention span is only 2 weeks after that I'm taking my marbles home and going to buy a motorcycle just kidding

+1 Killa joe I'm optimistic too

 

Speaking of SATA, it sucks that Intel only has two ports... the laptop has HDD1, HDD2 (right?), CD, and eSATA.
So, HP's safe bet would probably be to have 6G on both internal bays.

Also, isn't that combo port a 2.0+eSATA, not 3.0+eSATA? I've never heard of a 3.0+eSATA port, and it'd make it darn near impossible to use both buses at once.

 

So I called the HP sales rep that I've been working with (see earlier post) on the issue of when to order a replacement for the Envy 17 3D that I returned, and I asked him if the Intel recall would further delay the availability of the refreshed Envy 17 3D's. He said that if he tried to predict the effect of the recall on the release date, he'd be engaging in pure conjecture. He then added that Intel has already shipped the new fixed 2nd gen processors, and that should mean that the late Feb. release date could still be met. I'm going to continue to wait until Feb. 27th to see if I get the promised call back.

 

yes on today's Envy the combo port is 2.0+eSATA. the 3.0 port is separate. both are on the left side