Ordered a HP Envy 15

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Vengance_01

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 23, 2001
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In my mind this by far the best bang for your buck. Used a 450$ off coupon. I got the following:

Core I5 430
4GB DDR3
5830 1024MB card
320GB 7200RPM
15.6 1080P Glossy Screen
6 cell
Intel N WIFI
Bluetooth

950+tax+16$ CA recycling fee.

Sadly the coupon is dead. :(
 
Its a great laptop, especially for that price!

The biggest issue is battery life (without the slit fit) and that the system is apparently a giant heatsink that gets super hot.

For under 1 grand its a stupid powerful laptop though.
 
I heard the Gen 2 with the new cooler 5830's and I5 cpu, they run very cool.
 
I ordered one myself - same specs as the OP. The coupon makes these an outstanding deal - thanks for posting it. :)
 
This should be in Hot Deals. I don't think any other notebook can match it for the price. Especially with that 5830.
 
What a sweet deal. I just ordered an ASUS N61JQ though, so I missed that boat. The ASUS is a better deal with the i7 CPU, but that 5830 should be quite the nice mobile GPU compared to the 5730.
 
I rather have the I5 and 5830. Its much thinner and lighter. Plus you get a 1080P screen. HP over that asus any day.
 
I ordered one as well yesterday. I really wish it got 4 hours battery life minimum. Going to be very tough coming from a UL30VT that gets 9hrs+ battery life without even trying.
 
The Envy was a great machine, with a few exceptions that mattered to me. I had an Envy 15 at launch, the version the the i7-820 Quad. I eventually sent it back because..

1. Abysmal BIOS issues. Not ACPI compliant so with a fresh install of windows or linux, it would cook itself without HP software/drivers. I hope they fixed this
2. No edge to edge glass screen, no HP Radiance display - These turned out to only be on the 13, unbeknown to us at the time
3. No backlit keyboard - I just figure that ANY high end notebook needs to have this. If you make something that looks very close to a MacBook Pro, make sure you don't forget the little details.

Gen2 toned down the processor power to the nonQuads, i5s and i7s, upgraded the 4830 to a 5830. Hope the BIOS issues are fixed for you!
 
anyone who ordered with the -$450 coupon get there envy yet? I ordered and my build date isnt till the 16th and then its just standard shipping. Any impressions from new owners?
 
Ordered mine Tuesday this week.

Got everything base (base for this thing is i5-430M, 4GB ram and 5830 video!)
with 1080p glossy screen. It's supposed to have superb contrast and decent view angles for a laptop.
Mine was $1399 - $450 coupon - $95 10% Bing - $95 10% Bing again (HP Fuck up) + $76 Tax = $830.

I wasn't even in the market for a lappy, but now I'm a little exited. Already ordered an i5-540M to upgrade it with and have the i5-430M on ebay.

My only concern right now is the proported poor performance with random read for SSD's. This thing deserves an Intel SSD and I hope it doesnt affect real world performance. I want to boot Win7 in 10 seconds like my 2 yr old desktop :p

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/HP-Env...rmance-in-Envy-4k-Read-Write-Times/td-p/52262
 
The Envy 15 can play any graphics intensive PC game in Full HD resolution with incredible speed. Imagine being able to INSTANTLY Alt+Tab between a memory intensive 3D game, a large file in Photoshop and a flash intensive web page, back and forth with absolutely no lag on the screen - with the Envy 15 you can do this, especially if you order the SSD option and 16GB RAM option.

However, many people have experienced severe "black screen" and freezing issues with the ATI Radeon HD5830 and HD4830 - see below:

Bottom line - if you can wait until HP resolves the problem with (1) "black screen" crashing / freezing and (2) low 4k read speed for the SSD, I would recommend the HP Envy over any other laptop out there.

Also, I would highly recommend waiting until April 13, as it has been reported that Apple will refresh the MacBook Pro line on April 13. If they do, I would check the new MacBook Pro specs as well.

HP Envy 15 Pros:
(1) Incredibly fast when working with memory/graphics intensive applications; editing large files in Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
(2) Looks fantastic - slim, gorgeous FullHD glossy screen
(3) Reasonable battery life when using optional slice battery
(4) Currently one of the fastest USB 3.0 laptops available anywhere

HP Envy 15 Cons:
(1) Freezes up or crashes to black screen approximately 10-15 times per day. Many other buyers experienced the same exact issue.
(2) 4k read speed for the SSD is 10x slower than it should be (slower than the 4k write speed!)
(3) extremely expensive
(4) Annoying placement of special function keys to the left of the keyboard.

I purchased an Envy 15 about 1 month ago with the following specs:

i7-820QM processor
320GB Dual SSD (Raid0)
16GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD5830
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

The complete price including tax for this customized model was well over $4,000. On the very first bootup on the day I received the model in the mail from HP shopping, I went through the process of setting up windows and then the system froze up. The screen became filled with a colorful static effect with moving black horizontal lines.

On restart, the windows error reporting was as follows:

"You received this message because hardware or software on your computer caused Windows to shut down unexpectedly and restart. This is a serious problem, commonly referred to as a stop error or blue screen. If you have received this error more than once, we recommend that you do the following: Back up your files to avoid data loss in case of a complete hardware failure. Contact the original manufacturer of your computer to determine the specific component which is failing. Although we know the problem is caused by a hardware component, the error report does not contain enough information to tell us the specific component. It is likely that the problem is being caused by one of the following computer components: Random access memory (RAM) System board Central Processing Unit (CPU) Power supply"

I called HP Envy tech support and they put me in touch with the customer support rep who sent me a shipping label to return the laptop and get a refund. She offered me a $170 discount in the event I decided to keep it, so I thought I would continue using the model and see if it was perhaps a one-time problem on setting up windows for the first time.

Over the course of 2 weeks, I experienced black screen crash or freezing (with repeating loop of 1 frame of corresponding audio) approximately 10-15 times per day. The only way to get out of that screen was by hard reset.

I also noticed when running the crystalmark benchmark my 4k read speed was 10x lower than it should have been - in fact, the 4k read speed for the SSD Raid0 was slower than the 4k write speed!

CrystalDiskMark 2.2 (C) 2007-2008
--------------------------------
Sequential Read : 469.045 MB/s
Sequential Write : 155.626 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 253.068 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 133.743 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 10.294 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 55.438 MB/s
Test Size : 100 MB Date : 2010/03/10 1:54:01

I eventually returned my unit for complete refund; however, as it was the most lightning fast experience I have ever had (during the times when it did not freeze or crash on me) working on very large photoshop and illustrator files, I definitely want to order the exact same model once they correct the graphics card and 4k read speed issues.

From a bit of research, it appears many people with other brands of laptops have experienced exactly the same "black screen" issue with similar ATI Radeon graphics cards that we are having with the 4830 and the 5830 used in the Envy 15, leading me to wonder whether many of these ATI graphics cards are simply defective. I'm surprised that HP did not test them more rigorously before choosing to implement them in the Envy 15. I am eager to order another HP Envy 15, but do I need to wait until HP refreshes the line with an entirely different graphics card? Is anyone who has ordered the Envy 15 NOT experiencing this black screen issue? I wonder the percentage of users who are experiencing black screen issues with the Envy 15. Is it limited to those who have custom orders? Are people who bought the "quick-ship" models also experiencing this?


Here are several links to postings regarding the "black screen" issue with the ATI Radeon HD5830, HD4850 and HD4830 in various brands of computer:

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/HP-Envy-Not…

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/t5/HP-Envy-Not…

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthre…

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.c…

http://radeoncrash.blogspot.com/2009/07/…

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.c…

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about2044…

http://forums.techarena.in/monitor-video…

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread…

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/254855…

On an aesthetic level, this model is fantastic. Very slim, even when using the optional 9-cell slice battery. Others have complained about the heat issue but when I used a Zalman NC1000 notebook cooler, I had no problems whatsoever with overheating, in fact the underside of the laptop was cool to the touch.

The only gripe I had about the design was the plethora of special function keys on the left side of the keyboard. I kept accidentally opening the Print menu or web page, email, etc., when playing a video game or working in Photoshop. I had a great deal of difficulty to attempt to disable those keys and even with using the keyboard layout menus in control panel, I was not able to disable them. I was tempted to purchase special software for customizing keyboard layout for the sole purpose of disabling those annoying and poorly located special function keys.

The touchpad was slightly less sensitive and slightly more difficult to use compared to the MacBook Pro. Hopefully this will be resolved with driver or BIOS update.

When using the 9cell slice battery I had about 4 hours of battery life, which is not great, but much better than my previous laptop. For long international flights I would recommend taking along 2 fully charged slice batteries.

Again the graphics performance was amazing except for those 10-15 times per day that the graphics card crashed or froze up. Other than that it was lightning fast. As of today, the only solution I am aware of for the graphics problem is replacing the graphics card. I don't know if replacing the SSD with a third party dual SSD Raid0 will improve the 4k read speed.
 
what a post. I hope my system doesn't have those black screen problems. It's going back in a hurry if so. Wait for Macbook Pro? No thanks. I got the Envy for $900 - the MBP will be double the price, lesser specs, non upgradeable proc, weird OSX keyboard, probably heavier and lesser screen.

Did you not try to see if they could fix your laptop, or replace it to solve the problem?

I will certainty report on my Envy's performance.

It seems to me that this can't be the case for all Envy's. HP simply would not be able to sell the laptop if they all crashed "15 times per day." that's too striking and a deal breaking fault. It would never even make it through reviews. There are a good number of happy owners on notebookreview also.
 
I should be getting mine today. I upgraded the hard drive to a 500GB 7200RPM and grabbed the external dvd drive to use that $450 coupon because I didn't mind the 720P screen (will be using the HDMI out to a bigger screen when necessary, and games should run better at the lower resolution)
 
way to be late to the game bezant haha, the coupon was used up back in march
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
I too was looking at this laptop and I looked at all others. I have a M17 Alienware and want a smaller 15.6 screen rather then the 17in screen and heavy laptop. I am waiting till they fix that SSD problem before I buy the laptop. Maybe let it refine it self a bit more.
 
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