*HP ENVY 17 & 17 3D (1XXX series) Owners Lounge*

[Hitman322]

Which numlock do you mean, there is no numlock key for this laptop.
.

I know - that's the problem. The number keypad stopped displaying numbers a few days ago. I tried the registry hack to enable it, but it resets upon reboot.

[Chevalier_du_Roi]

Speaking of cooling pads, will it fit with the Zalman NC2000?

[nevian]

I believe the monitor with mini DP needs to be a native mini DP monitor or the adaptor you use has to be an 'active' mini DP adaptor. There is a list of the supported active adaptors on the ATI site somewhere.

we need confirmation on this.

i just got off a 2 hour convo with hp tech support.

he seemed to think that so long as the monitors each show up individually that they should all work to become part of a "group" ... i only saw the 1x2 and 2x1 option when creating a gruop and he seemed to think there is an issue in that regard with it not displaying 1x3 and 3x1 options.

he said he's going to research it further and get back to me.

on a side note.... after years of ordering and receiving laptops and computers and what not...i spoke too soon....i said earlier on this thread that all my laptops and computers from oems had always arrived working with zero issues as far as hardware was concerned. i guess the envy 17 broke that streak...the directional arrow keys are afu. probably a piece of trash of some sort under the keys. not sure i'll return it or try to get it working myself.

i'll keep you guys posted on the eyefinity thing

[nevian]

someone mentioned something about quality control on these envys...definitely agree with you. there are some areas around the chassis surrounding the keyboard where if you put pressure on you can actually hear a little pop as it tries to sit to the rest of the laptop. definitely not good on a "high end" laptop. people are supposed to envy these laptops!

[BennyPac]

Early Touchpad and Battery Issues:

Have there been significant touchpad issues with others? I remember at least one comment a few days ago.

My touchpad "wheel" works a couple times, but then ceases to respond. This pattern occurs regardless of whether I am using a browser or Windows explorer.

The pinch seems to work, but the tap for mouse button works rarely.

The two-fingered scroll has never worked.

I've reset the sensitivity in the Synaptics interface, but it hasn't helped so far.

I intend to keep experimenting, but all this is interfering with my planned temperature tests.

I can say that the left palm rest reached 100 deg F with the laptop at idle (1% - 2% cpu) with Speedfan reporting cpu temps of 115 deg F. The palm rest then dropped to 92 deg F after about 20 minutes (still, all idle) and the cpu dropped to 105 deg F.

I feel the heat around 100 deg F, but it is neither too hot nor lightly warm. Until I load the cpu, however, these numbers don't mean much. I wasn't tracking the fan(s?) speed, so I can't say for sure whether that early left palm rest heat was a quick purge by starting fans followed by a steady lower temperature or what.

This is with the i7 and a single hard drive. I also was using the 9 cell battery on a table (more air space). I was busy with errands, so the laptop was doing nothing except interact with the wireless router and collect Norton and Windows updates.

I need to evaluate the touchpad before I load any more software.

Battery: the 6 cell battery had 20 hours to charge with the laptop off, but upon boot, it was only 48% charged. With the laptop on, the battery completed to 100%. This seems similar to one prior comment, as I remember.

[Shiboe]

Second day review with a little more use (only light, no gaming).

Heat: I think the people who are having cooler results are running i5s in ideal environments. I was in a much cooler place (70F) and even web browsing this thing will creep up to hot. Fortunately the palm rest area wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday, but the left side and upper portion of top are still significantly hot (while doing nothing); enough to hurt should you leave your hand there more than a few seconds. The heat is HOT along the left bezel down to about the caps lock key. Below that it is uncomfortably to noticably warm, with the very bottom (inline with the bottom of the trackpad) being about slightly above room temperature. This is in an ideal cool environment; I don't see myself being anywhere much cooler than here.

Trackpad: Sucks, sorry to say. Maybe I've been spoiled working off a macbook (ol' whitey) the last few years, but this thing is endless frustration. It is nearly impossible to "click" accurately, as the mouse will jump as you try to do so. Forcing myself to learn to take all fingers off the trackpad when I want to click has helped, but a good 50% of the time it will still jump as my single finger tries for a flawless click. Somewhat a relief: "tapping" does seem to work pretty well in place of clicking, but it's not 100%. 2 finger scrolling sucks, but I'll try to tinker with it tomorrow. All in all, I'm bummed that I'll be forced to use my mouse more than I'd care to so that I don't punch something. I do love that I can double click the top left to lock the trackpad easily.

Build quality: As others have noticed, I am also seeing a gap in spots along the edge. Mine is fairly modest, so I don't see it as a big issue. A solid piece of metal a la MBP would have payed off here.


Everything said and done, I'm pretty happy with this thing. While the heat is a big issue for me, I'm starting to resign myself that to achieve the power I'm enjoying, I'm going to suffer heat, or noise, or both, and at least here I get something that's a bit more presentable. I'm a little more forgiving today now that I've got my eye on a G13 gaming pad. Let the F'er heat up all it wants, I'll stick my mit on something else.

Accoustics: Sound is nice. Subwoofer and whatever else they threw in is leaps above my old macbook in sound quality. Now that I'm in a pindrop room, the fan is definitely more noticable, especially when it decides to power up, but it's not overwhelming, and especially if you have turned up the sound to enjoy the niceness.

I'm gonna try to do some of the indepth testing I wanted over the rest of this week, then I'll throw up a review if anyone cares to read. If not, at least it will help solidify in my mind where this laptop sits, and if I want to keep it.


Final notes for people still waiting and wondering about things I was:
- it's darker in person than in all the pictures (the inside mainly, what I'm looking at 90% of the time) a pleasant suprise
- the bell 9-cell isn't bad at all. Very small bump, in fact, I wish it was larger so I'd get more life out of it. extending the width of the laptop would have been nice
-pattern isn't that bad, and doesn't stand out
- I don't see much in the way of bloatware, and am running great without a fresh install. revo uninstalled a few things and am plenty fine with the result

[kiwi_style]

Besides these issues, the bottom right "foot" of the laptop is slightly indented more than the others, causing the laptop to rock when pressure is applied. Applying the same pressure on other parts of the laptop does not cause rocking.

This is the same problem I have had with the two models I received. Both had issue with the front-right foot, ie the foot closest to the user (I'm assuming his is the foot your talking about as well?). If you pressed down on this corner the laptop would 'touch down' with a thud well that's an exageration but yea...

So HP are investigating it now, they suspect there's been an entire bad batch shipped here. Bummer. Still waiting on replacement and HP are looking into how they can compensate me, considering my original purchase was now 2 weeks ago.

Interesting there may be other units out there that have this same cosmetic problem. Bad news about all the other physical defects such as marks and gaps.

[ms960]

Speaking of cooling pads, will it fit with the Zalman NC2000?

Yes, it fits. It hangs over just a tad on the sides, but it's not really obnoxious or a problem. Does a great job cooling it...

[palatkik]

I've never had a laptop with fingerprint reader before. Can anyone advise why it is not on the ENVY but included on Pavilions?

What other security does ENVY have, perhaps face recognition through web cam? Or is it plain old keyboard entry of passwords?

[metril]

My Envy 17 is sitting on the Zalman NC2000. It fits, but don't expect too much cooling.