*HP ENVY 14 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge, Part 1*

[derpderp]

Meh, I never had anything driving me nuts when I tried out envies in stores. I don't use my tumb to click (frankly it's a retarded habit to do so when 99,9% of the trackpads out here are supporting double tapping as left click).
I never had troubles using only one finger on a trackpad to do everything. Eventually I use the thumb to right click but on most laptop its easier and faster to just hit with your ring finger the right click key that's near the right alt button. My only concern is the multitouch gestures precision. I didn't tried them out in store because I didn't even know they were there lol.

[ExodusC]

I don't use my tumb to click (frankly it's a retarded habit to do so when 99,9% of the trackpads out here are supporting double tapping as left click).

I think that is a personal preference. I've found many times a double tap won't register for me, and I (and I'm sure many others) like the tactile feedback of an actual click.

[LiTh07]

I wish the envy had a dot thing in the middle of the keyboard. Just a different color then red. maybe black? I love using those dots on business laptops =]

[derpderp]

Yea I understand that double tap often doesn't register on crappy touchpad laptops (even tho most of the time it is just a problem fixed by setting the right double tap interval in the driver) but this is an ENVY ! And on envy aswell theres no physical button to click, so you may aswell drop that habit if it happens to be unfixable.
And what was said right before is interesting, it sounds logic also, HP certainly have custom profiles to go with the synaptic drivers. Sadly I think most of their tweaks are hidden... If you don't manage to reproduce perfect trackpad with wrote down settings you can recover try saving the synaptics driver folders.

[calxn]

Using your finger to do everything including tapping seems a little dainty. I prefer buttons. It's going to be hard to break people's atleast decade old habits. Clicking with your thumb is just what 99.99999% of laptop users do. Doubling tapping is a very recent approach and still haven't replace the thumb click.

I don't get it. Synaptics has been doing this for a very long time. I thought they even invented the trackpad. Even Apple used them till the last few MBPs. Yet, Apple's current trackpads is light years better than Synaptics. Are those guys lazy or incompetent?

[LiTh07]

I think I am the odd man out, but I use both hands to use my trackpad. I use one index finger to move my curser, then I leave my other index finger on the left click button to click.

Will I have a problem doing this on the envy14's trackpad?

[ExodusC]

Will I have a problem doing this on the envy14's trackpad?

I guess we'll find out. Perhaps ask the Envy 17 users? Despite what HP said, I'm assuming the Envy 14 and the Envy 17 will have the exact same touchpad and drivers-- there's no real reason they wouldn't.

[Curse The Sky]

I also wanted to include a note about SSDs for those that are still on the fence.

First, for anyone that hasn't done any research on them before, SSDs are a relatively new (at least new in the mainstream) technology that uses flash memory rather than magnetic disks to store data. Think of them as a REALLY big flash drive, but with much more durable flash memory and a much smarter controller that directs where each bit of data goes. Due to the different technology, solid state disks do not have any moving parts, and thus will not cause any vibration. They can take far more physical abuse (dropped laptop, for example) than HDDs, and they generally consume less power and produce less heat than their moving counterparts. Flash memory chips (or the cells within them) do eventually wear out after being written to many times, but generally speaking, it would take a LOT of write cycles to kill or cripple a drive. Unless you're using it in a server that's constantly doing disk I/O, you're more likely to encounter a dead HDD than you are to prematurely wear out a SSD. After all, even if it does degrade or wear out in 4-5 years (unlikely), there'll be far better technology available for a much better price and higher capacity to replace it.

SSDs can give an amazing boost in general system performance, but it highly depends on what you're expecting. The primary boost comes in the form of faster boot and shutdown and faster application launch. You know how you have to wait a few seconds after double clicking an icon to launch a program, staring at the spinning hour glass for a moment? That's due to the time it takes to read the program off of your hard drive and load it (or parts of it) into memory. That delay is mostly eliminated with SSDs. While it may seem like a very minor point (after all, the hour glass isn't the end of the world), no longer being subjected to the "usual" delay really gives the system a great feeling of snappiness and overall performance.

However, SSDs will NOT increase performance that's dictated by other components. For example, games are generally limited by the graphics card, and sometimes by the CPU or memory. Yes, you may see a boost in the form of less stuttering as the game retrieves textures and other data off the hard disk (since the SSD is much faster), but it won't be night-and-day. A good 7200 RPM hard drive should work fine if your primary focus is launching an application that doesn't constantly read from or write to the primary storage device.

Since SSDs work differently from HDDs, a few other things need to be taken into consideration. First, SSDs must have some free space left for wear leveling. Wear leveling is a function of the SSD's controller which targets different flash memory chips in order to share the load, preventing certain chips from "burning out" before others. You should generally leave 10-20% of the SSD as free space at all times. Second, SSDs do not need to be defragmented; Windows 7 will automatically turn off defrag for SSDs, but you will need to do this manually if you decide to install Windows Xp or other operating systems instead. Third, the performance of an SSD degrades slowly over time, up to a point (usually they lose about 10-30% of their initial performance, depending on the drive, flash memory, controller, etc.). Most of the performance can be recovered with a special command called TRIM, or another form of automatic garbage collection. Without going into specifics, you should always buy a TRIM-enabled drive (for example, Intel X25-M G1s are not capable of TRIM, while X25-M G2s are) and update to the latest firmware. To my knowledge, Windows 7 is currently the only operating system that will pass the TRIM command, and there are no plans to add it to Xp or Vista (so only drives with their own form of garbage collection will regain performance).

Finally, there are several different SSD controller, and they all have different advantages and disadvantages. Probably the most well known is the Intel SSDs which have excellent random reads and decent sequential reads; their sequential writes are acceptable, but aren't up to par with other competitors. Indilinx SSDs, such as OCZ Vertex (1), Agility (1), and several others are another good choice, and tend to have better sequential than Intel drives, but worst random reads / writes. A newer player, Sandforce, such as the OCZ Vertex 2, Agility 2, etc., are currently very promising in most of their stats but still aren't completely proven in the field. Samsung-based drives tend to have excellent sequential stats but rather poor random reads / writes, and I generally don't recommend them. There are other types of drive controllers such as Jmicron (early models should be avoided like the plague) and Micron, but I have little experience with them and can't really comment.

So is a solid state disk right for you? If you have the money, definitely. I own an X25-M G2 160GB and 80GB and they've made a world of difference in both of my systems. My current laptop is an ASUS UL30A-A2 with a 1.3GHz CULV processor, integrated 4500MHD graphics, 4GB DDR2, etc. and it feels much snappier than my girlfriends XPS M1530 with a faster processor (2.26GHz, IIRC) and graphics card. You will need to take the smaller amount of available space into consideration, and I HIGHLY recommend at least getting a 120GB SSD (160 would be even better). With the 80GB in my desktop, I only have the OS and a few programs such as Microsoft Office and Photoshop installed. It's still about 60% empty, but that still goes to show you that you can't cram it full of games, media, or other programs. One option is to make use of the very handy USB 2.0 / eSATA combo port that HP conveniently places on the Envy 14, and buy a 2.5" external HDD enclosure with a USB 2.0 / eSATA combo port as well (AKA "powered eSATA" or "power-over-eSATA"). Then, you can grab a 500GB+, 7200 RPM hard drive and stuff whatever you want on it.

I hope this helps people who are still confused about SSDs or can't decide if it's worth $315. In regards to the 256GB SSD, I wouldn't grab it until I knew for sure who puts it out. My guess is that it's a Samsung-based drive, meaning that the Intel 160GB should be a bit better in terms of "snappiness."

[zeth006]

Using your finger to do everything including tapping seems a little dainty. I prefer buttons. It's going to be hard to break people's atleast decade old habits. Clicking with your thumb is just what 99.99999% of laptop users do. Doubling tapping is a very recent approach and still haven't replace the thumb click.

I don't get it. Synaptics has been doing this for a very long time. I thought they even invented the trackpad. Even Apple used them till the last few MBPs. Yet, Apple's current trackpads is light years better than Synaptics. Are those guys lazy or incompetent?

I've also been railing against Synaptics for a long time now. It's no wonder the value of their stock is now in question as they've lost quite a few lucrative mobile phone touchscreen contracts to emerging competitors. I'm of the opinion that there should be more than just one touchpad software maker.

[derpderp]

Well yeah synaptics was kind of lazy last years (or the last 10 years ?)...
But in january they presented their new 4 finger multitouch palm ignoring trackpad built into... an HP envy.

Who knows... untill someone reviews the envy 14 it's kind of in the air if it is the same envy 17 two finger trackpad or the new one synaptics finished ealier this year... Since hp didn't advertise the trackpad there's a big chance it's the old one. But when you come to think about synaptics who are such failures in marketing and advertisement... who knows...

Don't forget you can add scrybe software to synaptic touchpads to gain some more functions.