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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sleek Lightweight Powerhouse, March 1, 2010
This review is from: HP ENVY 15-1050NR 15.6-Inch Laptop (Magnesium Alloy) (Personal Computers)
I have had the Envy 15 for over three months and have enjoyed almost every minute of it. I have been very pleased with its performance and ease of use. The processor is simply amazing, the video card is more than enough for my needs, and the screen is the best I've seen in a laptop. I consider myself a pretty heavy user, often running more than 150 processes at a time, and rarely feel any lag. For the power you get, the size and weight are pretty impressive. The laptop does get warm when under heavy use, as is to be expected with a quad-core machine, but its quiet, effective cooling system does a great job of keeping the system within acceptable/tolerable temperature limits.
The drawbacks, as I expected, relate to its battery power. The processor is restricted to a "Low Frequency Mode" when running on battery power, which for the i7-720QM limits the processor speed to 931 MHz per core. This results in a noticeable difference when doing anything more than simple tasks such as reading e-mail or browsing the web while running on battery power. Despite this restriction, the battery life still isn't very impressive. Under normal use, it runs for just under two hours; under heavy use (3D gaming or streaming HD video), it only runs for about an hour on a charge.
In short, if you find yourself near a plug most of the time, this machine is awesome. If you need more portability, this probably isn't the best choice - you might want to consider something with a dual-core i5 processor.
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15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Lightning Fast But Serious Graphics Card Problems, April 10, 2010
This review is from: HP ENVY 15-1050NR 15.6-Inch Laptop (Magnesium Alloy) (Personal Computers)
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
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:
[...]
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Envy a solid selection, May 7, 2010
This review is from: HP ENVY 15-1050NR 15.6-Inch Laptop (Magnesium Alloy) (Personal Computers)
I have had my Envy 15 for a month now and I honestly love it(with notes). I upgraded from a HP DV6226 that ran Vista Home 32bit, so my improved experience is understandable. There are no media tasks that have been able to bog it down; not even live streams while encoding video. The performance and screen visuals are well beyond my friends' Mac Book. Now for the notes... If I did not own a very good laptop cooling pad the heat issues everyone talks about would drive me nuts. I put it through a lot to see where it would just give up a die and found that after about 30 minutes without the cooling pad was all it would take while encoding two 1GB video files and streaming two HD internet channels. This is not what most would do with their laptop, however if you are going to buy this one spend the money on a very good laptop cooler, otherwise you will experience heat related lockups.
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