At the end of the day performance is the most important measure of success to me and this machine lives up to expectations here its definately snappy. In regards to games, I've installed Dragon Age, Borderlands, Crysis all run great at maximum settings. I'm confident this machine will handle my gaming needs for the next couple of years.Nice fit and finish. Lots of metal bits and overall solid feel. Its not exactly light but for a 17" its respectable. It looks good enough to leave out when company is over. I had some concern buying site unseen because I know the previous envy models didn't quite deliver in this are but I think overall this version meets the bar. Its not a mac book but it gets pretty close.
Battery life has been good so far the extra 9 volt battery is an awesome bonus.
It does have a blu ray drive.
The screen is beautiful super clear, detailed and bright.
So in the two primary areas that drove me to purchase this vs. other 17" gaming machines performance and aesthetic this machine delivers.
I have a few usability complaints though..
The mouse pad. The problem here is that the click buttons are also part of the touch bad so when go to click on things your clicking finger will move the cursor. This happens often enough to be very frustrating.. maybe a patch will come out that will address. In the meantime I've been having to plug in an external mouse because I can't take it.
The PC does something strange when it sleeps when you open the lid it will resume but the screen doesn't come back so you have to open and close the lid once again and that will make the screen turn on. Not a big deal but a bug that bothers me. And the lid is a bit of pain to open no real place to get a good grip and its tight and heavy. Its more like prying it open rather than the nice smooth lid opening experience of the mac book.
Too much cluttering software pre installed and Windows disk not included making a clean install difficult.
The Beats audio is not that exciting but i didn't expect it to be. Sounds like a laptop to me at the end of the day.
This unit ships with dual 320GB hard drives. First thing I did was order a SSD to replace the boot drive, so my experience is based on that modification. I ended up doing a fresh windows install so I never worried about bloat ware. Fortunately the installation files for everything short of the O/S were in a nice setup folder on the c:\ drive I replaced, so I can always re-install anything I may decide I want later.
At the end of the day this laptop is FAST. The windows experience index for the machine after the SSD upgrade is 7.0 which is good thing. Supreme Commander 2, Assassins Creed 2 both run with full detail at 60fps. There have been reports of unbearably hot palm rests and sub par quality on the assemblies. I had none of those issues. I'm gaming and surfing on a plain table (no cooler) and heat has not been an issue. In a quiet room I can hear the fan but typing the keys on the keyboard is louder.
The extras I like include the backlit keyboard, the status led lights on the mute and wireless function buttons, the led that lights up the RJ45 network jack when plugged in, the tiny led lights in the front left for power and harddrive activity, only having to remove 2 screws to replace the primary harddrive.
The only criticism would have to be the track pad. I've used a macbook with bootcamp and the gestures made more sense. Since the left and right "buttons" are simulated, the act of holding a "mouse" button down and dragging the mouse (when selecting text for instance) makes the mouse move in fits and jerks. I don't know if driver updates can ever fix that, but allowing us to simulate those interactions with just gestures (no physical clicks) would.
Buy HP ENVY 17-1011NR 17.3-Inch Laptop Now
I've been using this notebook for a few weeks and I'm very pleased with it overall. The system feels powerful and responsive but that power comes at the expense of cooling. Under heavy load the right side becomes very hot. Too hot to touch in fact and you can even feel the heat through keys like caps lock, tab and the left shift and ctrl. That's one of the few caveats of this system. The others are the lack of a FireWire port for capturing digital video and the lack of RAID support. Although the system uses two speedy Hitachi HTS725032A9A364 hard disks there's no option in the BIOS to create a RAID 0 or 1 array with the disks. In my opinion HP missed an opportunity there to squeeze a few more drops of performance out of the system with RAID 0.Many reviewers have complained about the clickpad being quirky and annoying. HP has released an updated driver that fixes the problem and it's available on their web site. Once you install the update and familiarize yourself with the multi-touch gestures you realize they're very cool and convenient.
Oddly, HP has chosen to make the secondary controls of the function keys active by default. Meaning that if you press the key shared by F7 and volume down, the volume down control will be triggered. You need to press the fn key (between the ctrl and windows log keys on the bottom row) to trigger F7. This is truly annoying at first but a quick trip to the BIOS lets you change it back to the way it should be so the function keys are triggered by default and the fn key is only needed for the secondary controls like volume, screen brightness, wireless toggle, etc.
On the software side, unlike what the PDF specsheet states, this system does NOT come with Office 2007 trial or any other office productivity software pre-installed. The Corel video and image editors are present and accounted for but you'll either need to buy Office right away or install the free OpenOffice suite like I did.
Gaming is a pleasure on this system as you would expect. So far I've played Batman Arkham Asylum on it at 1920x1080 resolution with the quality settings turned all the way up and the game is beautifully detailed and frame rate is completely fluid. Of course the system gets hot as hell during gameplay, but such is life, I guess.
All things considered, I highly recommend the ENVY 17-1011NR to anyone who wants a powerful notebook.
Read Best Reviews of HP ENVY 17-1011NR 17.3-Inch Laptop Here
I was quite surprised with the packaging this laptop came in. The box is matte black and sturdy--leaving you with the idea that some people at HP are trying to make a statement. If you are giving this as a gift, the recipient will be quite impressed.First thing I did after the 15-minute setup experience was to create the 5 backup DVDs. This takes 2-3 hours to complete. During that time I did notice the left side of the keyboard was warming up. It was really noticeable left of the trackpad, where my wrist was resting. I can tell that over time this will become a major annoyance, especially if I am taxing the processor. So, I am buying a laptop cooler. I spent the afternoon on the patio with the laptop sitting on a metal table with a lattice design, allowing air to access the bottom of the machine. This kept the left side of the trackpad much cooler.
The things you'll find in the box are two batteries and the power supply (brick). There is also a 2GB SD card. Plug that in and you'll be prompted to install the HP user manuals. No other cables or installation CDs.
One major disappointment is the lack of a 1394 port, which I use for my video camera. The up/down arrows are half-size--an unusual design concept--but they actually work just fine. The full size keyboard is one of the best I have ever used on ANY PC! The F10 key enables/disables the wireless connection.
This machine looks impressive. The case is aluminum in a steel gray color and shows no fingerprints. It has 4 USB ports, along with the others advertised. No dead pixels on the magnificent screen. I like the slide-in DVD tray design--no more hunting for the eject button which is at the upper right of the keyboard.
The Envy is quiet unless you are pushing the processor, then the fans will speed up and the heat level increases. My previous HP laptop had a screen size of 1920 X 1200, while this one is 1920 X 1080. I miss the extra screen height, but all manufacturers are going to a 16 X 9 format.
The reasons for purchasing this laptop were the processor speed, Bluetooth, Gigabit LAN and the USB 3.0/ESATA connections. I wanted a laptop that could process large video files and make my own DVDs. I'm not a fan of Windows 7 Home Premium so I installed Windows 7 Ultimate instead. It appears that the driver files on the hard drive were created on August 2010, but these files have a date of Jan/Feb 2010. As of this date (Oct. 12, 2010) the HP website has newer drivers for almost everything on the Envy. Windows 7 performance scores are all 7.0 or higher, except for the hard drives at 5.9. Installing a solid state disk (SSD) will bring the hard drive rating to 7.9.
I like the backlit keyboard--makes for easy navigation in the dark. A function key toggles it on/off. Another function key toggles the screen brightness up or down. I also purchased some additional items with the Envy: Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 Mac/Windows, Zalman ZM-NC2000Black Notebook Cooler (Black) and the Targus Deluxe Top-Loading Leather Case Designed for 17 Inch Laptops TLE400 Black). The keypad is somewhat of a nuisance. The two keys at the bottom of it are actually part of the whole keypad surface. Finding the keys by moving your finger to the keys causes the mouse to move off the point on the screen that you wish to click on. No other laptop I've ever had has shown this quirk.
Bottom line: If it had a 1394 port and a cooler surface (hard to find with a fast processor), I'd rate it a 5. But a 4 is not bad in the ever-changing world of electronics. And the Amazon price is $300-400 less than HP's website.
UPDATE: 11/17/2010
The heat level on the left side was fixed by purchasing the Zalman cooler. The Targus case holds everything (barely), including the cooler. The Bluetooth mouse works well except when the wireless LAN is running at full speed. Then the mouse locks up until the WLAN frees up. Apparently there is a single-thread chip driving the two processes. The F10 key turns both the WLAN and Bluetooth devices on/off. Using a Bluetooth mouse requires you to separately enable it in this instance.
I watched a 42-minute video last night while running on the 6-cell battery. At the end, there was 45% battery life remaining. A two-hour movie uses most the life of the 9-cell battery.
Prices should come down on this box as there is a 3D version now available from HP. Unless you really need a fast laptop, you might want to consider some of the cheaper HP versions available.
UPDATE: 06/21/2011 I replaced the 320GB boot drive with a Crucial CTFDDAC128MAG-1G1 SSD. Here's how they compared using HD Tune Pro:
__________BEFORE________AFTER
Avg Seek__14.7 ms_______.231 ms
Reading____69.3 MB/sec___253.9 MB/sec
Writing_____not tested____138.4 MB/sec
The speeds are lower than advertised because the HP Envy has an SATA II controller. An SATA III version would be faster. My Windows Experience Index went from 5.9 to 7.7 for the primary hard drive.
Since my laptop came with two hard drives, I was fortunate to have the required mounting bracket.
I used Acronis Home 2010 to clone the drive.
Other Thoughts: My SSD came with firmware version 6. I read that others were having lockup/freeze problems so downloaded version 7 from the Crucial website. The download is in .ISO format so I used Nero to burn from the CD image. Since my HP cannot switch the SATA controller from ACHI to IDE mode (this is needed to install the firmware), I used an older laptop to perform the firmware update.
Want HP ENVY 17-1011NR 17.3-Inch Laptop Discount?
Just the facts. or at least anecdotal opinions (from a non-gamer who uses this type of device as a portable development workhorse):The good:
* Fast. I've seen some other i7 units and this definitely keeps pace if not surpasses them. The memory and drives are very fast (2 x 7,200 RPM makes for some nifty RAID 1). Note that the graphics chipset seems to be set at 500MHz, not 1GHz but it seems very snappy to me still.
* The display is great -crisp and clear.
* It's VERY quiet. Amazingly the quietest laptop I've even owned.
* Virtualization works very well on this machine.
* I'm looking forward to using a USB 3.0 drive on this someday.
* Value for the money seems reasonable to me.
The bad:
* You can't have 3+ displays without a display port device. I'm seeing some confusion over whether it has to be active or not, but right now I'm guessing it has to be an active adapter to VGA or a display port monitor. I can't test the third display yet since I don't have an adapter...
* I don't like the mouse pad. The multi-touch function is a pain, especially since the mouse buttons are part of the pad. This makes resting your trigger thumb rather touchy. It'd be nice to be able to disable it entirely without having to screw with X11 but no Fn key seems to do that.
* The sound from the laptop speakers sucks. I'm a little biased on this since I'm going from the deep, epic sounds of the Harmon/Kardons of my Quasimodo to a set of speakers that have all the acoustic depth of a wet towel. When plugged into a more advanced system, they seem to work fine, but I don't really understand why I'm supposed to get all jazzed over this "beats audio" thing. The only thing it seems to beat is
* It runs VERY hot when first purchased.
The unavoidably H.P.:
* Upgrade the BIOS and all the drivers right away. Doing that alone decreased heat output greatly for me. (I haven't been to the hospital for palm burns since.)
* Battery life is not great, even with two batteries included. I'm estimating about 3-4 hours for BOTH TOGETHER. I capitalize not out of anger but to forewarn the wary shopper. This is a portable aircraft carrier, not a dingy. Higher heat levels = more power.
* Why oh why does Windows/HP feel the need to take all four primary partitions on their laptops. (Make your backup DVDs early. Especially if you're a Linux user and are planning to repartition but might want to make sure they're available for later. Just sayin'. You don't want to be one of _those_ guys that has to dig out the recovery NTFS out of the partition table by hand because you accidentally turned on the dynamic drive looking for a way to get an extended partition.)
* When initially started, before the BIOS upgrade, the fn keys would do BOTH the regular operation + the HP operation. Normally you would hold "fn" and then press F1 or what not, but the default state didn't seem to require the "fn" for whatever reason. The BIOS upgrade seems to have fixed that.
This would be 4.5 stars if possible since it fits my personal needs (if indeed I can get the third display), but since I can't I have to rate 4 since the machine isn't really perfect.
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