HP Envy 14

[captcha]

Hey DJTT,

Was just wondering if anyone has owned or had any expeirience with one of these? I've managed to find a brand new one for £699, and it seems to be a really nice mac alternative. I'll be using it for everything, Cubase, Traktor, Photoshop and Office.

Im getting a new laptop cos my plastic Sony VAIO is now completely fucked from me being way too rough with it (the hard drive connection has become temporamental and sometimes just dies mid-set leading me to always ask for an extra CDJ at gigs so i can whack a pre-mix on and reboot the computer). But the HP is all metal and seems really rugged.

http://h40059.www4.hp.com/uk/homelap...0ea_ds_ene.pdf

So yeah, even if you haven't had one, what do we reckon of it? Can anyone suggest anything better for the cash?

[Dustin V]

There is a member here on DJTT that swears by the Hp Envy and he loves it.

His user name is "xtianw", try shooting him a PM, I'm sure he'll be glad to answer some of your questions about it.

[captcha]

Cheers man, just did a search and found this epic post by him!
Pretty much persuaded me to get it!

facts about the hp envy and the reasons i sold my 2010 macbook pro specifically to buy one.

1) the hp envy is crazy fast. pick any processor for it, any screen size and you'll know that if you get the hankering to do it, you have the power to, aside from dj'ing, edit serious videos quickly, or play a lag free game of black ops if you so chose to.

2) the envy has dual headphone outs with a second set of opamps on each of them. the output is STRONG. at least that of an audio 2, imo its better. definetly better than the output of a vci 300. a godsend for smaller parites,. if youre a vci-100 guy, that means less stuff to carry, and less stuff to worry about. 1 headphone for cue, the other out to speakers.


3) 3 usb ports on the 14" envy. 1 of them doubles as an esata port. that means one more usb device without a hub (macbook pro's only have 2 except for the 17"). the esata port means FAST external hard drives that use little to no cpu overhead for that speed.


4) hdmi and mini display ports standard. hdmi is what i care about when using an external monitor.


5) 2 years premium warranty standard on every envy with us based tech priority tech support if you need it. there are also more hp service centers than any brand out there. so if you have a problem, getting it to a tech to get work done under warranty isnt a problem whatsoever.

6) windows 7. yes im going to put that here because it kicks ass. it has more software for it than any other platform, and no matter what you need to do. it runs traktor great, the s4, midi fighters, you name it. if you ever decide to play a game, you can walk into any store and see hundreds of them ready to play. for the mac, there might be 8 or 9. and you already played those games 2 years ago.

7) dont buy an envy to hackintosh it. there are better laptops for that. they finally got quartz extreme running under full hardware acceleration. but the broadcom ethernet port and intel wifi are currently not supported. so if you do it, no internet. not the best laptop for that. acer's and asus laptops are better at that.

8) the extra battery gives 12 hours of battery life when installed. the envy's extra battery on the 14 also fits the bottom footprint of the entire laptop. so nobody can tell youre even using one. it looks sleek as hell.


9) sadly yes, the radience ips like displays they used to put in envys are no more. the company that hp sourced them from went out of business sadly. but the brightview is good. ask jesc. when i setup at his sunday night gig, he actually had to ask me to turn down the brightness on my laptop because it was so bright that it was like having a light on in the dj area.

10) also has an aluminum body.


laptops are computers. i honestly think its silly to buy a laptop "just" for dj'ing. but then again, the way mac extensions get so out of hand and kext files run broken, i can see why with a mac, you kind of have to dedicate it to just one thing. if you do more than that without regular maintenence (something most mac users dont know how to do which is silly, 1 app does it all for them with 2 mouse clicks). you can do more with an envy. more applications, more games, more software, fantastic performance, for about 300-500 dollars less than anything apple would sell you.


if you do buy a macbook, buy it refurbished from apple. all internals and the screens are all brand new on their refurbs. the only thing they reuse is the case and apple direct refubs all come with the same 1 year applecare warranty that their new laptops do. theres almost no reason to buy new from the apple store because of it. unless you like throwing money away.


good luck, enjoy your new computer when you get it

[mart21har]

HP's turn into fireballs after 3 -4 hours of use, MacBook's don't.. enough said

[bobbylight]

HP's turn into fireballs after 3 -4 hours of use, MacBook's don't.. enough said

No they don't. I run an HP and it runs just fine.

[MuzicFreq]

HP's turn into fireballs after 3 -4 hours of use, MacBook's don't.. enough said

huh?

[mart21har]

huh?

Both my parents had HP's... They get so hot you get a burn.. MacBooks stay cool except under EXTREME cpu load

[bobbylight]

Both my parents had HP's... They get so hot you get a burn.. MacBooks stay cool except under EXTREME cpu load

You gotta be shitting me. First off, the only time I've gotten mine really hot is after playing COD for about 4 hours. And second, you've never used a macbook pro and had it sitting on your lap, have you? Or are you talking about the base macbook?

[Garygary1]

Currently loving mine, had it for about a month and its all the firepower you will ever need for traktor and ableton or anything else. I get about 4 ms latency in traktor at the moment and have had absolutely 0 problems with drivers and compatibility. Its also built like a tank with its magnesium and aluminum chasis. Btw, don't worry about heat issues with this one, it runs super cool and silent unless I'm cranking up the graphics in Crysis 2 (its very nice to go to best buy and know full well that you can play any game on their shelves at native resolution )

My only real gripe with it is the battery only lasts about 4 hours on the intel gpu, though, honestly, I prefer it plugged in. Otherwise, its a fantastic machine an I highly recommend it.

[mart21har]

huh?

Both my parents had Hp's, and they got so hot you would get a burn after 3-4 hours.. MacBooks can get warm, but that takes gaming or 3 hours of ridiculously high cpu use...and traktor doesn't like to use high cpu percentages