HP Announces New Laptops for 2009

I forgot about the Dell Adamo, my bad. However, at best, the Adamo was a niche product for a niche market. And I should have phrased that the unibody Macbook Pros' construction was the best found in a consumer laptop. I would also bet that most folks wouldn't consider the majority of business laptops as being aesthetically pleasing.

Anyway, back to something more on topic! Although the Envies are clearly inspired by the unibody Macbook Pros, I personally think they look better. Does anyone else think the same?

 

Ain't that the truth. Sony VAIOs definitely have the premium look (and price!), but, unfortunately, they don't have premium constructions (sans the VAIO Z).

Dell puzzles me on some of their decisions. Why spend their time (and resources) developing a premium niche laptop (I'm looking at you, Adamo), and not on something someone might actually give a crap about (like, say, a Studio XPS 13/16)?

Sorry about going off-topic again.

 

I'm probably a minority, I think the Dell Precision and HP Elitebook look better than most consumer laptops. After using a business laptop, I wouldn't go back to a consumer one. I think the Envy does look better than the MBP, but I'll wait to see how it manages the heat.

 

This I agree with. I've used my laptop at school, where the young "hip" crowd found my notebook very appealing. And they were even more impressed when they saw how it handled Bioshock. Brains and beauty.

 

hey, I like the looks of my Dell Vostro...lol and it is hideous, I even like the ThinkPad design!!

I wonder what HP has for the business market...

 

Engadget Story about HP ENVY 15 Beats limited edition Thought you might like to read it.

Not too far off topic. We are just comparing laptop build quality between the HP aluminum and the Dell/Sony plastic. THAT'S MY EXCUSE AND I'M STICKING TO IT!

Can anyone tell me when we will be able to preorder the Envy 15? I know it comes out in October but I figured they would atleast allow us to configure our systems and get the ready for order.

 

HP may have cool laptops at reasonable prices, but there customer service would make me recommend against buying any of their products going forward. Here is my experience:

I purchased a HP Pavilion DV6 laptop computer in March of this year. On September 8, 2009, my AC adaptor burned out and stopped working. I spoke to someone on the HP online tech support website that evening and she told me that it would take over a week to send out an AC adaptor. After some pushing, she told me she could expedite it and have it sent to me to arrive in 3-4 business days (arriving either the 11th or the 14th at the latest). I waited for the adaptor, and being a poor student spending thousands of dollars on applications, I did not want to go out and purchase the $70 replacement from Walmart. When I had not received a confirmatory e-mail from HP about the chat conversation and the shipment , I called tech support the next day and they said the product would arrive in 3-4 business days. I received a call from case management asking if the issue was resolved on September 14, 2009, and I told them I still had not received the part. The case manager, John, basically said “Well it takes a while.” I waited until Thursday September 17th to contact HP again and the Joyce from tech support gave me some story about how parts are backlogged and software issues and how it was unknown when I they would have a part available to ship. She even had the nerve to suggest I ask around among my friends and borrow someone else’s charger. I told her the suggestion was ludicrous and asked her to speak with a supervisor. She said the supervisor was busy and would ask the supervisor to call me that night. Needless to say, I never received a call. I called HP tech support at 8:30 this morning (September 18th) and Luv on tech support asked me to wait while he connected me to a supervisor. I was on hold for 30 minutes to be told by Michelle, another case manager, that she cannot do anything for me and I have to wait for John, my case manager, to call back. So in a nutshell, 10 days, still no AC adaptor, and still no help from HP. Talk about great customer service – no respect for the time or needs of customers whose money they already have. All I really want is an AC adaptor Fed Ex-ed to me overnight, and to arrive on Saturday at this point, or to reimburse me the $70 for a charger I will have to buy from Walmart. As someone who spent several hundred dollars on a laptop so that I could do my work and school, this is not asking too much for a 7 month old computer.

 

It's a common approach to develop a Halo product that heightens the brand but in and of itself will sell very little. The truth is Dell might sell in the hundreds of units of the Adamo in a given month while they sell millions of Inspirons.

Car companies use this Halo approach a lot, but many industries use it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_vehicle

Think about the buzz the Adamo got versus say an Inspiron 14. It's gravy to Dell when their name gets out there in all the blogs and are associated with a desirable product.

You'll also see Dell and HP borrow elements of their high-end product set they're selling today and put them into their lower end products they'll sell in a year or two, called spreading the Halo.

 

I sort of like the way dm3&probook look, pitty they dont have fingerprint reader and trackpoint, neither optical drive :/
Atleast judging by those press pics, lol

 

wow, I actually quite like the Envy 15. in a couple of years when my thinkpad dies I'll consider one of these(or there ancestor's)

 

I really wish more laptops followed the path of the two Envy's in cutting the optical drive.

Such a large space on the chassis of the laptop can be used for better cooling (much needed in some laptops), more ports (I would love an HDMI and eSATA port on my Thinkpad, and would gladly give my optical drive for them), a larger battery space (a 9-cell flush battery would be great - 12-cell extended would be fantastic), etc. etc.

I have used my optical drive under 10 times on my T500, and every single one of those times were at my desk. In other words, I could very well have used an external optical drive in those cases.

 

Voodoo HP Envy and HP Envy Oo

same name (yes, I know that they are different notebooks)

I liked the HP "macbook"

 

Hmm ... I am really, REALLY liking what I see regarding the ProBook 5310m.

Very nice indeed.

As for envy 15 ... erm ... well, I guess it could be nice for folks that live in much colder climes.

 

It's happening more and more. Asus UL series, Acer Timeline 11.6" and 13", HP DM1 and DM3 etc.

 

Well I use my optical drive quite judiciously, so getting rid of it is something that would not appeal to me. Fortunately, manufactures like Lenovo are smart enough to give consumers a choice; they configure their optical bay for double duty: If you're not interested in an optical bay, then perhaps an additional battery bay might be to your liking?

 

Do these carry e-SATA?
That should become standard, considering that most people have an e-HDD

 

They have a combo e-SATA/USB 2.0 port

 

HP gives you an ODD, it's just external... majority of consumers would benefit from this as most do not use their ODD on a regular basis. For those that do, I doubt the external ODD would be cumbersome to carry around with it.

 

All this whining about the lack of optical drives reminds me of the incessant whines when the floppy drive was first removed and when widescreen laptops replaced standard aspect ratios. I think a lot of enthusiasts here are very resistant to change and sometimes it can get pretty annoying to read about these complaints. In hindsight, you'd probably notice that many of these changes are for the better and today's sleek designs are all a result of these changes.

I'd like to see the whiners stop buying new laptops from this point on and continue using their beloved Thinkpad T43's for the next decade or so. Perhaps if there is a great number who do that, they may decide to reintroduce those models to satisfy your nostalgic obsession.

 

Honestly, I don't recall people whine about no floppy in laptops too much -- in fact, I don't even remember when a floppy was first removed from a laptop. My Sony Z505 from 2000 already had floppy (and optical, for that matter) as external -- I don't think it was the first one to do so, nor do I recall any one complains about it.

Ultra-portable always sacrifices something to get the portability up, be it floppy/optical or size of the keyboard or CPU power or combinations of them, that's no news. Also no news, there are just going to be people who need one of the features omitted and don't need some included and they would like the manufacturer goes the others.

The new trend that even larger, less portable laptops -- even though it may be very thin, but 15" is never going to be ultraportable until the day rollable/foldable screen and keyboard are invented -- is taking away optical may be what cause more people to whine. I personally don't think of it as a big deal if the product is oriented toward consumers (which these are), but there would still be some time where business laptops need an optical -- SD card or USB thumb drive are not cheap enough yet to be expendable (and probably never will be as cheap as a DVD or even Bluray).

Of course, the business world could use external solution just as consumer, but if you have to carry an external all the time, you want it be internal -- at the very least, the way you make your buying decision would be based on the travel weight and dimension with external optical included.

 

Not to mention with the specs of the Envy 15, I'm sure it will appeal to a lot of gamers. With the mandatory disc checks that games have nowadays, that optical drive is absolutely necessary, which means it'll be a real hassle to have to carry it around all the time. I think it would've been a better choice to have the optical drive built in for the Envy 15. The other new models could get away without having one.

Not everyone may have the need to use an optical drive all the time, but I, for one, am extremely glad to have a Blu-ray drive built in to my laptop.

 

Lots of people use them, otherwise, manufacturers would have removed the long ago. Like I said, the removeable drive bay, gives you the best of both worlds.

 

Core i7 benchmarks: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2009/09/18/intel-core-i7-for-laptops-first-review

 

Impressive technology, albeit completely academic at this point. Still, I'll be anxious to see how well it handles real world applications in a comparison to present CPUs.

 

Not a very accurate review though. They test total power consumption of laptops in which the specs are greatly in favor of the i7.

 

Wait, you are not going to game on battery, and when plugged in, you will most likely have it on your desk, where the eOD is...
I have no problems with this, I could get used to an external OD easily if that means getting a powerful laptop which does not break my back while lugging around with it

 

If it were the 32-nm i7 with the 40-nm Mobility 4830 then gaming on a battery wouldn't be out of the question.


The sooner more laptops drop the the ODD the sooner SD cards will take over.

 

As long as it's sold as a mobile CPU, battery life IS significant. Making a laptop more powerful is the easy part, doing it without having it need it's own generator is the challenge.

The panacea of laptops, has yet to be invented. But I look forward to it's arrival.

 

If the Envy is boasting 7 hours of battery life, I would expect a reasonable 2-3 in high performance.

No high end GPU machine can do that right now. Oh yeah, the 11 pound M17x with smart bay battery. Gimme a break.

 

If the Envy 13 at least had a modular dvd drive i might have been interested. I still will not buy a main notebook without a dvd drive. I tried using an external before and i found it too much of a bother. I used to own an Apple iBook Clamshell and that only had a dvd rom and to burn dvds well i had to buy an external and i never liked it.

I don't download movies or music really. I buy my own CD's and DVD's and don't always want to be reaching to get a dvd drive somewhere. Plus it looks kind of messy also.
Also, it is not ideal for when i travel abroad either.

Also, no hdmi port. That is not ideal either, although hopefully in the PC world you will be soon able to buy a Display port-> HDMI adapter that will give you audio.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Hands-On-HP-Envy-13-Envy-15-in-Review.20675.0.html

The display looks overly glossy as well which is what i'm not really a fan of. I do prefer matte displays but glossy displays are acceptable as long as it is not on the extreme end of the scale.

Some colour options for the lid would be nice to.

I do agree though that HP have taken a lot of their cues from Apple.

 

On the good side, if the display is really 410 nits bright (as HP claims) reflections will not be much of a problem.

 

close-up hand on Envy at "Nothing but HP for Me" in Singapore
http://www.tinhte.com/forum/t274629/#7422-Tren-tay-the-he-notebook-cao-cap-HP-ENVY




i think this notebook quite beautiful as macbook pro 13" unibody, one of the best choice of people who love the outlook of macbook design and Windows inside.

 

I really like the looks of all and find the Probook really nice. However, I wished that HP should have provided a HDMI port rather than displayport. What's up with that??? Honestly I don't know anybody using a displayport...

 

well no OD will lead envy 15 be a failure in third world countries where piracy is at peak,where users can get cheap dvds for noyhing.Also broadband internet is also not common there where one can download every thing so a large no of people will not buy this laptop.

 

From the Notebookcheck article:

Sounds like the 15 gets kind of hot. Not too surprising considering what is under the hood though. Cant wait to read a NBR review about this system.

 

Yeah, those are temps of about 104-115 degrees on the outside chassis.

Maybe BIOS aren't polished yet.

Maybe its doomed to get hot just like we were afraid of.


Also, the port selection on that Envy 13 is reallly weak.

The Probook includes displayport because it is most commonly used to hook up to projectors- which is one of the largest needs for business users. HDMI is considered a consumer feature still, and I don't know of a business notebook that has included HDMI (at least not any from HP, Dell, or Lenovo).

 

According to the link that GRZ530 posted there will be a HDMI port on the Envy 13.
However, the article notebookcheck doesn't state that.
The HP 8530w comes with a hdmi port.

 

You guys, that IS an HDMI port, not a Displayport. You can tell by the shape alone. Notebookcheck.net has incorrect information although I would think it's probably from inaccurate translation to English.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/envy/discover_13.html
or
www.hp.com/go/envy

 

The Envy 13 has HDMI, thats for certain, but they are talking about the Probook.

 

Ah, yes. I missed that in Panic2000's post. Then hopefully it'll help Rachel out. The link from Rachel's post from Notebookcheck.com says the following about the Envy 13:

"The Envy 13's ports are limited to two USB Ports, a digital Display Port as well as an audio interface."

...which is incorrect. Hopefully, that clears things up for some.

 

Yeah... well... if you build it they will come???

 

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/the_myth_of_an_hdmi_displayport_standoff

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/02/19/46464.aspx

The links should explain why there exists both DP and HDMI. To keep it short, both have advantages and disadvantages as they target different fields: DP was made to replace IT interfaces (VGA, DVI, LVDS) while HDMI was made to replace consumer electronic interfaces (S-video, component video). With the integration of more consumer electronics with computers, we see more computers (especially desktop GPUs) having HDMI along with the traditional IT interfaces.

 

The original German article also mentions "Display Port" and no HDMI. Guess they got it wrong. The picture shows HDMI.
http://www.notebookcheck.com/HP-Envy-13-Envy-15-im-Hands-On-Test.20514.0.html

 

I wish they would give their Minis a similar look as the Envy line.

 

HP DM1 (11.6") isn't too far off.

 

Is there a pic of what DM2 may look like?

 

I don't think DM2 exists. DM1 and DM3 exist, Google has pics.

 

Ah I thought I read there was a DM2, which was replacing the DV2.

 

DM1 looks nice. Will probably be over $500 though.

 

I really don't get the hype with "too thin" laptop. Come on, it's great that it's thin, but give it some strength! When I hold one of the Sony's little laptops I feel like the thing is gonna break in my hands. Too fragile!