Need a New Laptop, ENVY 17?

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KnoxHotch

Well-known member
So my current HP DV9500t is failing, dead mobo, broken hinge, and I leave next saturday for a study abroad semester. I don't have much money, but I'm in need of a new laptop as a replacement that can still take care of my editing jobs. I wish this problem would have occoured 2 weeks from now after CES and when sandy bridge rolls around, but I need something now from amazon (gift cards). I've had my eye on the HP ENVY 17-1181NR, whose specs will follow, but I have a few qualms about it. Lack of firewire, so no DV capture or monitoring as well as no expresscard slot for future upgrades such as an I/O Box, good graphics card but lack of nvidia/adobe harmony.

Specs are:
1.6ghz i7-720QM (2.8 turbo)
6GB DDR3
17" 1080p LED Display
ATI Mobility 5850 (with eyefinity for multiple external monitors)
Dual hard drive bays (current 650gb will be swapped with my better one)
Slot-load BD-R
6-cell and 9-cell batteries included
Ports of interest include Displayport, HDMI, VGA, eSata, USB 3.0, gigabit
http://www.amazon.com/HP-17-1181NR-...2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1293695745&sr=1-2

What do you think? Worth it to upgrade my Vegas 10 rig at $1200 even? It has to be quite a bit better than my aging Core 2 Duo 2.0ghz with 4gb ram... Is there another laptop i should be looking at?

Thanks in Advance!
 
Not a bad choice. I hear the bottom of the HP gets VERY hot. They are nice machines though. I'm in the same boat and will be upgrading in the next 2 weeks.

Sony has their "F" series and "Y" series. Personally, I like the F series and may go that way.

Good offerings from Lenovo.

I'm sure there are other decent machines out there. One nice thing about the HPs though is the fact that the have dual hard drives and I believ they have the ability to run RAID, doubling your thouroughput. Put some SSDs in there and it would blaze for rendering...
 
Like all things it depends on how money you are willing to pay.


It seems like a good machine and I've look at Envy 17.3's before I went with my current laptop.
It was missing some stuff I wanted/needed so I moved on but check out http://forum.notebookreview.com/
if you have not done so already.


I think the best thing to do is to ask yourself what you want out of your computer like faster render times, more space, better screen color and gamma-wise, bigger screen, RAID, affordable price, graphic card etc. and then go from there.


I will say than i7's are much better than older core 2 duo's on the render side of the scale.
 
Essentially, my nvidia gpu croaked outside of warranty (Sadly, my product number lies just outside the class action settlement with nvidia) and my replacement mobo was DOA, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but my left hinge also ate itself the other day as well. I'm waiting on the DOA replacement mobo to reach the store and figure out if i'm getting a refund or replacement since the site now lists it as out of stock, so i'm looking at using my amazon gift cards from christmas to at least get me something nice that can edit at the level i am now, or, hopefully much faster. What i've loved about this current machine is the dual hard drives, full sized display and keyboard, and the plethora of ports, but my current processor has been dragging me down and it was a price compromise when I initially bought the machine after high school.

The f-series is on my radar, and i'm glad it has the elusive firewire and expresscard so many laptops are losing, but based soley on the online pictures, it looks like a white box lappy with a vaio logo. The standard battery, according to reviews, looks like it won't last very long, though, a desktop replacement doesn't usually excell at such a thing. Would the GT425 M work with the MPE hack? It would just be icing on the cake since I don't use premiere too often right now.

The MSI looks pretty awesome, but that new model isn't yet up on amazon. Post a link if you find it.

It may turn out I can only stick to something under $1000, so would an i5 machine like the envy 14 be worth looking at? Based on the benchmarks I've seen, the i5-460m is nearly double my current T7300 processor's speed, but then again, the i7 would cut rendering times significantly.

Before this incident, i planned on spending $2500 or so on something nice after graduation in may on an elitebook or 17" MBP, but I may end up biding my time with something smaller and cheaper like the envy 14 and giving it to my fiance when I upgrade. I guess I really want a computer that does it all, fast render times, excellent battery life, good display, lots of ports, aesthetics/build quality, and battery life (3+ hours).
 
So far i'm leaning towards an envy 14 for the short term. With sandy bridge right around the corner, I may just bide my time with something small and portable. I'm a little concerned about the performance of the i5 for vegas after spending too much time looking at i7 notebooks, as well as how to step down from a 2 disk system to a single hard drive. I edit mostly DV and multicam cineform HD (painfully). Anyone know how the inferior (non radience) 1366x768 is? The 1080p high gamut display, dual hard disks and quad core keep pulling me back to the 17" model, but it's $300 more, which is stretching my budget.

Any thoughts and performance comparisons?

Thanks again for your input.
 
KnoxHotch said:
Anyone know how the inferior (non radience) 1366x768 is? The 1080p high gamut display, dual hard disks and quad core keep pulling me back to the 17" model, but it's $300 more, which is stretching my budget.

Any thoughts and performance comparisons?

Thanks again for your input.
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I believe it would be foolish to go with the 14". Although the speed on my laptop is only a dual 2Ghz, it's not too slow. But I want a quad procesor and "NEED" more space on the screen. That's why I am upgrading. The 1366x768 display is "ok" at best, but for $300, find a way to get the bigger, full HD screen. It will save you $300 worth of time and headaches in the longrun. And having 2 hard drives is exactly what you need for editing. I don't usually tell people what to buy, I usually just suggest, but in this case, get the 17". Hands down.
 
Managed to have a look at best buy last night. Some notes:
While they don't stock the envy, they had the dv6 and dv7, the vaio F, and a toshiba gaming laptop to compare. It's easy to see why they could sell so many macbooks judging by the horrid pc notebooks they mostly sell. The Vaio F is the only i7 notebook on the floor, and it's definitely powerful and has the right ports (expresscard, 1394a, usb 3.0, esata), however, the screen and build quality are questionable. The 1600x900 display lacks contrast and has pretty bad viewing angles, though a calibration could help the contrast a little. Not sure how the vaio's 1080p option looks, but none of the pre-boxed models have one, though I just noticed the one on amazon has a 425M graphics card (very nice). The HP's looked more elegant (i'm a little biased since I own one now) and had nicer displays except for that awful 1366x768 resolution found on a lot of 16:9 laptops currently. If I can afford it, I'll probably get the envy 17, otherwise I'm still considering 14 as a temporary notebook for my semester abroad, upgrading after graduation.
 
The HP Envys are built out of aluminum. Alot of people say they resemble and iphone 4 in style and quality. I may go that direction too. Even though I love Sony and their top notch support, and I love the specs on the Sony F series, I too thought that they could use a little help in the stylistics department. I don't care much for that funky keyboard either.
 
Well, got my refund for the DOA motherboard, I'm most likely getting the Envy 17-1181NR off amazon for $1200 with that sweet 72% gamut 1080p display, quad core i7, bluray, etc, but now freaking sandy bridge is official! I think I'll still stick to the envy 17 and if the price drops on amazon during the next 30 days I'm pretty sure I can request a refund for the difference. Am I mad for ditching firewire and expresscard on this laptop and not waiting for the sandy bridge refresh? I keep telling myself this laptop is supposed to be temporary until after graduation, but it always kind of hurts to buy last year's model when the new ones are just coming out.

Thoughts?
 
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KnoxHotch said:
Well, got my refund for the DOA motherboard, I'm most likely getting the Envy 17-1181NR off amazon for $1200 with that sweet 72% gamut 1080p display, quad core i7, bluray, etc, but now freaking sandy bridge is official! I think I'll still stick to the envy 17 and if the price drops on amazon during the next 30 days I'm pretty sure I can request a refund for the difference. Am I mad for ditching firewire and expresscard on this laptop and not waiting for the sandy bridge refresh? I keep telling myself this laptop is supposed to be temporary until after graduation, but it always kind of hurts to buy last year's model when the new ones are just coming out.

Thoughts?
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You'll be just fine and I think you'll love the speed and workspace increase. Technology, especially computers, changes so rapidly and things change in price everyday. Stop waiting and start using the tools to make money rather than waiting til the next best thing. There's always something better around the corner.
 
I think you're right, I always have to tell myself the same thing each time I make a significant purchase. I'm certain the quad core I7 will smoke my little 2ghz core 2 duo at rendering and mulaticam playback.
 
KnoxHotch said:
I think you're right, I always have to tell myself the same thing each time I make a significant purchase. I'm certain the quad core I7 will smoke my little 2ghz core 2 duo at rendering and mulaticam playback.
Click to expand...

I have the exact same thing. A 2Ghz Core 2 Duo. The benchmarks on the i7 mobile processors are 4x faster than my current one. Should help out just a scoach.
 
Is it a T7300? I seriously do love my current hp, lots of ports, good sized screen, dual hard disks, but it hits 100% processor usage more often than I'd like in vegas.
 
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