Due to the pandemic, the world has seen a slowdown in production of all technology & hardware, (everything really) but such as laptops, tablets, printers etc

When the world went into lockdown, organisations & businesses & most of all charities, bought up all of the stock.

They went in & bought up all the laptops & tablets & mostly, certainly the best ones!

It is one thing for businesses to go out spending tens of thousands, buying up the world's stock of laptops, tablets & printers but for charities to do it, it tells people a lot about the world itself.

It demonstrated an ethos mentality of "everyone for themselves".

It is not just about the fact that they buy all of the laptops, tablets etc, it is the fact that charities who are given thousands for a particular reason, going out & spending tens of thousands on high-end laptops & tablets, to a point, they wiped the store shelves of supplies.

They didn't buy the cheap low-end laptops or tablets, unless that was all the shop had to offer!

They bought all the high-end laptops & tablets, leaving the stocks within shops, depleted, using the money donated to those charities for something else.

( FOR THEMSELVES)!

You imagine one charity buying 10 laptops at 2,500 each, that is 25,000 & you can be sure that those laptops will not go back to the offices of those charities, one of two things will happen (explained later).

The people who govern those charities should have bought cheap laptop or tablets, that were sufficient to do a job.

Not spend money given to them for a designated reason & use it for something else, such as buying all the high-end laptops, tablets for themselves to use at home & more than likely be able to keep it for themselves when the pandemic is over (but that's just a theory & maybe in time the media will jump on the story & answer the question)?

There is two points to me actually explaining all this to you:

1. The factors of the world showing an all for themselves mentality & it wasn't just toilet rolls they stripped the shop shelves bare of.

It was high-end laptops, tablets, printers, you name it, for their homes, for themselves!!

They thought about themselves & stripped those shelves bare!

They cannot also claim that they did their jobs from home, some people, maybe.

A lot of them didn't, they might take the high-end laptops, tablets & printers but that doesn't mean to say they're all working at home, doing their job at home, some people yes but all people, no!

An all for me & none for you mentality, showing everyone their true charitable ethos, which we found out was actually far from charitable!

It would have been more charitable to use that 25,000 & buy 50 low-end laptops, for people who were not online, that's charity! 

There were many people who were disabled or elderly who are not online & could have benefited greatly considering the isolation they endured & I mean REAL ISOLATION not PRETEND ISOLATION with the family because being with your family, isn't isolation, being alone is!

I mean at the beginning of a pandemic, you don't rush out & buy 10 laptops at 2,500 each, as a business or charities because at that stage age no one really knew really what was happening!

But as a charity, the first thing you'd be thinking about is the people that you represent! #clearlynot

2. The realism for people, the consumer, is that you are going to find it very difficult to get exactly what you want as far as laptops or tablets are concerned for the foreseeable future.

Because more than likely they're sitting in the homes of businesses & charities, the people who stripped all the shelves bare of all the technology, as well as the toilet rolls.

By my post & what I'm saying to you, "it is coming to the end of 2020 & you're better off, hanging on & waiting for 2021.

The likelihood in December 2020 stocks may replenish for Christmas, but I'd say, wait for 2021 & keep your ears to the floor.

So that you can find out what the latest technology in regards to laptops & tablets will be in 2021 (release dates, what's coming etc) & if you can hang on, wait & see if there's any new models coming out in 2021 before you buy.

Don't forget the January sales, don't forget there will be new models being released.

You don't want less than a 16 RAM ANYTHING, you don't want anything less than, 1T of storage.

A lot of the technology is moving forward, away from hard drive technology, to fluid transferable technology.

What I'm basically saying is "if you can hold on & you're not in a hurry to buy, then I would wait till 2021 before buying a new laptop or tablet.

Technology wise, anything below 16 RAM in reality, is not a good performer.

When you think that technology is moving to a more fluid technology, it's important that you have specifications with a certain capability & 16 RAM has that capability!

The reason you will need large storage is, with fluid technology, you're going to have to be able to store items which benefit you & your life & lifestyle or work life.

When you take into consideration photos games, music etc, even 2T storage is not a large quantity of storage, in a not so distant future, when you consider the storage you will need for future downloads etc.

I mean any other day of the week 1T of storage Is massive, but if you look at how designers of laptops are taking away the hard drive, THAT IS SYMBOLIC.

It demonstrates that they are going to make laptop technology more fluid, even to a point, you may think you can download what you need, then delete it, but that's not always an option!

Sooner or later it will happen, laptops will come out, with a storage capability of 10T.

1000 megabytes is a gigabyte, 1000 gigabyte is a terabyte & when you consider an average CD of music to be stored on your laptop, for you to play, that is some MB.

Maybe you don't value a music & prefer downloading them to your laptop is better for you but you're still storing them & music CDs are just an example or music downloads.

There are going to be other things that you have to take into consideration when storage is the issue.

Like photos which take up MB, videos etc & for a laptop, the demands for storage in the future are going to be so large, that a laptop will have to have a storage capacity that outweighs any laptop on the market, at the moment.

Of course you can store files or use the cloud but that's still limited or a never-ending stream of creating a file, downloading the file onto a storage device, then wiping the file off the laptop, but at the end of the day, unless you're going to download the file to a storage device each time & delete it off your laptop each time, you'll soon run out of space!

if's & &'s & pots & pans!

But when you're doing it, day in & day out, you'll understand what I mean!

Everyone knows, once the storage capacity reaches it's maximum volume on any PC, laptop or tablet, performance is affected!

One of the main points, I want to make about waiting until 2021 to buy new laptop.

You have to consider the way that many businesses & charities went in & strip shop shelves bare of laptop & tablets & the possible deal they made with the retailer in regards to buying so many laptops.

We as consumers are unaware whether the charity or the businesses negotiated a deal with retailers, that at the end of a pandemic, the laptops that were bought, can be returned!

So, that would mean, they'd be returned, cleaned, basically made to look brand new, refurbished is the word!

The businesses maybe came to an agreement of leasing them for the length of the pandemic, but they could return them at the end, to be refurbished & to be resold to the consumer!

I've given you a lot of information to think about & I believe that everyone should have the full information when making a decision about anything they're going to buy.

Particularly if there's a lot of money involved.

I don't always believe that people are honest & I believe that the consumer could end up paying the price, for a refurbished laptop!

It is debatable but not impossible & if you're asking my honest advise, I would consider that!

If you're not bothered & want to make a purchase of a laptop now, don't buy anything less than 16 RAM, simply doesn't cut it in the 21st century, 2020 to 2021.

If you're looking for a laptop, make sure it's got 16 RAM & always look at the storage capacity, you want at least 1T, you also need an i7 core processor.

There is the availability of a i9 processor but the difference between the i7 & i9 processor is insurmountable & therefore I would just go with the i7 because more doesn't always mean better!

The difference between i7 & i9 is roughly 200, hardly worth the bother.

I'm basically saying "patience is a virtue" & I'd wait.

If you look at the specs on a gaming laptop, the RAM very important in regards to giving it the ability to have a fluid ever changing gaming experience & therefore, people have to understand it's important to have at least 16 RAM.

It's more powerful to have HP Envy with a 16 RAM than a Microsoft Office Pro 7 with an 8 RAM & I could have chosen any model to make that point!

But there are laptops out there with 32 RAM + & with i9 processor, which is no better than i7 & there are also 2T of storage in models now.

But the basic factor for anyone buying a laptop is:

• 16 RAM or above
• At least 1T of storage
• i7 Core processor

Those are the things I would recommend you look at when choosing to buy a laptop.

But let me also remind you that laptops are phasing out hard drives, so you better be ready & make your decision now, because in the future you won't have the choice!

You do have the choice of buying a portable hard drive.

But when you think of compact & portable, carrying around a laptop, a hard drive etc, it becomes less portable than one would imagine!

Food for Thought

by

Damian Xavia

What is the refresh rate of the display? I can't find it anywhere. Not sure if I've missed it but I've googled it and haven't found it either.

This Laptop is completely incompatible with linux. At least the top model with 2x 1TB HDDs. It is in RAID mode by default and you cannot change to AHCI in the BIOS since, for some ridiculous reasons, HP locked all advanced BIOS settings. So Linux won't detect your harddrives.

Is there 'insert' button on the keyboard? I don't see it on photos (or is it hidden under some fn switch)

Can you clarify by what is meant by this "However, we did not choose an RTX 2060 option as HP rates these for significantly shorter runtimes than the GTX 1660 Ti model."

Why is the 2060 have a shorter runtime?

Anxiously waiting for this review!

Thanks for those first impressions. Please consider that, regarding the thermal profiles, we noticed that:

• The Quiet profile does not shut down the fans at all (even if "fan always ON" is set to "off"), while the default profile is actually working in a more silent fashion, shutting down fans at low temps.
• The manual slider of Quiet mode is broken, and it works as opposite than it's intended to.

We are talking about those issues on Reddit (reddit.com/r/Hewlett_Packard/comments/hoqn1c/new_envy_15_ep000xx_is_the_quiet_mode_broken_how/?sort=new) and we are trying (on the HP Community Forum - look for ""Quiet" thermal profile not working [Envy 15-ep0xxx]") to reach HP to solve this problem.

I had a HUGE headache with Hp. Their delivery partner lost the parcel in transit, on the day it was supposed to be delivered. 11 days later after everyday calls, I received the laptop. As soon as I turned on, the noise started. A continuous one. I thought it was me, not having a laptop for so long that forgot how it was. Or the silence around 1 am that could make the sounds even more perceptible. Next day, daytime... same. I couldnt find any proper reviews because I received it on 29/06, early to find some reviews. I had to record and send do HP. and it came with the left bottom side of the tracking pad, a bit loose, causing double click. I found out I could ask for a replacement instead of sending to fix. Received new one, afraid of having the same issue. and then? Bingo. Noise. But this time I noticed that this one makes the noise when plugged in. The fans are loud yes. Even going to the app for performance and choosing the option Quiet. The bar QUIET - QUIETEST, when you click on quietest, it makes more fan noise than on quiet mode.  It really sounds HP launched a produtct that is not ready. The battery lasted 7.5 hours used only for browsing websites, no videos or music. using it at 80%. I am really disappointed. I had to wait for a month since the purchase, replaced and waited again, and just to find out that the problem it wasnt one isolated faulty laptop. I lost a lot of time, money calling delivery supplier and HP, waiting long time to be in touch with them, waiting for deliveries and organizing my life around deliveries days, collecting day, etc, after taking some weeks to choose a nice laptop and in the end, I will need to get a refund. The screen is beautiful, the keyboard is very soft and nice, but for a high perfomance laptop I wasnt waiting for that kind of issue and loud fans, even on quiet mode.

The coil whine issue had me thinking what could be causing this in some notebooks (Yes, I can't leave things like this alone) In desktops its mostly power supplies (actual coil whine), passive components associated with VRMs, and add-in solid state devices. That means memory and SSDs. As it turns out you can create and conversely eliminate coil whine in these notebooks by changing memory, WiFi, and SSD components. I tried out different DDR4 modules and sure enough some modules make a squealing sound that's often associated with coil whine. This noise can be heard while moving the mouse around, while the CPU is under load, and during various operations.

So if you have coil whine with this notebook. Try changing out the memory for another brand, different chips, or with a different chip arrangement.

Note: I haven't been able to find a in production SSD that makes coil whine; and the WiFi module (CNVi) is not replaceable.

Yup, seems many of the new envy's have coil whine - My x360 amd 4700u is terrible.  Nice to see someone call them out

I just noticed the review mentioned coil whine. I also do not have any coil whine from either the notebook or adapter. In fact HP did a good job with the noise profile. It is primarily white noise. Even at high RPMs the fans do not make a higher pitched whirling sound.

The only noise that can be heard is a soft electronic chatter sound. But only if I place my ear against the keyboard. This noise I believe is unavoidable, even with spread spectrum, as the varying amounts of data and CPU frequency changes will produce the occasional audible harmonics.

@edd5  - I have the same keyboard as in the article photograph.  It has UK Pound and Euro symbols so if HP call it a Euro keyboard then yes.  It is not the same as the Envy x360 or any other keyboard I have (Elitebook 840, zBook Studio G3, Lenovo Yoga S730/S740, Razer Blade Stealth, Latitude 7300, Surface Pro 4 Type Cover/Brydge Keyboard or any of the dozens I have used in workplaces.  As someone who uses these keys from time to time, I may just have to get used to it or sell the unit on.   

Currently soak testing and have performed a complete fresh build with WIn10Pro - Had to reinstall full NVIDIA drivers as the default ones installed by Windows had missing CUDA components.  Running some Folding@Home GPU units through to see the effects on the power profiles and will be testing battery life next. 

I have the RTX2060 4k model and I wished places actually reviewed this. Because the 4k display is a OLED display with a odd dot pattern that makes solid white backgrounds and other bright swatches look dirty; like dithering in a GIF. There's also a sleep issue that's been reported on HP's website. The notebook gets really hot while sleeping because it doesn't support S3 only modern suspend. And its currently broken. The problem was discovered when Windows added hardware accelerated GPU scheduling. It broke something with the nVidia drivers causing high CPU idle and wasn't fixed until 451.67 drivers. But that just masks the issue. The CPU actually sips power under 2W for the entire system, minus display and peripherals, when nothing is running. So you'd probably not notice unless you have a driver issue. It would just result in horrendous battery drain while "sleeping".

I also found the power limit is 150W. Once you hit that with the combo of CPU or GPU you're capped. It never hits a thermal limit. The fans only spin up enough to keep the CPU and GPU at 70c and 65c respectively.

@Brendan do you have a euro model? My backslash key is under the backspace like other US keyboards.

Just taken delivery of the i7 model with the RTX2060 MaxQ.  Aside from getting used to the odd keyboard layout (the backslash/Pipe key is not in the usual UK or US positions but hidden via the Fn+L key) it seems okay.  Not had it long enough to report on the battery life and the power profiles. So far no coil whine though!

Will there be a complete review of this laptop soon? Thanks for shining light on it!  The RTX model of this seems to have all the same specs as the mighty XPS 17 but for one grand less. Look forward to reading more about this laptop!