This is one sweet machine. So far not a single problem with the software or hardware. A couple of caveats to that: The battery lasts about one hour while working and about two hours sitting idle. I contacted HP about this and it is a known problem. HP assured me that when the problem is resolved they will let me (and all owners) know what the fix is and repair it at their cost if necessary. It may just be a BIOS update or a different battery; we'll see, and I'll update when I know more. You can (and should) order the "slice" (HP 6-cell Slim Fit Battery for Envy 14-1000 Series (RS06)) secondary battery. This will boost the working time to about four hours including the original battery. Once they resolve the battery issue, I hope to get about eight hours out of the two battery configuration. Second, the touchpad takes a little getting used to. The right and left click buttons are built into the touchpad and the pointer will move while trying to click, but I've pretty much gotten the hang of it now. Finally, back in November or December HP went to a two-year warranty for all ENVY computers, however, not all serial numbers were updated. When mine arrived the "HP Support Assistant" software said my warranty was up in one year. A short phone call to (an English speaking person in Canada) got my warranty changed to the stated two years. If you have this issue, just give them a call; my experience with customer service was better than any I've experienced in a long time (BTW they also gave me a $125 credit towards the "slice" battery bringing the cost of the second battery to less than $50.00).
So, that's all the issues I've had with this machine and all are easily fixed (or gotten used to). The machine itself is beautiful. The back-lit keyboard is awesome and easy to use, comfortable on the hands. The display is bright and crisp. The sound out of the built-in speakers is better than any other laptop I've owned, but they are still laptop speakers. To get the full benefit out of the Beats Audio setup you need to plug into headphones or an external amplified speaker system. The clock speed (CPU) is outstanding, programs open in the blink of an eye and I run a lot of "heavy" software like photoshop, cad programs, and accounting software. I can have multiple programs running at the same time and have never noticed a slowdown. I don't even know what the limit is before I'll notice any slowdown. One other benefit of this machine (and there are probably plenty of other manufacturers with the same benefit) is that you can plug in an external drive or flashdrive and tell the system to use it as system memory. So, if you have 6 GB of system memory and add a 10 GB flashdrive you'll have 16 GB of system memory. Pretty sweet!
Bottom line, I would recommend this machine to anyone (especially those with their heads stuck in an Apple)! I plan to buy a silver one for my wife. Outstanding laptop and outstanding customer support.
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