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HP Envy question

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 9:50 pm
by Jon
Hey gals and manly gals with chest hair,

I currently have an HP dv7 laptop, it's really nice except that it doesn't cut it as far as performance goes. With Starcraft2 out I've got a really good idea how well this laptop will fair with upcoming game releases, and the outlook, needless to say, is pathetic. So I'm in the market for a new laptop!

I want to buy the 17" Envy laptop but I'm in Canada and all the laptops here have these garbage french style layout keyboards, think unnecessary accents on keys AND extra buttons on the keyboard, why they need to change the physical layout of the keyboard is beyond me. So needless to say I don't want to buy locally. The US style of keyboards is what I prefer so I'm thinking of buying an Envy from the HP US online store. The question is, do you have any vague idea what customs fees I'll incur when the Envy crosses the border?

On a related note, let's talk about how crap Canadian laptops are, due to the keyboard layout, and if you know if the manufacturers are about to release newer specced laptops, I can wait patiently for a couple months for a kick-ass laptop.

Re: HP Envy question

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 10:06 pm
by scpulp
StarCraft II is NOT a good measure of general gaming performance. SC2 is horrendously processor limited (badly threaded and optimized in general) and tends to put in a mediocre showing on laptop CPUs.

Re: HP Envy question

Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2010 11:12 pm
by Jon
Starcraft 2 is not the only game I'm measuring performance by, Bad Company2, GTAIV and a host of other 3D games are my personal benchmark. I'm just tired of running most games on low-medium detail settings to achieve playable framerates. The Radeon Mobility 4650 in my dv7 is not bad .... for games released 1-2 years ago.

Re: HP Envy question

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:35 am
by scpulp
I don't know what availability looks like in Canada, but a good cost-friendly alternative to the Envy 17 might be the Asus G73. My editor had a lot of good things to say about it, and it's the least expensive thing you're going to find something like a Mobility Radeon HD 5870 in.