I am really upset! I received a brand new HP Envy 15 for my birthday. I had several laptops which were recently stolen so someone was nice enough to purchase a brand new laptop for me for my birthday. The laptop just came out and in order to make sure that I was one of the first to get it, the person actually had it delivered via UPS. I opened the box. It was really a nice box - all black and serious looking. The laptop itself looks very similar to a Mac Book Pro. I don’t really like the look of Macs, but whatever. This isn’t my first HP laptop and I was surprised to see how much thought went into the packaging. I pulled out the laptop and cut it on. The HP Envy 15 is supposed to be the best laptop or fastest laptop HP has ever come out with. If this is the best they can do, maybe they need to go back to the drawing board.

First, the HP ENVY 15 does not have a FireWire port. This may seem like an insignificant thing until you go to plug in your FireWire music equipment or FireWire external hard drives. Then it becomes very significant. I use my laptops to develop software so I needed to get the Envy up and running quickly. I went to plug in one of my FireWire drives and guess what? I couldn’t. Ok. I called HP on the “Dedicated” ENVY product support line so that I could speak to an “ENVY Product Specialist” and get some guidance from HP. I did this because I was thinking that surely the company had some device FireWire device owners could use to pull data into the ENVY 15. Surely you wouldn’t make a laptop without the latest inputs and then not have thought of a way that users can still use those devices on your laptop. Surely that wouldn’t be the case.

I quickly found out a few things about my new HP ENVY 15 that turned my smile upside down. First, the phone number in the ENVY 15 case listed as a line to get in contact with ENVY Product Specialist is actually the same number used for all of HP’s products. There is nothing special about it at all. I had to spend about 11 minutes going through menus and on hold before I got a person. Second, the people on that line knew about as much about the ENVY 15 as I did! I asked the first guy I spoke to if HP had a solution in place for users who needed to use FireWire devices on the Envy. I explained why I was asking this in the paragraph above and I explained the same thing to him. First, he had me go through this long process to even be recognized as an ENVY owner. Then he asked me to hold. He came back to the phone after about 6 minutes. Guess what he said guys and girls? This guy comes back on the line and tells me that the ENVY doesn’t have a FireWire port! I said “WHAT??? I KNOW THIS!! I JUST TOLD YOU IT DOESN’T HAVE A FIREWIRE PORT!! I’M ASKING ABOUT THE SOLUTIONS THAT HP THOUGHT OF FOR USERS WHO NEED TO USE A FIREWIRE DEVICE WITH THE ENVY. SURELY SOMEONE IN THE COMPANY HAD TO THINK OF THIS BEFORE PUTTING OUT THIS LAPTOP!!!” He put me on hold again. After a few minutes he came back and suggested, very politely, that I should get another laptop because the ENVY 15 doesn’t have a FireWire port. This man had a very thick accent and it was hard to understand him, but I was really trying. I asked him if I could speak to someone who works in the technical support department and he stated that he was that person. I asked him if I could speak to someone who was an ENVY Product Specialist and he informed me that he was that person as well. I asked him if I could speak to someone who had more training on the ENVY than him and he told me that he just received his training for the ENVY and that he knew about it. I hung up at that point. I had spent about 45 minutes on the phone and was no closer to using my FireWire hard drive on the ENVY 15 than I had been when I started the call.

I called back. This time I used the button for the TouchSmart computer to see if I could get to someone quicker. It worked. I got a woman on the phone named Sarah. Sarah made me go through the verification process too. I explained the situation to her and asked if HP had a device or solution for people needing to use FireWire with the ENVY 15. Sarah put me on hold and when she came back, she told me that I was incorrect. She told me that the ENVY 15 DOES in fact have a “combination USB/FireWire port”. She told me I needed to look on the bottom of the laptop and read the titles of the inputs on the side. If I could have, I would have come through the phone and smacked her! I’m serious about that one. First of all, I didn’t call to ask IF the laptop had FireWire! I already know it doesn’t! I was calling to see if HP had some device that would allow the use of a FireWire drive on the ENVY 15. They invested so much time into thinking about other things on the laptop that I assumed, incorrectly, that they would have thought about the lack of a FireWire port too. Sarah said “Well I don’t know what to say. The ENVY laptops we have here have a combination USB/FireWire port.” At this point I was really starting to get angry. I told her that she needed to read the specs on HP’s website OR on Best Buy’s website. I asked her if she realized that this is something that people are going to want to know. She stated that the laptop was being released the same day of my call and I was the first person who had called her about this laptop. She also stated that FireWire was an outdated, old technology so it wasn’t necessary! WHAT???? I immediately disagreed and started to explain how HP’s OTHER NEW LAPTOPS HAVE FIREWIRE, how SONY VAIO LAPTOPS HAVE FIREWIRE, HOW MANY LAPTOPS HAVE FIREWIRE….Then I stopped. I told Sarah to have a nice day and I hung up. HP can you please train your people? Is it too much to ask that they know what is on the machines you sell and can offer coherent, easy solutions?

HP phone support is about as bad as I have ever experienced for a hardware company. This isn’t the first time I have had this type of problem with them. When I had my HP Pavilion machine and I tried to return a defective docking station to them, it took me about a month and a half to get the right part. I ordered the part and they sent the wrong thing and then I called to have them send the right thing and they couldn’t find the product in their system! It was surreal. Anyway, I decided to purchase a laptop FireWire card so I could use  my drive. Wait a minute!! The ENVY 15 DOES NOT have an expansion card area! What? Is it just me or is that crazy!

The HP ENVY 15 comes with 2 USB ports - only 2. If you get the optical drive, which works via USB, you will end up with a total of 3 USB ports  because the optical drive has two ports on the back of it, however, since the optical drive actually plugs into one of the USB ports on the laptop, your net USB drive gain is only 1. So you go from 2 without the optical drive to 3 with it.  You also have an HDMI port, an Ethernet port and an eSata port on the HP ENVY 15. To round it off, you have a SD card slot. Now the SD card slot is OK, but it doesn’t read any other format. Who the hell would design a high end laptop that couldn’t take more than just one SD card? My HP Pavilion was a 5 in 1 card reader. Now this HP ENVY costs more than that Pavilion did with fewer inputs? Does HP believe that people only use SD cards? What about Compact Flash for those of us with high end cameras? What about mini SD, etc? Is it just me who needs these additional things?

Listen, I think the fact that the HP ENVY 15 can be upgraded to 16 GB of memory (4 slots by 4GB each) is great! I need processing speed and power, however, the other things that this laptop lacks in service, inputs and overall common sense make me thankful that the person who purchased this for me was willing to get me another laptop if I wasn’t happy with this HP ENVY 15. I’m not trying to bash HP, but I just don’t understand how you could make a high-end laptop without high end inputs or the option to expand the machines capabilities with an expansion card. HP was trying to design this thing to be like a MAC. Well guess what HP?  The MAC HAS A FIREWIRE PORT!! I need a PC because of what I do, but the HP ENVY 15 just doesn’t live up to the HYPE. I’m so sorry. I really wanted to like this machine. The black case and packing materials were so nice. At the end of the day you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. I left a review on their website, but they didn’t post it.

HP….do better next time!