I bought an envy about a month ago and have been working through the usual new laptop quirks. There are plenty of hard-to-notice-until-bought pros and cons that I might pour over some time, but right now I’d just like to mention my findings with respect to the Envy Quick Launch keys that are located on the left of the keyboard.

By default these keys open up a mail program, HP’s MediaSmart SmartMenu, a web browser, printing, and the Windows calculator program. You can see them on the left side of the keyboard, with labels I’ll explain in a moment:

There’s no way in the HP software to customize the buttons, so I did a little bit of fishing around and found some useful information.

My original intent was to make a small program that would sit in the system tray and simply have a menu to enable/disable all the buttons at will. The buttons are nice, but they aren’t the most useful thing to have enabled when one is trying to play a full-screen game. I’d keep getting sent back to the desktop because I accidentally opened a calculator instead of pressing Ctrl. Similar problems abound with Photoshop, or any program that demands constant use of Tab and Ctrl.

Making a small key-capture program I found out that the first odd-one out was the Print key, which literally just sends the key press for LeftCtrl and P. The second odd one is the wave- looking key, the SmartMenu button, which I’ll address later.

The others had strange key names: BrowserHome, calc.exe, and LaunchMail. At that point I decided to look for those names in the registry and came upon some interesting values:

There are 5 entries in a registry folder corresponding to some of the Quick Launch keys as well as mysterious nonexistant keys. First I’ll mention what the real keys do and how to change them.



Editing the keys

Go to the start bar in Windows 7, type “regedit” and press enter. If you’re unfamiliar with the Windows registry then please be careful, messing with values here can cause a lot of errors.

Navigate to the registry folder:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AppKey

In the folder you’ll see more folders, the three we care about are:

• 15 calls for the Assocation of ‘mailto’
• 18 calls for a ShellExecute of ‘calc.exe’
• 7 calls for the Assocation of ‘http’ (opens the browser or program associated with http)

These are the mail, calculator, and internet buttons respectively. If you want to change them, simply modify the values inside each folder. Associations will open the program that is tied to the protocol or file type. For these two buttons, the ‘mailto’ association opens Windows Live Mail (by default), and the ‘http’ association opens whatever browser is your default. ShellExecute on the other hand is the same as typing something into Run and pressing enter.

An example: Let’s say you want the mail button to open Notepad: Go into the folder named 15, rename “Association” to “ShellExecute”, double click ShellExecute to modify the key’s data and enter “notepad.exe”, replacing “mailto.”

Want to disable a button? Just clear out the ShellExecute or Association data. For the mail button you would double click the Association and replace “mailto” with nothing.

What about the wave key?

The wave-looking key actually opens a program called ‘HP MediaSmart SmartMenu.’ You can uninstall this from Programs and Features in the Control Panel if you wish. I haven’t yet found a way to do anything else with it.



What were those other registry entries?

• 16 calls for the Assocation of .cda, this seems to be a nonexistant key that was intended to be media-centric
• 17 calls a ShellExecute on ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}, which is the ParsingName for “My Computer” in Folder Descriptions, so I suppose it was a My Computer button

These keys were probably programmed for but never implemented in the final Envy design.

None of this gives us an easy way to disable the keys temporarily, though, so I guess I’ll have to release a small program later to let people temporarily disable and re-enable them on the fly.

Also, if anyone has any information about the Wireless On/Off key above the “+” key, please let me know. I’d really like to find a way to temporarily disable that, or better yet only make it work when “fn” is pressed, but so far haven’t found anything useful on the key.

The fruit-themed computer manufacturer has finally made an effort to bring the MacBook Pro into the modern era. Boasting new Core i5 and i7 series processors and an updated (albeit last generation) graphics card, the new MacBook Pro sells at a curiously similar price to the MacBook Pro of last week.

Take a look at what’s changed. I left the HP Envy 15 in for a comparison to a modern laptop with non-Apple brand pricing.

Part	MacBook Pro 15 (1 week ago)	MacBook Pro 15 (Today)	HP Envy 15
Processor	Intel Core2 Duo T9600 @ 2.80GHz (Passmark score: 1995) (2 cores)	Intel Core i7 M 620 @ 2.60GHz (Passmark score: 2871) (2 cores)	Intel Core i7 720QM @ 1.60GHz (Passmark score: 3296) (4 cores)
RAM	4GB DDR3	4GB DDR3	4GB DDR3
Video	NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512MB of GDDR3 120 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 2.1	NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512MB of GDDR3 182 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 2.1	Mobility Radeon HD 5830 1GB of GDDR3 800 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 3.2
Screen	15.4″ 1440×900	15.4″ 1680×1050	15.6″ 1920×1080
HDD	500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm	500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm	500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm
Price:	$2,399.00	$2,399.00	$1,749.99

Little else has changed on the Pro aside from the processor, video card, and max screen resolution. The supported DirectX and OpenGL are still still 10.1 and 2.1 respectively, and the laptop’s price remains unchanged*.

The updated video card is NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 330M, which is an over-clocked GT 240M, which itself is just an over-clocked GT 230M (June 2009), which explains the aging DirectX and OpenGL versions.

Nonetheless, thanks to Apple’s staunch refusal to discount hardware that was already two years old, it is a significantly better time to buy a MacBook Pro than it was just one week ago, be it new or used. Every other laptop manufacturer has had to reduce prices on aged models or introduce newer models in order to stay competitive, but it seems that Apple is immune to Father Time, perhaps because its consumer base practices an isolationism unseen since the days of Hai jin.

This is of course not a bad thing in itself. If you’re running an all-Mac shop then right now is quite possibly the best time to buy a MacBook Pro. Yesterday, however, was quite possibly the worst.

* As configured above. I believe the minimum price for a base 15-inch MacBook Pro is slightly less than it was previous.

I’ve been looking for a new laptop since January, so far being generally unimpressed due to the slow adoption of the mobile i7 processors. I ended up with just a few, the best of which seems to be the HP Envy. Dell and Lenovo have contending i5 and i7-based systems out, but all the models except the Envy seemed to have one or two unforgivable drawbacks, such as only two dimm slots, only one hdd slot, poor screen resoloution, or a new processor coupled with a miserably dated graphics card (I’m looking at you, Lenovo).

Every time I mention that I’m looking for a new laptop I have gotten no good suggestions other than one recommendation for the HP Envy and a handful of people advocating the MacBook Pro. I don’t plan on running OSX but I recall back in late 2007 an article mentioning the Mac being the fastest Vista notebook, so I figured I’d at least take a look. Comparing it to the Envy though, the results were pretty stark.

Part	MacBook Pro 15	HP Envy 15
Processor	Intel Core2 Duo T9600 @ 2.80GHz (Passmark score: 1995)	Intel Core i7 720QM @ 1.60GHz (Passmark score: 3296)
RAM	4GB DDR3	4GB DDR3
Video	NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT 512MB of GDDR3 120 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 2.1	Mobility Radeon HD 5830 1GB of GDDR3 800 gigaFLOPs OpenGL 3.2
Screen	15.4″ 1440×900	15.6″ 1920×1080
HDD	500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm	500GB SATA @ 7200 rpm
Price:	$2,399.00	$1,749.99

Geekbench generally rates the two laptops on the whole with a score average of around 3700 for the Mac vs 5000 for the HP Envy, making the performance-per-price enormously in favor of the Envy.

The Mac’s poor marks largely stem from its age. This is the newest 15″ laptop, according to Apple’s own store, yet it is using a processor and video card that were released in July 2008 and June 2008, respectively. On the other hand, the Envy has a video card from last month and a processor from September of 2009.

So why the price discrepancy? $650 more than the up-to-date Envy is an enormous sum to pay for a laptop that was largely produced a year and a half ago. It doesn’t help matters to be reminded that this is the performance line of laptop, nearly Apple’s highest attainable 15″ without going deeper in to terrible price-per-performance territory. (see below)

I don’t mean to say the MacBook Pro will never be worth its cost. It is expected that Apple will be refreshing its product line in the very near future, but in the interim it seems almost cruel to Mac fans to charge so much for pathetically dated technology. Right now is quite possibly the worst time to buy a MacBook Pro.

I guess people who consider MacBook Pros are only comparing them to other (past) MacBook Pros, and in solely that light they’re clearly well-endowed. The only reason to buy a MacBook Pro at this point in time would be an enormous desire for OSX over any other operating system coupled with a belligerent ignorance of computer hardware timelines. What’s more absurd than the price is be that Apple still seems to be selling the things.

I’m sure others have made this observation in the past, but I get the feeling that Apple actually holds their users hostage. If Apple opened up OSX to be installable on non-Mac platforms it would almost surely kill the MacBook Pro of today, or maybe just force them into using hardware that isn’t trash. Hardware this old for that much just seems gimmicky, or even dishonest.

Other upgrades not added to my table don’t help the Mac much:
The MacBook Pro has an optional Intel Core2 Duo T9900 @ 3.06GHz, which came out in April 2009, (passmark 2328) +$300 for 333 more passmark points
The Envy has an optional Intel Core i7 820QM @ 1.73GHz, brand new, (passmark 3708) +$400 for 412 more passmark points

The Mac can be upgraded to 8GB for $600 more while the Envy can be upgraded to 8GB for $300 more. The HP has a large advantage even with after-market upgrades due to it having 4 RAM slots instead of 2.

As an aside, there are a few other aspects of the laptops that could be compared that I didn’t factor in to the above because they are hardly worth mentioning once the processor and video card age are apparent, but I’ll list them here for those interested. The HP wins on the battery side of things (life is debatable, being able to swap out batteries is not. Like I said above the Envy also has more RAM upgrade options as well as two HDD slots. I didn’t look much at sound, but I’m going to guess that the MacBook Pro’s speakers produce better sound than the Envy. The Envy also has no optical drive inside of itself (remember the second HDD slot), so I added the HP external USB optical option to my configuration, which added (surprisingly only) $50 to its price.