The envy is clearly more hardware for a lower price. I struggled with the same decision; and I chose the new 15" MPB; I'll tell you why. First there is battery life. The 6hrs claimed for the envy is with the extra-large battery being used. The battery slides underneath the laptop and covers the entire undercarriage. It makes the otherwise sexy looking envy much thicker and heavier. The second issue (with the envy with those specs) is heat. The Quad Core processors produce significantly more heat; and draw a good bit more power, than their dual core brethren. Now clearly, they perform better as well; but I always have been and always will be a desktop AND laptop guy; I want a high performance laptop, but I don't need a desktop replacement. Third, is build quality. Now it's very nice that HP went with the aluminum body for the Envy, and I'm not claiming it has bad build quality. Undoubtedly, someone will flame me for saying this, but from personal experience, I find the unibody MBPs to be among the sturdiest laptops (along with the business class Lenovos) out there.
Now there is the graphics card issue. I was disappointed with apple's call on the 330M. There are really two issues at play here though. I would have preferred the 360M, but not the AMD(ATI). This is particular to a sub-class of users, but I program in CUDA. This means that for me, ATI is not an option. In terms of performance (and heat, and power draw) the ATI card produces a good deal more. I don't really think that's debatable. Like I said, I would have preferred the 360M, but I'll use the MBP to make sure that my CUDA code works; not to performance test it. Also, Apple's optimius-esque graphics card switching solution was/is a big plus here.
Finally, there are the details. The MBP is thinner, has the backlit keyboard, weighs less than the Envy (if you consider the extra battery), but still includes an optical drive (which is an addon for the Envy). The hardware is officially supported by Apple, so I know I won't run into one of the plethora of hackintosh bugs which pop up on unsupported hardware (though when I was considering an Envy, my plan was to pop Ubuntu 10.04 on it . . . not OSX-86).
At the end of the day, even though the MBP offers lower performing hardware at a premium price, it still edged out the envy in terms of what I want/need from a laptop. That said, if the Envy adopted some minor modifications (like the option of choosing an Nvidia card and a better battery life w/o the extra battery, I might have gone with it). Either way, I'm sure you'll be happy with your purchase if you choose to be.
thanks for the opinion
there will be 2 more MBP revisions before this game will ever make it to the release stage.![]()
yeah , but Starcraft 2 will arrive soon..
Go with the Envy. It's cheaper, better, and Windows 7 is pretty darn close to - if not on par or above - OS X.
Remember, the Envy is about 1/2 the price of the MBP, so you'll save somewhere around $1000.... In a more realistic sense, that means when you go to Starbucks with your Envy, you'll have saved enough money for over 200 cups of coffee. If you got a MBP, you'll be giving up 200 cups of coffee*.
*Assuming the coffee is around $4 a cup. Not some sissy drink mind you, but a real frappuccino.
ENVY is the same price of the MBP 15" i7..