HP announces new 14 and 17-inch Envy notebooks

[nvkhkhr]

HP’s new 14 and 17 inch Envy laptops have been a poorly kept secret, so it might have seemed a bit anti-climactic to see them officially announced if not for the fact that HP was ultimately so successful in keeping the more interesting details to themselves.
Here’s what we’re looking at. Externally, the Envy line has been changed so that both models feature backlit keyboards, slot-loading optical drives and the addition of on-board DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA jacks. Like the Envy 15, both systems retain HP’s Clickpad, albeit with retooled software to cut back on some of the complaints of the first Envy’s touchpad.
The Envy 14 is the replacement for the earlier Envy 13. It costs $999 and boasts a Core i5 CPU, an ATI Mobility Radeon discrete GPU and even the option of a 7200 RPM hard drive. HP claims up to eight hours of battery life on integrated graphics… not quite the new MacBook’s 10 hours, but pretty close.
The Envy 17 is even beefier than its little brother, coming in both Core i5 and Core i7 flavors, improved ATI graphics with Eyefinity support and up to 2TB of storage. This is the workhorse of the line.
A really nice update to an already nice laptop. If you’re looking for a Windows 7 notebook with a good juxtaposition between performance and price, the new Envys might be just the machines you’re looking for.