Recently, my laptop power cable broke, as in completely, a bit of it fell off and some of it was still plugged in the laptop and everything. It was bound to happen eventually seeing as half of the power cable was actually lots and lots of black tape holding the wires together. 

My laptop will be 11 years old in January.  That’s right, I have an 11 year old laptop.  And here it is - The Sony VAIO PCG-GRT715M.
 

Pinnacle of modern technology

It had everything - a whopping 512MB of RAM, a 40GB Hard Drive, Windows XP and a DVD drive. That’s right! You could play DVDs on this sucker! DVDs!! On your LAP! You could even do your part for the fledgling music pirate industry by having the ability to copy CDs.

It was like freaking magic. So sure, it didn’t have wireless interet built in, but at the time that didn’t really exist.  Eventually I got a WI-FI card for it, but the battery having a life of around 30 seconds meant you always needed it plugged in anyway.

And if you try to navigate too fast, it freezes on you, but that just makes illustrating on Photoshop that much more fun. Imagine trying to pass the time by sketching out something in Photoshop.  Now imagine after you drawn something it doesn’t appear on the screen for another 5 seconds.  That’s what I’ve put up with.

And it didn’t like to be cold. No, it preferred to hoover up dust and dirt like a Dyson. I’d often considered chucking away my hoover and just waving my laptop around the carpet while it sucks up crap.  No matter how much I cleaned the bugger it always seemed that when I had reassembled it had managed to inhale even more dust. The cooling fan had obviously evolved into a lung that needed a constant supply of dust.

And after spending what seemed like seven hours waiting for it to boot up you could always tell when it was switched on, as it sounded like the Devestator chasing Tantive IV at the beginning of Star Wars: A New Hope.  It could even be heard in the other room.  If I left it on overnight, I’d wake up in the middle of the night panicked that Jack Bauer and the rest of CTU had come to kill me in their helicopters that they were always so fond of.

“WHY DID YOU COPY CDs TO PLAY IN YOUR CAR YOU SONOFABITCH!?’

So why did I keep this thing for eleven years? I bloody loved it. Just getting the thing to run was and is always a challenge and I love getting it to work. But it’s showing it’s age now. I think it started to do that six months after I got it.

So being me I did what I do best and moaned about it breaking.  Only I did it on Twitter.  And those like blokes at HP read it and asked if I wanted to borrow one of their laptops for a couple of weeks.  Now coming to the end of my time with it, I wish they really hadn’t.  More on that in a bit.

So what did they send me? They didn’t just send me any old laptop. They sent me a HP Envy14 Beats™ Edition. One of their premium laptops along with a pair of Beats Audio headphones to try out.



Let’s get the technical bits out of the way before I talk about it properly.  It’s got all kinds of bells and whistles -

Processor Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM
Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit 
8GB RAM
Dedicated AMD Radeon HD Graphics Card
14.5” High-Definition LED HP BrightView Infinity Display
750 GB Hard drive
SuperMulti DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
2-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader and 2 USB 2.0 Ports
1 USB 3.0 
1 HDMI port and VGA port
Beats Audio sound system
HP TrueVision HD 1.3 mp Webcam 
Red back-lit keyboard
Up to 12 hours of Battery

Bit of a difference to the old one. 

It looks bloody gawjus. With a nice black matte finish and a chrome trim around the edges.  The big giveaway that this a Beats Audio laptop would be the Apple inspired Beats logo on the lid of the laptop.  And in case you missed it, the ‘b’ button on the keyboard is a beats logo as well, which I thought was a nice touch. 

In this day and age it’d probably be considered quite a bulky piece of kit but easy enough to carry around. The keyboard itself has a cool red backlight and is quite comfortable to use.  One thing I didn’t get on well with was the trackpad.  It’s big, very big, I kept finding myself accidental nudging the other end of it when I was navigating around. It seems that HP noticed this too as since they included a ‘tap-twice’ to disable button, which has been handy when typing.  Like now, when I typed this. 

The Beats Laptop has Beats Audio installed but you can also use the Beats headphones that it comes with, thats right this thing comes with Beats Audio headphones. Also, the previous sentence has the largest use of the word ‘beats’ in a single sentence.  But this thing was LOUD.  

I tested playing a few trailers and the sound was incredible, and that was before I plugged the headphones in.  I’ve heard that Beats Audio is supposed to be good, I even know people who own some headphones and say they’re good.  But I never believe the hype before I try it myself, I was the same with CDs (yes, I’m old). I was the same with DVDs, HD telly and Facebook.  When Sony first announced the PS3 was going to include Blu-Ray I thought that was silly and no one would want that. Skip to now, and I will spit on anyone who buys me a normal DVD.

I plugged the headphones in, turned the laptop to full volume (this was a big mistake), and put on a trailer for The 3D version of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. On the HP Beats’ 15” screen it looked amazing.  What I wasn’t prepared for was the sound. It literally blew me away, I think at one point the sound coming out the headphones actually inverted my head and my ears touched in the middle.

As good as the laptop was, Jar Jar was still shit.

I tried again at a more sensible volume and it really is THAT GOOD. I could hear things and base rumbles that I had never heard before.  I’ve even taken them to work plugging them into my HTC Desire HD and the sound was still great.  The noise cancellation was brilliant although at the higher volumes your music can be heard and then people on the train make those stern disapproving face expressions like I had just phoned their children and told them that Santa was dead. Or maybe they just didn’t like my music, both may be true.

The 14.5-inch High-Definition LED HP BrightView Infinity Display was clear and very bright.  The kids watched CBeebies on BBC iPlayer and we could all see it clearly from all angles.  iPlayer also didn’t stop for any buffering and was very fast on the laptop.  My old one would have just given up if you typed ‘iPlayer’ into Google.  We played with the webcam which although my daughter only used it so she could see herself dancing, I could see that HP TrueVision HD 1.3 megapixel webcam was good.

Next, I connected up my Wacom Tablet up to it and fired up Photoshop Elements which came preinstalled.  It was very quick, responsive and fluid.  Having got used to working with a delay when using the tablet on my old laptop it was a joyous moment. I may have shed a tear. I think I even heard angels sing, not through the Beats Audio which is a good thing as it would have taken my bloody head off. 

On the old Sony laptop I was never able to just sketch or doodle, it would have taken too long.  So each sketch or illustration has become a laborious planning process where every line is being carefully thought out. Just trying to experiment on it is an impossibility.  So on the HP laptop I decided to sketch and doodle my arse off, I did this below - 

I would have never have created this in the same time as on my old laptop, it just can’t cope. Memories of my old laptop drifted away the more I used it.  It’s impossibly fast. When I booted it up it was so quick, I actually had to check a few times that I was actually turning it on, or if I had nudged the screensaver off.  (I was booting it up - it’s that bloody fast). 

The 4GB of RAM came in handy and it didn’t even slowdown when I played a trailer in HD, played some music and opened Photoshop Elements.  There was no stuttering in the media, no pausing, buffering - NOTHING. Incredible. My old laptop would start weeping if after you had turned it on, and waited the seven hours, you dared to be so arrogant as to click the Start menu. How dare you!?

If you’re still reading at this point, firstly; Congratulations. Secondly; I mentioned earlier that I wish HP had never given me this laptop.  Why? It’s an amazing machine.  The sound is incredible, it’s fast, it’s a beaut to look at and … I have to give it back.

Yes, HP have given me this amazing Envy Beats Audio Laptop and I have to give it back. And on Christmas Eve!

I’d be lying if I hadn’t considered ways of keeping it for a bit longer.  I’ve thought about begging them to let me keep it for a bit longer, I’ve fought about selling my house and moving so the courier couldn’t find me, I’ve thought about hiring someone to pretend to live in my house and pretend I don’t exist whilst deleting any evidence of me from the Interwebs. IT’S THAT GOOD!

It’s so good, I actually thought about moving my home and my family just so I could keep it.  Would I buy one? Of course. More importantly, will I buy one? In a word, no.  It’s very expensive, admittedly it’s a high end professional laptop, but at time of writing this it’s for sale for £1199.97 and that is a large amount of money.

I’m surprised that for that much that this doesn’t come with a Blu-Ray player built in, as there are cheaper laptops with this functionality built in.  And for the same amount of money or less, I bet most people would splash it on an Apple.  Mostly, for no other reason than to have an Apple.

Another thing to consider is that when you buy this laptop, you also get a pair of Beats Audio headphones thrown in.  These are roughly around £200 on their own so suddenly the large price tag seems a tad bit more realisitc when that is taken into account.

If I got a hefty bonus at work or won a bit on the lottery, would I then buy this? Without hesitation. I really enjoyed my time with the laptop and was really grateful to HP for letting me try it out … up until when I have to give it back.