HP Envy 13 As Close to A MacBook as One Can Get-Or Is It

The HP Envy Line of Laptops was announced about Two weeks ago. The Envy 13  and Envy 15 will be shipped on October 18, about the same time Windows 7 will be released.

Gizmodo and Engadget got their hands on them and one just can not deny that the Envy 13 is a knock-off of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Even the packaging is blatantly familiar. Then there is the glossy Radiance display (a 410 nit display with an 82 percent color gamut (versus standard 45-60 percent).which is very bright . But after the cosmetics, similarities stop.

Despite the bright display the Mac still seems to have more natural color and some think that the Radiance may actually take its toll on the eyes in a short time. The unibody construction which is comprised of magnesium and aluminum, is lighter than the MacBook and appears less solid. It should have taken some lessons from Apple which has had issues with bending . The color is metallic brown. it is .2 inches shorter and thinner than the MacBook Pro. However,the Envy only has two USB ports and a HDMI port. It lacks an optical drive or an Ethernet port but comes with a USB dongle for the connectivity.

The multi-touch track pad also is a direct steal from the Mac, well, maybe in concept only because when you try to use it like a MacBok Pro, forget it. While it works fine as a normal trackpad—the left and right mouse button work just like a normal one—the frustration arrives when you try the gestures.

The HP Envy 13‘s 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor (along with 3GB of RAM) doesn’t quite have as much as power as the MacBook Pro’s 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. But it handles everyday tasks very well.

Envy 13 comes with its own instant-on OS version called HP QuickWeb. It loaded very quickly according to Gizmodo. It took an additional minute to load the Windows environment.

The battery on the Envy is a 4-cell swappable which averages about 3-4 hours, but you can order an extra 6-cell battery slice that magnetically clips to the bottom of the notebook which purportedly will add almost another 10 hours.

All in all the HP Envy MacBook Pro Knock-Off is a very nice little computer. If  I were Mac i might  be worried if the price of the Envy 13($1700.00) were not so high for the options included or should I say (not included) . You could get a Macbook Pro 15 inch for the same price with all the fixins.