icewheel Blog: March 2017

I purchased HP Pavilion - 15-bc251nr last month. I am feeling very happy about this laptop. Most of the computers in the market are having low power processors. This laptop had quad core Intel processor and total of 8 threads combined with 16 GB of ram makes it very powerful laptop.

The best thing with HP Pavilion - 15-bc251nr is that Ubuntu / Linux works fine on it even though it has dedicated NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 (2 GB GDDR5 dedicated) graphics card. Ubuntu does not need any driver for the this graphic card and uses internal Intel graphics. I did not take trouble to install drivers for NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050. In the absence of drivers for NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 the HDMI port for external display do not work, well I rarely use HDMI port.

Product specifications:

Operating system: Windows 10 Home 64

Processor : Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ (2.8 GHz, up to 3.8 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 6 MB cache, 4 cores)

Processor technology: Intel Turbo Boost Technology

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 (2 GB GDDR5 dedicated)

Display: 15.6" diagonal FHD IPS UWVA anti-glare WLED-backlit (1920 x 1080)

Memory: 16 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)

Hard drive: 1 TB 7200 rpm SATA

Network interface: Integrated 10/100/1000 GbE LAN

Wireless: 802.11ac (2x2) and Bluetooth® 4.0 combo

Power supply: 150 W AC power adapter

Battery: 4-cell, 63.3 Wh Li-ion

Ports:

2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Data transfer only); 1 USB 2.0; 1 HDMI;
1 RJ-45; 1 headphone/microphone combo
Expansion slots
1 multi-format SD media card reader

Webcam: HP Wide Vision HD Camera with dual array digital microphone

Audio: B&O PLAY with 2 speakers

Sensors: Accelerometer

Color: Natural silver cover, charcoal wood keyboard frame

Pointing device: HP Imagepad with multi-touch gesture support

Keyboard: Full-size island-style backlit with numeric keypad

Dimensions (W X D X H): 15.06 x 9.94 x 0.96 in

Weight: 4.85 lb

It comes with 7200 RPM HDD. Mine showed some bad sectors in the SMART test. So I better choose to buy 1 TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD from Amazon as I did not have the time to wait for another new replacement from HP and installed all the environment already. After putting in 1 TB SSD its working even faster. I have to open up my new HP Pavilion - 15-bc251nr for that. HP these days does not provide external interface to change HDD and RAM which it used to do with older laptops. Its a bad practice. I prefer to buy laptop that can modified easily in terms of HDD and RAM.

Replacement of HDD was little tough. It includes removal of all 10 screws from the bottom of laptop. There are no hidden screws anywhere else. Keyboard panel needs to be separated from the bottom in the next step. Than I used a sharp screw driver to open up the laptop from one of its corners and slowly unlocking all the plastic locks that hold together two pieces.