'Cinnamoroll'
HP Pavilion 15-n008tx
Current Status: Working fine
CPU: i5-4200U CPU 1.6GHz x2
GPU: Radeon HD 8670M (?)
RAM: 8GB DDR3 (can take 16GB)
Storage: 240GB Crucial BX500 SSD
Optical: DVD-RW
Current OS: Linux Mint 22.3 - Xfce
This was my partner's laptop, bought in 2016 I think. It had worked well for her needs since then, and originally came with Windows 8, which I never got used to using. We have recently swapped laptops after this started having issues with bluetooth and it's wifi range not being very far (likely the wireless card is on the way out). I don't use any bluetooth stuff, so this works well enough for me.
Certain keys on the keyboard stopped functioning after a few years. Luckily replacing the keyboard was easy, and spare boards were cheap (might be breaking down again atm, certain keys are less responsive). The battery had needed to be totally replaced two or three times, thankfully it is an externally removable one. Most repairs on this laptop are easy-moderate difficulty. Although, once you get into it many parts are sort of loose, only connected by cables.
In 2024 I replaced the harddrive with an SSD and it now runs like new :)
Usage
- General use; web browsing, video playback, image editing, text editing/webmastery, light gaming.
Troubleshooting
- USB Boot issue: I think this just won't boot from USB 3.0+ devices at all, now that I have tested a few installs and ISOs out. It does have/support USB 3.0 ports, but very old ones from when they were called USB 'ss' or 'superspeed'. The solution is to just burn ISOs to USB 2.0 drives.
- Bluetooth isn't working/WiFi range limited: Tbh I don't know if the bluetooh ever did work, I almost never use it so I never check after install. But recently trying to connect a bluetooth keyboard showed the bluetooth daemon won't start and it says it's a hardware fault. I tried several fixes from the Mint forums but nothing worked, so I just swapped laptops with my partner as mentioned above. Since using this as my main laptop, I have noticed that the WiFi will not work from the other side of our apartment (about 5m through one brick wall). It says connected with about 50% signal strength, but no internet functionality. My solution is just using this closer to the router, and idc about the bluetooth, but digging into it more I found this specific wireless card (Ralink RT 3290) is apparently quite buggy. There is apparently a solution to get the bluetooth working, a kernel module/driver that is in Ubuntu PPAs (user repositories with easy install), I won't bother trying it but will leave some links about it below.
Resources
- iFixIt.com HP Pavilion 15-n210dx Repair page - not the exact model, but everything is in the same place
- linux-hardware.org Device 'Ralink RT3290 Bluetooth' - Possible fix for the bluetooth issues present with this wireless card, links to a driver download with install instructions for Ubuntu and derivitives.
- archie94.github.io 'Ralink RT 3290 bluetooth kernel module for linux' - A more detailed direct install instruction post for the third party Ralink RT3290 Bluetooth driver. Maybe it could work on non Ubuntu systems.