Is the HP Notebook 15-bs021ne good enough to be your next laptop?

Admittedly, I am not much of a laptop person. I am mostly on my smartphone for work and entertainment. But cranking out a blog post is definitely a better experience on a laptop than on a smartphone, so I often turn to my laptop for that.

HP Notebook 15-bs021ne Quick Specs

Let’s have a quick look at the key specs of this notebook.

Operating System: Free DOS 2.0Screen Size: 15.6 inches, 1366 x 768 pixels,Dimensions: 38 x 25.38 x 2.38 cmWeight: 2.1 kgHard Drive: 500 GB HDDRAM: 4 GB SDRAMProcessor Name: Intel Core i3-6006UProcessor Speed: Dual-core 2.0 GHzVideo Graphics: Intel® HD Graphics 520External Ports: USB 3.1 Gen 1 x2 for data transfer only; USB 2.0 x1; HDMI x1; RJ-45 x1; headphone/microphone combo x1Battery:  User-replaceable 4-cell, 41 Wh Li-ion,

Looking at the specs of the HP Notebook 15-bs021ne, I am not sure why the battery capacity isn’t specified, at least the way I understand it. Which is in mAh. Like I said, I am more of a mobile phone person and more familiar with the mAh standard. However, searching around, I found that the battery voltage is in the range of 10.8V to 11.1V. That puts the battery capacity in the range of 3,700 to 3,800 mAh. Which is kind of small.

I’d be more comfortable with a 4800 mAh battery. But then, I may be calculating this wrong.

Anyway, battery aside, why is the HP Notebook 15-bs021ne interesting at all?

Core i3 Processor

For one, it has a Core i3 processor. Elroyhelped me with vital information that helped me understand what to look out for in picking a laptop with fairly good performance. And a Core i3 is the barest minimum, if I understood him well.

The Core i3 processor is a key part of the specs of the HP Notebook 15-bs021ne

Intel’s Core i3 processor is designed for affordable laptops. I want an affordable laptop. I don’t game on my PCs. I don’t do video editing either. Some basic image editing is required for my blog posts. Other than that, the major software that I use on my laptop is the web browser.

99.5% of the time, I have only the browser running. Once in a while, I put Microsoft Office to use.

Elroy also says that for even better performance, I will need to swap out the HDD for an SSD. I have since read up a bit on that and I have a better understanding of what he means. This article agrees with him, for example, and says, “Intel Core i3 has enough power to run Windows 10 well, but you need an SSD rather than a hard drive for slick performance.”

So, performance-wise, HP Notebook 15-bs021ne is fairly good for a budget laptop. But then, I do not like the idea of tinkering with a new laptop. Which is what I would have to do should I choose to put in an SSD. But wait; what is SSD?

What is SSD?

SSD, or Solid State Drive can be thought of as a huge flash storage. It has no moving parts whatsoever, and it reads and writes information faster than HDD. HDD has moving parts, which is why you hear a slight whir when your traditional laptop is running.

Because SSD is faster, it delivers better performance during use. But the HP Notebook 15-bs021ne has HDD built in. I don’t want to have to tinker, or have someone tinker with it.

Free DOS Software? Where is Windows OS?

If you look at the specs sheet again, you will see that it says that the operating system running on this notebook is Free DOS 2.0. Free DOS is an open source software. Let me cut to the chase. Unless you are a computer nerd or geek, you don’t want to have anything to do with it.

At least I know I don’t. Which means that I will have to install Windows OS on the Notebook 15-bs021ne after purchasing it. This list of after-purchase configuration is getting long.

At this point, I would rather go hunt for a laptop that has Windows OS pre-installed and SSD built in than buy one without the two, and then start running up and down to upgrade it. Give me a laptop that I can hit the ground running with as soon as I unbox it.

Verdict on HP Notebook 15-bs021ne

If you are on a budget and love to tinker and tweak your gadgets, the HP Notebook 15-bs021ne is an interesting laptop for you to consider. It has decent specs and at N114,000 or about $330, the price is decent too.