A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life

I would love to see a program like this succeed. There are huge hurdles in getting partners though.

The strength of Carfax is the enormous number of data sources they use, and the enormous amount of money they pay for access to those sources. A typical Carfax report can include data from the OEM, dealership, government agencies, police agencies, insurance companies, and repair shops (both big groups and small independent shops).

Even if HP is willing to put in the money and effort making connections to secure data sources, it relies on those data sources wanting to play ball, rather than trying to build their own siloed approach.

It's certainly a noble goal, and I hope there is some kind of consumer groundswell to enable a program like this. I also hope, that like Carfax, there are eventually standards for the data, allowing competing services to exist.

This has dual purpose to proof identity to computer and usage tax.

> We decided that the best way to do this is to integrate the life-cycle records into the firmware layer. By embedding telemetry capabilities directly within the firmware, we ensure that device health and usage data is captured the moment it is collected. This data is stored securely on HP SSD drives, leveraging hardware-based security measures to protect against unauthorized access or manipulation.

The laptop doesn't have a Secure HP SSD Drive? Then throw it in the landfill because it doesn't have an HPFax Report, so who knows what kind of problems it might have!

Thinkpads used to be sought after, not sure about it nowadays though.

Yes:

https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling

Disclaimer: I work there, and posted many of those listings.