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

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

#11

Post by josho »

awnird wrote: post #2

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 indepen…

Why? What problem does this solve?

With a car it’s common for people to not maintain correctly or to get in a major accident and not disclose.

What are the common factors that cause a computer to prematurely wear out? I can imagine there are lots of hypothetical risks, but how common are these? And how easy are they to mask?

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

#12

Post by tokai »

Rich coming from HP. They have trailed blazed how blatant planned obsolescence can be done in printers, and though its not hard data I have seen plenty HP laptops just burn themselves out after some years of use. They can definitely build better products without user data, just stop working so hard on making them crap.

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

#13

Post by as1mov »

SG- wrote: post #5

is there even a used market for laptops other than MacBooks?

Refurbished enterprise laptops like Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes are highly sought after. They generally have better build quality than regular consumer models along with good Linux support out of the box. I've been using refurbed Latitudes for the past decade, works pretty great imo for a fraction of the cost. I.e buy the machine for Though more and more manufacturers are switching to completely soldered components now, so I guess this won't last long.

Ironically making the device more repairable would be a boon for recycling instead of whatever bean counting bullshit HP is attempting here. Meh.

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

#15

Post by _fat_santa »

unixhero wrote: post #14

What even is carfax? I am not from America.

Vehicle history reports. It's mostly to see if a used vehicle was in an accident prior to purchase though it will sometimes also tell you if the car had a history of maintenance (typically this indicates a car was serviced at the dealer).

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

#16

Post by dghughes »

unixhero wrote: post #14

What even is carfax? I am not from America.

It started off as a way for people to get info on cars via fax machine. You ask or enter the vehicle VIN and you get a report. If it was in a crash, in a flood, see if mileage matches actual odometer. It's all web-based now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfax,_Inc.

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

#17

Post by herf »

The average car on the road is over 12 years old, and maybe a laptop has maybe 1/3 as long a lifecycle? Not sure that tracking "Wh" as a replacement for "mileage" is that useful, it's either time to replace a battery and SSD or it's not - and perhaps we should have scheduled maintenance for removing dust from your fans? An old PC that has a hard drive replaced with an SSD and a fresh battery is usually a great thing, unlike a car with tons of after market parts. I think this would make sense in a world of glued-in components where service is hard and somewhat risky (like Apple) and the highest quality components were installed originally. But ultimately the aftermarket value of a PC is only as good as the brand's reputation overall, that means removing bloatware and good quality batteries and other things that are hard to attest to automatically.

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

#18

Post by macintux »

dghughes wrote: post #16
unixhero wrote: post #14

What even is carfax? I am not from America.

It started off as a way for people to get info on cars via fax machine. You ask or enter the vehicle VIN and you get a report. If it was in a crash, in a flood, see if mileage matches actual odometer. It's all web-based now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfax,_Inc .

TIL how it got its name, thanks.

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

#19

Post by specialp »

I needed a windows laptop. My work laptop is a Mac. Unless you are doing extremely intensive things that will benefit from technology gains, buying a new laptop makes little sense. The performance of an off lease enterprise laptop for $500 is great.

I purchased one from Dell, but it shut down at high cpu which indicates a cooling or other issue. In return they sent me an even better laptop for no additional charge. Perhaps more detailed reporting would avoid things like overheating laptops to enter the market. These laptops originally retailed for over $1500

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

#20

Post by bitwize »

dghughes wrote: post #16
unixhero wrote: post #14

What even is carfax? I am not from America.

It started off as a way for people to get info on cars via fax machine. You ask or enter the vehicle VIN and you get a report. If it was in a crash, in a flood, see if mileage matches actual odometer. It's all web-based now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carfax,_Inc .

And here I was thinking it was named for the phrase "car facts".
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