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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

#21

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

ok123456 wrote: post #14

Is there any value added here? Carfax exists because of the possibility of buying a car with extensive damage that looks cosmetically ok. Additionally, the service records they collect indicate that a vehicle has undergone regular maintenance. Computers, for the most part, aren't getting in major accidents and reentering the stream of commerce. Additionally, there's no significant mechanical maintenance required, exc…

This, I think, is the part that confuses me. While there is a level of uncertainty, when buying used computer, the cost tends to magnitude smaller than a new car and even for fancish lappies likely sub 1k ( maybe that changes when we start accounting for gaming laptops, but those are unlikely to be corporate fleet, which I assume is the consideration here? ).

I initially though HP found some new way to fleece data out of its users, but looking at what is proposed, I don't see anything that obviously bad so I am lost here too.

And this is all before we get to how difficult HP has gotten to repair. My last HP ( consumer grade after which I swore no personal HP machines ever ) did everything short of soldering hdd to the board ( ridiculous placement, non-standard screws ).

The idea has some, limited merit, but I just don't see it being useful.

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

#22

Post by codedokode »

mrweasel wrote: post #7

For people outside the US (maybe?), CarFax has no meaning, so the analogy is a bit confusing. The whole thing make no sense. They plan to store the report on the SSD (but not just any SSD, an HP SSD), so that the telemetry is retained between operating system install. I'll give them points for doing on device data collection, but what if I replace the SSD? Maybe they don't plan on making that user replaceable, but th…

I heard about Carfax in a comedy skit, but that was the only case I saw this word in many years.

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

#23

Post by jeroenhd »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #19
999900000999 wrote: post #6

Seems like a horrible invasion of privacy for very little benefit. The logs are stored on an SSD , which is literally the only part you need to replace when donating or reselling a PC. Any enterprise company should have a policy ensuring SSD destruction. Most laptops will last a long time assuming they aren't abused. I guess the SSD wears out, but that's a 50$ part.

> Any enterprise company should have a policy ensuring SSD destruction. Why? Drives should already be encrypted, at which point you just lose the key and it's unrecoverable.

I wouldn't: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/resear...

I don't trust HP firmware to wake the laptop from sleep in one attempt, let alone trust them to securely store their telemetry (that they won't let me see directly).

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

#24

Post by ls-a »

mrweasel wrote: post #7

For people outside the US (maybe?), CarFax has no meaning, so the analogy is a bit confusing. The whole thing make no sense. They plan to store the report on the SSD (but not just any SSD, an HP SSD), so that the telemetry is retained between operating system install. I'll give them points for doing on device data collection, but what if I replace the SSD? Maybe they don't plan on making that user replaceable, but th…

Cars in the US are cheaper so in some countries they are shipped, fixed, and sold. People pay to see the CarFax to see how bad the accident was. There's a big market for it outside the U.S. surprisingly. U.S. cars can be easily identified by their yellow indicator lights. You'll see the term "clean CarFax" a lot in online dealerships outside the U.S. Although I feel for PCs it's a bit silly

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

#26

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jeroenhd wrote: post #23
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any enterprise company should have a policy ensuring SSD destruction. Why? Drives should already be encrypted, at which point you just lose the key and it's unrecoverable.

I wouldn't: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/hotforsecurity/resear... I don't trust HP firmware to wake the laptop from sleep in one attempt, let alone trust them to securely store their telemetry (that they won't let me see directly).

The problem was that

> BitLocker essentially trusts self-encrypted drives to do their job, and defaults to the drive”s hardware encryption.

But that was 2018; the result was that in 2019 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/september-24-2019-... happened:

> Changes the default setting for BitLocker when encrypting a self-encrypting hard drive. Now, the default is to use software encryption for newly encrypted drives. For existing drives, the type of encryption will not change.

And in any event, I would tend to argue that the matter of reselling is secondary: The problem is that the affected disks are effectively unencrypted, and that's a problem regardless. If your disks are properly encrypted, then reselling them should be safe.

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

#27

Post by [deleted] »

ok123456 wrote: post #16
fred_is_fred wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other purpose of a CarFax is to validate or attempt to validate that the mileage reported is accurate or not. Is there an equivalent of mileage for a CPU or motherboard?

People aren't forging SMART drive diagnostics. These are <$100 components anyway.

[deleted]

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

#28

Post by mikeocool »

What exactly would this report reveal? Laptops that have some sort gremlin in them resulting in lots of repairs over time?

If I worked for an organization that deployed or sold large numbers of used PCs -- and that problem cropped up frequently enough to matter, I think my take away would be: "let's stop deploying/selling used HP laptops and switch to a more reliable brand," not "let's try to use this fancy reporting to identify them before they get deployed."

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

#29

Post by jamesgill »

Having access to fine-grained usage and health information for each device in their fleet can help IT managers decide which devices are sent to which users, as well as when maintenance is scheduled

Based only my own experience in large enterprises, the usual process is to EOL new laptops after about three years, regardless of condition. There's a whole sandwich of business and financial agreements built around this, so this 'fine-grained data' doesn't seem very useful (or necessary).

If HP really wanted to make an environmental impact, why not start an HP recycling/refurbishment program?

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

#30

Post by kube-system »

> When buying a used car, dealerships and individual buyers can access each car’s particular CarFax report, detailing the vehicle’s usage and maintenance history. Armed with this information, dealerships can perform the necessary fixes or upgrades before re-selling the car.

Dealerships in no way use those reports for that reason, nor do they contain the information that would be necessary to do so. They inspect the car to determine its mechanical condition, and query manufacturer databases to determine if recall repairs are necessary. CarFax reports are a marketing tool to assuage concerns that used-car buyers have about inadvertently purchasing a lemon.

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