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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

#41

Post by tedunangst »

alexpotato wrote: post #17
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…

This reminds me of an old story about Hertz and Ford Mustangs. Goes something like this: - Ford makes the original Mustang (which everyone loves) - Ford makes different versions of the Mustang (some more powerful than others e.g. the Shelby) - Hertz had a special custom Shelby model made for them - You could rent that special model from Hertz - So, people would buy a lower end Mustang, rent the higher end Mustang fro…

"People" could really use a number attached to it.

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

#43

Post by kube-system »

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.

They should, but then it only takes one misconfigured, or misbehaving machine to cause a data breach that, depending on the industry, could be a big headache and cost. At scale, with many employees, the chances of this happening approach 1.

Physical destruction is cheap and effective insurance against this.

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

#44

Post by Hasz »

lwn wrote: post #38

This feels to me like HP is trying to formalize a whole new business around second-hand hardware — not just selling off returns, but really building a controlled ecosystem for trade-ins, refurb, and resale. My guess is they want to keep that value in-house rather than letting third-party refurbishers or resellers capture it. The Carfax reference stood out to me. It seems more like a feel-good marketing move than anyt…

Certified Pre-Owned programs.

I am surprised they are starting with Laptops. IMO, it makes more sense to start with servers. They are car-priced assets, and stand much more to gain from a multi-point inspection versus a laptop. They are also less likely to suffer from long term damage damage, such as water damage.

Slap another 5 years of hardware support on it and resell for 20% above the used market. Many small and medium size enterprises will happily take you up on that offer. For example, typical dell hardware support is 5-7 years, the systems are still usable for several years after hardware support ends.

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

#45

Post by fortran77 »

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.

There's a possibility that unencrypted data could be in a sector marked "bad" (if plaintext data was present before encryption was turned on). It's just not worth it. I always take my drives out and put a few holes on them on the drill press before disposing/donating computers.

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

#46

Post by kristopolous »

neilv wrote: post #18

> 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. What I see are more technological affordances for closed firmware behavior of the device, increasing complexity, and prov…

I think the reason is that, on laptops, the cosmetic has such a high correlation with what you can expect wrong with the device - people don't take their laptops in for "body work".

Also these devices in the second-hand market are probably 80+% (I've sold about 5k things on ebay btw).

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

#47

Post by bluSCALE4 »

Another reason HP is irrelevant. They pour money into stupid ideas no one is interested in. I'm curious what HP would think about the Acer C740 I recently reformatted and reflashed so I could directly into Linux. Would they "restore" it to its EOL state, undoing that work I did? My money is on yes because corporations don't know shit about PC building or optimal settings.

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

#48

Post by verall »

Hasz wrote: post #44
lwn wrote: post #38

This feels to me like HP is trying to formalize a whole new business around second-hand hardware — not just selling off returns, but really building a controlled ecosystem for trade-ins, refurb, and resale. My guess is they want to keep that value in-house rather than letting third-party refurbishers or resellers capture it. The Carfax reference stood out to me. It seems more like a feel-good marketing move than anyt…

Certified Pre-Owned programs. I am surprised they are starting with Laptops. IMO, it makes more sense to start with servers. They are car-priced assets, and stand much more to gain from a multi-point inspection versus a laptop. They are also less likely to suffer from long term damage damage, such as water damage. Slap another 5 years of hardware support on it and resell for 20% above the used market. Many small and…

HPE is very happy with off-lease server HW only being sold on ebay and appearing as sketchy as possible. The margins are really high on server HW - offering HW support on systems sold at 20% above the used market under their brand name would cannibalize their core business so it will never happen.

But in consumer space, margins are very low, and so there is money to be made reselling used HW at a premium, so they will try.

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

#49

Post by rwyinuse »

999900000999 wrote: post #31
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.

It's just easier. You don't have to worry about IT forgetting to wipe a drive or something. You have a policy that says we take the SSD out before sending it to the reseller/donating. A used SSD is a bad idea anyway, everything else on a laptop can more or less work indefinitely

From reliability perspective an used SSD is not a bad idea. Average SSD that has seen typical business / home use will become obsolete long before it reaches its TBW rating, and many drives last way beyond that. Keyboard, screen or even the motherboard are more likely to give up before the SSD.

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

#50

Post by knowitnone »

HP has 0 incentive to give old laptops new life if they don't profit from it. People who buy used laptops are already doing so. Yes, there are somes risks but if the computer boots up, perhaps run a few performance tests, then it's good. A used laptop is $100 - $500, not $2000 - $10000 and it most likely is not sold multiple times because after teh second owner, it's likely already too old, too slow, and not supported (Microsoft). I was a seller of used laptops.
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