[HN Gopher] A CarFax for Used PCs; Hewlett Packard wants to give...
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A CarFax for Used PCs; Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops
new life
Author : rubenbe
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-06-30 16:38 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| trollbridge wrote:
| "CarFax for used PCs" is a silly analogy; a used machine can
| quickly be assessed for its current condition, and a log of past
| repairs isn't really relevant, particularly when most repairs
| these days are just replacing the entire motherboard.
|
| Old laptops are not particularly valuable because (a) they might
| be a lot slower than a new, base-model laptop at a quite
| affordable price, and (b) much of modern electronics has a design
| life of 3-5 years, and a used laptop will generally be at the end
| of that design life. Nobody really likes laptops which have
| random components fail and need replaced.
|
| With that said, we happily use used laptops, some much older than
| 5 years. HP supplying a "Carfax" would have zero utility to us.
| graemep wrote:
| I have used laptops for much longer too, and for a lot of tasks
| performance does not matter.
|
| Desktops tend to be better when older though.
|
| There are already dealer who sell second hand machines in
| reasonably dependable condition.
|
| HP seems to be aiming to control (note the bits about
| preventing unauthorised access) rather than facilitating the
| market.
| bcraven wrote:
| Whilst you may have used them, this is referring to an
| enterprise setting where devices are usually replaced at the
| end of the warranty.
|
| Indeed, this is the point. When that business is done with it
| you can buy it, know how well-used it is, and give it a
| second life.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Knowing how well-used a laptop is barely matters. And I
| still need to examine and test it.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| This is pretty clearly just an attempt to look like they are
| doing something about a perceived problem without actually
| doing something about it.
| throitallaway wrote:
| Yeah, with used vehicles there's a lot more at stake. Mainly:
| potential safety concerns and they can cost tens of thousands
| of dollars. Neither of those are true with used laptops, and in
| cases where it may be they're not putting used equipment into
| service. HP has invented a solution to a problem that doesn't
| exist.
| sergius wrote:
| Isn't that caller eBay?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| 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.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 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.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| 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
| rwyinuse wrote:
| 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.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| At least in my experience SSDs are literally the only
| part that tends to fail.
|
| Using a used SSD( Refurbished assuming direct from
| manufacturer might be ok) feels like digging though
| someone else's stuff.
|
| Maybe they cleaned it, maybe they left business docs or
| other sensitive data. The risk to reward is too great.
| kube-system wrote:
| 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.
| fortran77 wrote:
| 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.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > Any enterprise company should have a policy ensuring SSD
| destruction.
|
| Counterpoint: enterprises shouldn't be incentivized to produce
| physical waste containing toxic components that are virtually
| only available from supply chains that abuse human rights and
| cause mass ecological devastation.
|
| this idea that we should just shred perfectly working
| components because an asshole in a suit doesn't understand FDE
| (or just... wiping the drive) is _bad for everybody_ in the log
| run.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Ok.
|
| The alternative is corporations just trash the entire laptop.
| With the rise of soldered ssds( Apple for one) this is
| possible.
|
| Maybe argue for better recycling ?
|
| It only takes one half awake IT guy to forget to wipe a few
| drives to spook companies.
|
| In my world if MegaCorp offloads used laptops to a non
| profit, and the non profit just has to throw in a cheap SSD,
| that's a win.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| that's one alternative. another is: the corporation is
| regulated against unnecessary waste, and they do their due
| diligence to ensure the drive is wiped before
| resale/donation.
|
| trade secrets must take a backseat to human rights and
| toxic pollution from mines.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >trade secrets must take a backseat to human rights and
| toxic pollution from mines.
|
| Or personal medical information, which in some cases( STI
| status, etc) can ruin thousands of lives if leaked.
|
| The solution is recycling the destroyed drives, not
| banning secure data destruction.
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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 that would work against what they are trying to do here.
|
| Honestly if HP cared they would make the device more easily
| serviceable by the end users, and upgradable. Even that doesn't
| matter a great deal, beyond having companies slow down their
| upgrade cycle slightly, there's no real gain. Right now I'm
| looking at used laptops, but the local refurb place have
| apparently scraped all their laptops that are unable to run
| Windows 11. Without the software companies putting in a bigger
| effort to keep old devices viable for longer I don't really see
| who's suppose to buy all these old HP computers.
| alexpotato wrote:
| 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 from Hertz, swap out the engines and return the Hertz
| Mustang
|
| There is actually a lot of extra detail in this article if
| people are interested: https://www.motorcities.org/story-of-
| the-week/2024/rememberi...
| tedunangst wrote:
| "People" could really use a number attached to it.
| stonogo wrote:
| https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/legends-
| of-...
| codedokode wrote:
| I heard about Carfax in a comedy skit, but that was the only
| case I saw this word in many years.
| ls-a wrote:
| 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
| robocat wrote:
| > but what if I replace the SSD?
|
| Also many companies want to destroy the SSD on selling old
| laptops. Paranoid about security and thinking they need
| Pentagon level security theatre. But companies should delete
| potential liabilities.
|
| But I'd never allow an enterprise SSD to be reformatted. If
| some old data leaked from the business and the business was
| taken to court, the prosecution might argue it leaked from SSDs
| and you couldn't _prove_ otherwise.
| wildzzz wrote:
| This is likely just something that corporate users would care
| about. Companies often lease PCs from IT service providers
| rather than own and maintain their own hardware. The owner of
| the hardware now has a metric they can point to for how
| "usable" a machine is after the initial lease. As a customer, I
| may not want to rent laptops that have been through who knows
| what sort of wear and tear no matter how cheap but if the owner
| can now show me actual data saying how used the laptop is, I
| may feel more comfortable paying less for used. It's like the
| odometer on a car, I'd never buy a used car that didn't have an
| odometer (even if such a thing existed). But with an odometer,
| I can get a general idea of how much use a car has had despite
| the age. Only a year old with 30k miles? Hell no. Three years
| old with only 10k? That car might as well be new.
|
| I'm assuming since it writes to a vendor-reserved sector,
| replacing it would make the whole thing moot. The rental
| company wants to retain that data because it makes a used PC
| more valuable. Since the corporate renter doesn't own the PC,
| they would only be allowed to wipe the SSD (excluding this
| section), not remove and destroy it.
| buccal wrote:
| "Odometer" for HDDs and SSDs are already provided in SMART
| data that is more or less standatized and accessible using
| many tools. The data is not resettable by mortals similarly
| to car odometers.
| bigyabai wrote:
| This is the sort of thing that gets developed for benevolent
| reasons, and then deployed as an excuse to outlaw any third-party
| servicing as dishonest log manipulation.
| msgodel wrote:
| Wow HP is the last company I would expect to get this right.
| stefan_ wrote:
| HP is literally the company that will charge a laptop battery to
| 100% by default for a little bit more runtime on a random product
| test but exponentially less longevity. All the shitty HP office
| laptops at my last job would without fail have a bloated battery
| within 3 years, often taking the touchpad and other components
| with it.
| ok123456 wrote:
| 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, except for blowing
| compressed air if the environment is dirty.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| 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?
| ok123456 wrote:
| People aren't forging SMART drive diagnostics. These are
| <$100 components anyway.
| kube-system wrote:
| SMART stats are cleared on secondhand or "refurbished"
| drives _quite frequently_
|
| e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42864788
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| 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.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| There's plenty of models of business notebooks and thin and
| lights, many of which are preferred by a certain customer
| segment over cheaper options due to higher grade design,
| materials, etc that can breach the $1k mark in the used
| market if sold within the first year or two of manufacture.
|
| I don't know how much value it'd add, though it would be
| pretty interesting to see exactly how much of a Ship of
| Theseus that used laptop you just bought is, if this system
| tracks part serials and such. Could also be useful for
| sniffing out use of substandard/knockoff third party parts,
| which could be of legitimate interest to buyers (I wouldn't
| necessarily trust a third party power handling module from
| AliExpress for example).
| lawlessone wrote:
| smaller consequences too.
|
| There are lots of ways a dodgy car could kill me or someone
| else.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| I was wondering the other day about something like this for
| retro computing hardware, including game consoles.
|
| You can buy a device that looks perfectly good, but has rusty
| parts, leaking capacitors, shoddy/counterfeit replacement
| parts, and who knows what else. And if it wasn't previously
| opened (they seemingly always are), you don't know what was
| done to it.
|
| I don't think you can really solve that through tech, it's
| really more of a record keeping issue. Which actually seems to
| be mostly how carfax works?
|
| I've thought about fixing up consoles and selling them (more
| for cost recovery and to free up space than for profit), but I
| wonder about how to share information about the work and the
| risks in a way that the purchaser is likely to understand and
| appreciate.
| neilv wrote:
| > _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 providing
| additional opportunity for, and cover for, secret surveillance,
| backdoors, and other malware.
|
| The used laptop market is very healthy already, and sellers
| already make money doing their own n-point tests before selling.
| Some use turn-key diagnostics software packages that work with
| the state of the laptop as it is (and drive SMART data). It's
| worked fine, AFAIK.
|
| I've personally bought and used ~40 used laptops, mostly from
| random sellers on eBay, and not knowing the laptop's dating
| history hasn't been a barrier. The only significant, rare
| problems have been dirt and strange odors, which presumably
| aren't sensed and recorded in this "telemetry".
| dietr1ch wrote:
| > > What I see are more technological affordances for closed
| firmware behavior of the device, increasing complexity, and
| providing additional opportunity for, and cover for, secret
| surveillance, backdoors, and other malware.
|
| All this surveillance just in case you want to have an easier
| time selling a laptop. I'd rather have this time spent building
| a better laptop that sells itself because it's a battery swap
| and a CPU re-paste away from feeling like new.
| kristopolous wrote:
| 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+%
| < $1,000 and let's be real - getting a bad $400 computer is
| kinda whatever in the dramas of life. Just get another.
|
| (I've sold about 5k things on ebay btw).
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I think the main problem with old laptops being discarded is one
| of software & OS release cadence more than hardware relatability.
|
| My accountant has used the same 4 apps since the turn of the
| century. Yet the industry has created a situation where they've
| needed to buy 10 new computers to keep up, even though they still
| just use email, spreadsheets, web, and a word processor. They'd
| happily be in XP if it were still on offer.
|
| The only meaningful productivity boost from the hardware side of
| things for the overwhelming majority of knowledge workers over
| the period was the introduction of SSDs and wireless network
| cards.
| juris wrote:
| I'll trust that this is genuine when HP lets me connect 3rd party
| ink cartridges to their printers.
| mikeocool wrote:
| 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."
| jamesgill wrote:
| _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?
| michaelt wrote:
| Right, but you have some laptops coming back from leaving
| workers. Laptops issued to interns. Windows laptops issued to
| people who come back and say they need Linux. Laptops loaned to
| people while their main laptop was being repaired. And of
| course the dreaded no-fault-found returns.
|
| Of course you wouldn't want to be locked in to HP hardware
| only. And hopefully you've got an endpoint management tool
| which is gathering at least some of this data anyway...
| kube-system wrote:
| > 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.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| HP is circling the drain! if they have to resort to rentseeking
| crap like this then they are already out of high ROI revenue
| streams.
| lwn wrote:
| 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 anything with real substance -- just
| enough to trigger that association of "trusted, inspected,
| certified." Not necessarily bad, but definitely more about
| perception than transparency.
|
| Overall, I think they're trying to rebrand "used hardware" into
| something safe, premium, and profitable -- under the HP umbrella,
| of course.
| Hasz wrote:
| 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.
| verall wrote:
| 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.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| 100% of the companies I work(ed) with have either a "destroy
| laptop" or "destroy data storage media" policy. I know 0
| companies reselling their used computers with storage media
| included.
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| The images contain date of the example report - 2023. Can we
| assume that the current HP laptops already gather all that
| information and store them, and the new "feature" is just a new
| way of extracting money from something they are already doing?
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| 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.
| knowitnone wrote:
| 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.
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| The images contain date of the example report - 2023. Can we
| assume that the current HP laptops already gather all that
| information and store them, and the new "feature" is just a new
| way of extracting money from something they are already doing
| llimos wrote:
| HP laptops don't last 3 years these days. You're lucky to get
| past 1.
|
| They haven't made anything good for years now.
| cush wrote:
| Just imagine for a moment what this would look like in reality...
|
| "I was going to take your original offer of $220 for this here
| used HP laptop, but after looking at the high number of writes to
| the SSD on PCFax, I can't do better than $180."
|
| What a bizarre initiative. CarFax was started in the 80's to
| combat odometer fraud. Cars need CarFax because they're expensive
| and have thousands of moving parts
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