A CarFax for Used PCs: Hewlett Packard wants to give old laptops new life
20 comments
·July 15, 2025specialp
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
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.
gessha
A well-built laptop can last you just as long. I’ve been rocking a tricked out Dell XPS for 9 years now and it’s still going strong. It’s really hard to find something better on the market. If I could only change the motherboard with a slightly updated APU like the strix halo or current gen AMD solution, I couldn't be happier.
onestarnono
This has dual purpose to proof identity to computer and usage tax.
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.
awnird
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.
josho
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?
SG-
is there even a used market for laptops other than MacBooks?
theandrewbailey
Yes:
https://www.ebay.com/str/evolutionecycling
Disclaimer: I work there, and posted many of those listings.
as1mov
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 <EUR400 + some additional sticks of RAM + storage.
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.
MrGilbert
Thinkpads used to be sought after, not sure about it nowadays though.
dogcow
This is nothing more than another data harvesting scheme thinly veiled as a useful service.
unixhero
What even is carfax? I am not from America.
dghughes
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.
macintux
TIL how it got its name, thanks.
bitwize
And here I was thinking it was named for the phrase "car facts".
_fat_santa
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).
> 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!