> 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".
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.
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...
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
I heard about Carfax in a comedy skit, but that was the only case I saw this word in many years.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
This is pretty clearly just an attempt to look like they are doing something about a perceived problem without actually doing something about it.
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.
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.
Knowing how well-used a laptop is barely matters. And I still need to examine and test it.
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).
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.
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.
I'll trust that this is genuine when HP lets me connect 3rd party ink cartridges to their printers.
Wow HP is the last company I would expect to get this right.
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.
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.
Isn't that caller eBay?