CarFax For Used PCs: Hewlett Packard Wants To Give Laptops New Life (arstechnica.com) 52
HP is developing a "PCFax" system similar to CarFax for used cars that securely collects and stores detailed device usage and health data at the firmware level to extend the life of PCs and reduce e-waste. A team of HP experts outlines the system in a recent IEEE Spectrum report: The secure telemetry protocol we've developed at HP works as follows. We gather the critical hardware and sensor data and store it in a designated area of the SSD. This area is write-locked, meaning only authorized firmware components can write to it, preventing accidental modification or tampering. That authorized firmware component we us is the Endpoint Security Controller, a dedicated piece of hardware embedded in business class HP PCs. It plays a critical role in strengthening platform-level security and works independently from the main CPU to provide foundational protection.
The endpoint security controller establishes a secure session by retaining the secret key within the controller itself. This mechanism enables read data protection on the SSD -- where telemetry and sensitive data are stored -- by preventing unauthorized access, even if the operating system is reinstalled or the system environment is otherwise altered. Then, the collected data is recorded in a timestamped file, stored within a dedicated telemetry log on the SSD. Storing these records on the SSD has the benefit of ensuring the data is persistent even if the operating system is reinstalled or some other drastic change in software environment occurs. The telemetry log employs a cyclic buffer design, automatically overwriting older entries when the log reaches full capacity. Then, the telemetry log can be accessed by authorized applications at the operating system level.
The telemetry log serves as the foundation for a comprehensive device history report. Much like a CarFax report for used cars, this report, which we call PCFax, will provide both current users and potential buyers with crucial information. The PCFax report aggregates data from multiple sources beyond just the on-device telemetry logs. It combines the secure firmware-level usage data with information from HP's factory and supply chain records, digital services platforms, customer support service records, diagnostic logs, and more. Additionally, the system can integrate data from external sources including partner sales and service records, refurbishment partner databases, third-party component manufacturers like Intel, and other original equipment manufacturers. This multi-source approach creates a complete picture of the device's entire lifecycle, from manufacturing through all subsequent ownership and service events.
The endpoint security controller establishes a secure session by retaining the secret key within the controller itself. This mechanism enables read data protection on the SSD -- where telemetry and sensitive data are stored -- by preventing unauthorized access, even if the operating system is reinstalled or the system environment is otherwise altered. Then, the collected data is recorded in a timestamped file, stored within a dedicated telemetry log on the SSD. Storing these records on the SSD has the benefit of ensuring the data is persistent even if the operating system is reinstalled or some other drastic change in software environment occurs. The telemetry log employs a cyclic buffer design, automatically overwriting older entries when the log reaches full capacity. Then, the telemetry log can be accessed by authorized applications at the operating system level.
The telemetry log serves as the foundation for a comprehensive device history report. Much like a CarFax report for used cars, this report, which we call PCFax, will provide both current users and potential buyers with crucial information. The PCFax report aggregates data from multiple sources beyond just the on-device telemetry logs. It combines the secure firmware-level usage data with information from HP's factory and supply chain records, digital services platforms, customer support service records, diagnostic logs, and more. Additionally, the system can integrate data from external sources including partner sales and service records, refurbishment partner databases, third-party component manufacturers like Intel, and other original equipment manufacturers. This multi-source approach creates a complete picture of the device's entire lifecycle, from manufacturing through all subsequent ownership and service events.
No they arenâ(TM)t (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It is not in HP's interest to instigate more trust into a used computer purchase. This serves to help the used computer market, at the expense of the new computer market.
HP is not altruistic.
So what is the monitoring data really being used for?
I suspect that this is similar to the yellow dots on colo(u)r printouts. The stored data timestamps the computer usage (excuse: it's a 'wear measure'), and this may be very useful evidence of a suspect's activity.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe.
One reason Apple can charge more money then other companies for new iPhones is people believe they can sell a year or two old iPhone for a reasonable amount of money. HP may believe their products will retain more value over time in the used market then competitors even if the sole reason is because “PCFax says it is good
The HP logo on the lid (Score:2)
The HP logo on the lid is the only warning I need to know to stay far away from. I've never seen an HP laptop that wasn't a complete POS within a year of it being built.
HP business-grade much better than consumer-grade (Score:1)
HP business laptops and desktops are solidly built. At least the EliteDesk, ProBook, and EliteBook lines are. The ZBook Firefly line looks solid too, but it's too new to tell for sure.
I wouldn't drop one from a second-story balcony, but if it falls off the table and hits the floor there's a very good chance it will still be working. It won't be happy, and the lid might not shut right anymore, but it will probably still work.
Under normal, not-falling-from-table-to-floor use, they'll easily last 5-7 years,
Re: (Score:2)
The Firefly line (G8-G11 is what I have experience with) has good construction quality, I'd say slightly better than the EliteBook.
They do seem to have some weird Thunderbolt firmware bugs. Certain features like video output will stop working, and sometimes the entire port. BIOS/FW updates don't seem to fix this, but a hard reset (holding power button for ~60 seconds, possibly several times) usually will.
Certainly less issues than my low-end Dell laptop, but I'd still get a warranty.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. HP busniess laptop af a coworker literally burst into flames. Fortunately self-extinuished immediately, but a component on the mainboard drastically overheated.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe, but HP do well in secure/secret settings - no idea why, although they do have some models with physical camera covers, so there's that, I suppose. No idea how many laptops they sell to those sorts of places, but it must be a big order (although unlikely to come from an obvious purchaser).
If they put this in, those models will almost certainly be out of scope for any secure settings - an area of the system which you can't look at or audit? Not likely to fly. I wonder if they really thought this throug
Re: (Score:2)
You can probbably look at and audit the PCFax area with some sort of enterprise tool, you just can’t write it. Or maybe they will even allow you to erase it and leave behind a “the PCFax report was deleted, so anything could be wrong with this computer! Odometer tampered with! Tampered!!!”
Stored on the SSD (Score:4, Interesting)
Storing these records on the SSD has the benefit of ensuring the data is persistent even if the operating system is reinstalled or some other drastic change in software environment occurs.
Good thing SSDs can't be replaced. /s
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe they are going to start soldering them to the motherboard like Apple does.
But it's HP... (Score:2)
They'll find a way to paywall it.
so lock in HP only ssd / wifi / etc to each system (Score:3)
so lock in HP only ssd / wifi / etc to each system?
HP is decased (Score:2)
I think it is a good idea. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
should be a small dedicated chip that is able to monitor usage of at least the screen, the battery, the read/writes to the SSD
Actually I would say each of those components, and the main board should have an IC added that counts and reports its own cumulative usages. It's perfectly fine to replace the SSD with a brand new one that can upgrade the storage capacity, performance, and remaining lifetime on that storage module and increase the value of the unit. In fact storage devices generally already have/h
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In a car when a major part is replaced or upgraded, and then it is sold, the seller shows receipts
Yes well cars have many components which cost thousands of dollars and are mechanical with an expectation of lasting years, so there is a meaningful depreciation. Also a car has many systems and is much more complicated than a laptop.
Then you have laptops which pretty much have the SSD and Battery. Every other module is not a single part but many electrical parts and ICs. Monitoring the hours or usage ac
Re: (Score:2)
No. Fuck proprietary secret telemetry, especially for nonsense like this.
1. Displays in laptops hardly ever fail naturally. Knowing how they have been used tells you very little about the failures that do happen (due to impact, etc.)
2. Batteries should be replaceable.
3. SSDs should be replaceable.
4. Components should track their own health. SSDs already do this. Battery systems also do this more and more.
4. Nobody currently refrains from buying a used laptop due to lack of such a telemetry system, so no e-w
Re: (Score:2)
The should leave the market alone [but they won't] (Score:2)
HP inserting themselves into this and grading the used PC's in the market is only going to end up driving up prices for those of us who don't buy new PC's.
I don't run Windows so I don't care about the TPM crap Windows 11 is pulling off. Being retired on on a fixed income I do like having access to inexpensive recycled PC's. This will enshittify the used PC market, where all the still usable, good hardware will end up costing a whole bunch more and by only sold by private aggregators, while all the crap wi
Re: (Score:2)
inserting themselves into this and grading the used PC's in the market is only going to end up driving up prices for those of us who don't buy new PC's.
I seriously doubt they will have success in doing that. They're still old PCs being sold off for a reason; usually because they are outdated.
What this has a potential to do is provide reasons a used device should sell at even Less value than it currently sells for on the used market. Consumers can get their PCFax report and send it back as "Item not d
Re: (Score:1)
Agree.
My used PCs come from Goodwill, refurb places and eBay. They cost under $100, and I plan on replacing/upgrading parts as a matter of course. I tend to buy Dells, since the ones I've had at work have been generally reliable. They're also reasonably easy to work on.
My point here is that HP is offering a service nobody needs. People who buy used laptops are generally not expecting much. Laptop refurbishers offer a better value IMHO. They can buy bulk lots of off-lease machines, and mix and match to get s
Re: (Score:2)
Good luck with an HP. (Score:2)
My brother bought one of those and I've never seen a laptop self-destruct so fast. The kids school Chromebooks are HPs too: a load of junk.
We used to say in the olden days that after the bomb dropped, the only things left would be Cockroaches and HP Calculators.
Not anymore!
Hahahaha! (Score:2)
Seems pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Laptops, not so much.
SSD wear is the only non-obvious thing this would help with, and you can check that yourself with `smartctl` on a thumb drive.
Otherwise this just looks like trying to find something consumer-friendly-sounding to say about yet-another surveillance vector with protected storage for your tracking cookies.
SSD/HDD wear, and (Score:2)
battery.
That, and a something that indicates if the computer (or, more specifically, each individual replaceable component) has ever experienced liquid damage or a severe shock/hard drop.
Re: (Score:2)
Batteries are smart and if you can read out the information contained in, you can see how much wear there is.
You get stats like how many cycles they've undergone, when they were made, their design capacity, their current capacity, and a few more items.
It's the same kind of information you need to figure out how good the battery is, just like how SSDs keep track of enough information to figure out their health as well.
Liquid damage is a lot harder since that requires taking stuff apart. Apple's liquid indica
Re: (Score:2)
>"A car's repair history matters, as does the odometer."
The funny thing is, the odometer-only-metric is so outdated. I have wondered for decades why it hasn't been updated to at least include number of engine starts, and total runtime hours. Combined with distance, those three metrics would say a hell of a lot more about the vehicle.
Anyway, it is true that something like that on a laptop is likely some elaborate excuse to manipulate the market or screw the consumer. The SSD and battery wear/health, we
Re: (Score:2)
The most common point of failure due to age on a laptop is the fan, followed by the LCD backlight. You can estimate on-hours from the counter that the SSD keeps of its time powered up, but most manufacturers don't publish an MTBF for the fan or backlight driver/lamp.
Re: (Score:2)
The first thing that ages in all laptops is the thermal interface material between heatsink(s) and processor(s). Once the TIM begins to dry / age / pump out / degrade, it sets off a positive feedback loop where the chip gets hotter with TIM aging, which in turn gets the chip hotter still and aging the TIM even faster and so on. A little lint and dust in the heatsink will kickstart this even higher.
LCDs didn't have a CCFL backlight prone to aging in a while, and they also mostly avoided OLED so far, so they
Re: (Score:2)
Temperature matters a lot for components and laptops usually max out their component temperature limits quite a bit.
If I had two identical laptops with a similar age and wear, I would immediately choose the one that has seen more hours at higher temperatures, although it would be difficult to formulate this in such a way that it can be used mathematically or algorithmically. Laptop A has operated 1 hour at or above the allowable CPU temp of 100 degrees Celsius and 9799 hours at idle with barely higher CPU t
This is hilarious (Score:2)
Some marketers got together, jerked each other off, and came up with the idea.
Do they track crashes? Ba dump, bump!
Pointless (Score:4)
All that!! (Score:1)
All that for a computer worth a few hundred bucks?
Seems like overkill.
Besides....bah, Nevermind. Good luck with that dumb shit.
One more thing... (Score:3)
It's just one more instance of this oppressive trend. You bought something but you can't control it because you aren't "authorized". Resist. Stop this unpleasant trend toward non-ownership of all your possessions.
Here's a better idea (Score:2)
If I were HP... (Score:2)
HP! (Score:2)
I see the HP logo and I run the other way. HP is a disaster.
I'm skeptical. (Score:2)
This will be very good at fretting if the refurbisher swapped out RAM or mass storage; but it's not like onboard diagnostics are all that good at pi
Yet another unwanted unasked for service (Score:4, Insightful)
The damn cases need to stop cracking in half! (Score:2)
I have a Lenovo Legion laptop whose case cracked along the bottom in less than three years. I wasn't paying close attention, so it could have happened after one or two years. The same thing happened to a MSI. Apparently you can't pick up mid- to high-end laptops by a side or corner! This has not happened with the very high-end laptops I've used. The resell value of these things plummets to near zero if the damn thing is starting to break in half. The cynic in me says that's why they are designed this way.
It
Boo. (Score:2)
Nothing like CarFax.
CarFax doesn't store any data on the car, it's not needed. If the complete picture requires external data sources, all the device needs is a unique identifier, which it already has.
Sounds like they want to store errors or other things that happen on device, probably to reject warranty claims. Case opened? Unauthorised operating system installed? Hardware components changed, then changed back again?
"Your laptop is needs replacing" ? (Score:2)
This is HP, the company that prevents the use of non-HP ink cartridges, and automatically expires your ink when they deem it too old.
Which makes me wonder if they'll use the stored data to prevent non-HP upgrades, and switch your PC off when they deem it's time to sell you a new one.
Some things change, some others doesn't... (Score:1)
That just did remind me why the last HP computer I ever played with, was back in the Windows 98 era.
And it will probably stay that way forever now.
They'll use AI! (Score:2)
"We are also working on integrating AI into our dashboards. We hope to use AI models to analyze historical telemetry data and predict failures before they happen, such as detecting increasing SSD write cycles to forecast impending failure and alert IT teams for proactive replacement, or predicting battery degradation and automatically generating a service ticket to ensure a replacement battery is ready before failure, minimizing downtime."
So they must not know that they could send a warning for low capacity
Re: (Score:2)
More HP Bloatware (Score:2)