alt Hacker NewsCertified 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.
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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.
There is difference of usage patterns between servers and laptops. Servers are most likely run nearly entire duration they are used or leased. Maybe not loaded, but is not massive difference.
On other hand laptops might spend significant time being turned off. Or their usage patterns might affect batteries. Like how deep they were drawn. In that sense getting more telemetry on laptops is much more useful.