I’m starting to get back into the swing of tech at large, and found a business laptop that fits my needs for a portable low power emulation device. When I look to buy it secondhand, because I don’t intend to burn money or the environment unnecessarily, I find dozens of extremely cheap listings without drives. Are these secondhand from businesses removing and drilling the drives or is there something else going on?
I’m assuming you’re in the US and looking at Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, or Lenovo Thinkpad, possibly on eBay from a recycling company.
Many large corporations buy these with a 3 year warranty, and stretch those to 4 or 5 years unless they break. Once the devices are too old, they go through a decom process. This usually includes sanitizing the data. Depending on the corporation, this could mean a secure erase, or it could mean physical destruction with a grinder. Then they send it to a recycler or refurbisher, who pays them a pittance for the remaining value. It’s also why they are frequently missing the hard drive caddy - the difference in value is minimal, so they remove it the fastest way possible.
Power bricks and docks are usually usable on other models/generations, so those aren’t sent to recycling until they are useless. That’s why you often see laptops listed without bricks.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
No Let’s Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates.
(Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources.
If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
I’m assuming you’re in the US and looking at Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, or Lenovo Thinkpad, possibly on eBay from a recycling company.
Many large corporations buy these with a 3 year warranty, and stretch those to 4 or 5 years unless they break. Once the devices are too old, they go through a decom process. This usually includes sanitizing the data. Depending on the corporation, this could mean a secure erase, or it could mean physical destruction with a grinder. Then they send it to a recycler or refurbisher, who pays them a pittance for the remaining value. It’s also why they are frequently missing the hard drive caddy - the difference in value is minimal, so they remove it the fastest way possible.
Power bricks and docks are usually usable on other models/generations, so those aren’t sent to recycling until they are useless. That’s why you often see laptops listed without bricks.