Xpander on ebay

[Karl-Ludwig Butte]

Hi all,

there's an HP Xpander on sale at ebay at the moment from Australia with a link to hpcalc.org. This web-page contains the following warning: "Note: All Xpander prototype units are the property of Hewlett-Packard. It is illegal to sell or buy these units, and they must be returned to HP if HP requests it. Please be warned before attempting to buy or sell one on eBay -- the auction could be cancelled, or the seller could be a fraud and you would have no recourse."

How serious one should consider this warning and how big is the risk that this auction is a fraud ? Has anyone experience with this ? Thank's for your opinion and information in advance.

Karl

[Thibaut.be]

All distributed Xpanders were prototypes, basically a PDA running on Win CE, that were distributed to some teachers for feedback.

HP decided not to commercialize the Xpander and did not care that all protos were returned. Some persons had the chance to gather several on those and made a lot of $$$ on ebay in reselling them. The price is usually close to $500.

I own one that I never use but I thought it was valuable in a collection to have an item that was not even sold. I think we would all love to own Dave's 95C.

Regarding the (c) mention I guess the seller does not bother and should not be to much worried by HP. After all, I'm free to resell my Xpander as I legally purchased it, am I not ?

Ebay could eventually consider this item not valid, but we all know that ebay is a seller driven business and unless you can prove one is trying to avoid ebay fees, they mostly leave the auction run.

As for an example, I recently bought an ice machine to a 1000+ feedback wholeseller. You can easily see that it uses several 0 feedback ID's to make sure the auction reaches a minimum amount, on nearly all their $100+ items. I told this story ebay, and they said there was nothing to prove I was right...

[Eric Smith]

The claim that all Xpanders are property of HP is incorrect. A fair number were sold or given away to HP employees, and HP has no further say in the disposition of those units.

[sjthomas]

Quote:

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"Please be warned before attempting to buy or sell one on eBay -- the auction could be cancelled, or the seller could be a fraud and you would have no recourse."

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How is this different from any other ebay auction? Does [hp] jump in to guarantee auctions of non-prototype hp equipment? [/sarcasm]