HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Desktop Mini Business PC, Intel Quad-Core i5-6500T up to 3.1G, 16GB DDR4, 240GB SSD, VGA, DP, Win 11 Pro 64 bit (Renewed)

I spent the last few work years developing automation using raspberry pi, so it made sense to have it as my daily drive and desktop. Now retired, I wanted to see how the rest of the Linux world was doing. I looked through my motley collection of old computers and decided I needed something more modern, nothing crazy, I'm not a gamer or video producer. I just needed a commodity desktop. On that front, not much has changed for years. I looked at what I could get new locally or online and wasn't impressed. But I did see huge numbers of these on sale at attractive prices. Off lease doesn't scare me I have the tools and knowledge to build PCs if needed. So, I found what seemed the best deal, Amazon renewed so I could send it back if hopeless. For $100, these old business models are pretty much on par with the new budget models I was looking at.So, what did I get? Slightly more than I ordered, this one had a 1tB ssd and it does have WIFI and Bluetooth internal. The ssd had been running for 5 years and was down to 9% life according to Crystal Diskinfo. But, it had Windows 10 Pro on it and works fine. The external antennas were missing but both WIFI and Bluetooth work OK. I didn't really have to do anything. But I added a nvme M2 ssd and put LinuxMint on it. I left the Windows on the original drive and if it fails eventually, no big deal, I don't use it anyways. But, it's a great deal for what I needed and more than fast enough as a Linux desktop. I am pleased, and as someone who has been in the game since before PCs, that's saying a lot. I would recommend if for someone who just needs an average desktop.

I got this new a couple of years ago, to replace a terribly old Mac that couldn't keep up anymore. I've been astonished at how fast this little PC has been. The specs don't really tell you the whole story. The folks at HP managed to optimize this machine so that it's just blazing fast compared to other computers I've had that were closer to top of the line in their day. It may not hold up well for instensive things like video procesing or bulk graphic editing in Illustrator, but for the vast majority of productivity type tasks, this tiny PC is perfect. You'd never know you're on a mini PC except the fact that it's stone cold quiet and doesn't have great HD space (just get a 500GB flash drive, they're cheap). With 7 USB ports and a 2 DisplayPorts, even the lack of HDMI isn't a very big deal. Thunderbolt would be nice but there are workarounds. I've got this thing hooked into a 43 inch 4K monitor and everything looks beautiful. Mouse is a bit slower on the big screen, but that's it.Upgrading to Win 11 was as easy as upgrading the TPM to 2.0 w/ HPs official tool, and using MSFT's registry override published on their site with instructions how to install Windows 11 on machines deemed incapable (Windows will tell you the CPU on this machine isn't up to par, but that's ridiculous). Then during the ISO ugprade you need to selected advanced and turn automatic updates during installation OFF or the install will cut out. Also, all the warnings about how if you upgrade on a machine deemed incapable will make you ineligible for future Windows updates are totally bogus - updates work fine. Windows 11 is way better than 10, especially for multiple monitors. I ran the Performance Monitor app in Windows 11, and not only did this machine pass with flying colors, it scored an 8.7 in the CPU area - where 5 is a passing score. So not only can the CPU handle Windows 11, it handles it a lot better than plenty of the machines deemed capable of Win 11.Buying one of these for $110 refurbished for office, home, or school is a no brainer.

So I picked up one of these to use as a Raspberry Pi alternative for some small IoT services around the house. I had a NVMe SSD in another system I should be able to drop into this and boot, which mostly seemed to work, but I was having some strange issues that took a while to figure out.So, out of the box, I went ahead and opened it up and unplugged the SSD included. I don't need Windows for my needs and would rather not have it numerated in Linux or anything, so I just unplugged it. I plugged my prepped NVMe in and it all seemed fine.Booted into the BIOS, went thru resetting some things, and upon save & resetting the BIOS... it wouldn't boot. I kept getting "RESET SYSTEM" messages and it just kept rebooting. I couldn't get it back into the BIOS either.At first I figured I did something wrong in the BIOS and tried to reset the CMOS, but that didn't really do much either. I was able to get into the BIOS once, didn't change anything, and it immediately started back into a RESET SYSTEM loop.I took it apart completely and noticed the Wifi antenna were seemingly damaged. It looks like there are a couple of places where the antenna has been stripped on purpose, exposing the inner metal shielding to the bare metal of the chassis. I didn't think it was likely causing a short but I did see some others reporting such a problem. I'm not using the wireless so I went ahead and removed it. Problem persisted.After a bit more troubleshooting I figured out if I plugged a second keyboard in and spammed F12 on both I was able to get into the BIOS, and from there I set the boot delay timer to 5 seconds... and it boots into Linux very consistently now.I say all this to hopefully help anyone else that picks up one of these for homelab type things: Ensure the boot delay timer is set, because it seems like the HP BIOS can't kick over to GRUB otherwise. Super weird, but hey, it ends up working fine.