This is not generally an option in my case. I go to a street market where stuff is dirt cheap because it’s untested and has risk. Sometimes there is someone at the market who will rent their power generator for a buck to test something, but most laptops do not have their power supply. So I would have to be equipped with the correct PSU (and the universals don’t usually do 19.5v which is what many HP’s are, plus HP has some lock-in tech that forces a PSU to be HP). Some don’t even have the RAM and thus would not boot even if I had a Knoppix drive.
I’m signing up for some risk. But what I don’t want is the risk that the CPU is not even what I am after. It’s central to my buying decision so I need to know early before wasting time and money.
Worth noting that we know think/suspect from this page that Elitebooks and Probooks possibly indicate AMD or Intel in the 3rd digit of their model number. And it seems likely because some Lenovos also use a 0 or 5 to make the same designation in their model numbers. But this is apprently useless for HP Pavilions AFAICT.
It would be nice to force HP to talk. I wonder if a FOIA request could be used somehow, perhaps targetted at the FCC who licenses the radios in a laptop and thus may have some info on the specs.