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Cheap laptop colocation
I just saw this hit the front page of hacker news: https://www.colaptop.com
But I'm surprised at that because the site looks incredibly sketchy. In addition I feel like I have barely seen raspberry pi colo at a price of 7 euro let alone colo for a full laptop.
It is a cool idea though, so part of me is hoping it's legit or there's another person that's offering this.
If anyone is braver than me and wants to test it out or has more information let me know!
Comments
Domain registered on 9 Apr 2026, Single page website, no Company/DC details - That's 100% sketchy.
I suppose they are counting on the fact that they will use very little power (partially because they'll thermal throttle!) and can probably fit 150+ in a rack.
Here's the original hacker news post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47707477
I think they have been around for a while but the url was https://colaptop.pages.dev/ , just redirected to the domain, according to archive.org has been around for a year at least.
I was just surprised it got so many upvotes and assumed something that was a scam wouldn't rocket to the front page like this.
I found the google forums as a way to contact them where you need to be signed in as well especially sus.
Yeah but by that logic why isn't raspberry pi colo even cheaper than that?
It is a nice idea if they are legit.
But if they are scam it is an easy way for them to get loads of laptops.
what kind of retard would colocate a laptop
I feel like more and more people are moving towards hosting at home due to increasing costs, privacy concerns, etc. I know people who have absolutely self hosted from home with laptops. However there are sometimes concerns doing it this way (residential internet speeds, security) so absolutely I see the market for colocating raspberry pis and laptops although it is a bit niche
Agreed, I was looking at colo for my Pi 5 a few weeks ago, and getting a VPS worked out more powerful and cheaper.
If you're that constrained you won't be looking for colocation to begin with, you either have your vps at home and have whatever tunnel set up for it or try to rent a cheap vm.
I think there are other niche usecases that this is good for such as people who are privacy aware and want to use their own hardware. There have been lots of VPS hacks recently.
A solution I've found some people do is buy a membership at a local makerspace or hackerspace which can often be cheaper than traditional colo and comes with the benefits of using the space as well. They often have small sever racks for this usecase and would probably welcome laptops, raspberry pis, etc.
So the next best idea is to physically hand it over to someone else because we're sooo privacy conscious..?
150 old batteries stacked together.
I think the idea is that they remove the batteries due to fire risk
Yep, they allude to that on the website.
I just realized something if they are claiming that it's literally within Hetzner's data center maybe Hetzner can chime in on whether this is legit or not? @Hetzner_OL
"We're based in Amsterdam and aim to work with Hetzner to provide colocation services in the US and across their European datacenter network"
Aim to work?
Good catch, I was going off this quote "Your laptop will be hosted in Hetzner's professional datacenters with 24/7 security, climate control, and redundant power. We also provide basic firewall services and DDoS protection." which makes it sound more like they have an existing partnership with Hetzner
Just noticed they also provide a prepaid shipping box...lol...at only 7 a month how do they recoup that price? They've got to just be stealing the laptops...
The way it's worded I would definitely read it as they are already partnered up with Hetzner which is very misleading if they aren't.
Looks like a Scam to me.
Complete fever dream.
They also dont specify which laptops they accept. A 20 yearold ThinkPad with a dual-core and 4GB of RAM? Or my 8 year old gaming laptop with an i9, an RTX 2080, and 64GB of RAM?
This offer makes absolutely no sense.
North Koreans.
A combination of "officer, I didn't steal it, they sent it to me!" And "possession is 9/10ths of the law" kind of bullshit.
Plot twist: it's CIA honey pot where they'd happily subsidize this to find the types of criminals doing this shit.
I am intrigued. I can't find where they list bandwidth/network stats...
seems just grab alot of laptop ? )))))
Where is the bandwidth status of https://www.colaptop.com
I have never seen in my life that laptop colo can be done !
This is 100% a scam.
The price seems too cheap for them to offer the setup support, kvm over ip device, free prepaid shipping label+box out and return.
Signup is a Google form and seemingly no legal contract.
Seems off. I wouldn't touch this...
I actually like this idea (if it's not a scam) Being able to cheaply colocate old gear and give it a second life would be sweet. But... I don't know how economically viable it actually is though.
Case in point:
If evenly divided with performance reserved for each VM, the lower power chip (65W) system running virtualization is the equivalent of ~15 old laptops @ 225W. (246% more power draw)
The higher power chip (500W) system running virtualization is the equivalent of 55 old laptops @ 825W (65% more power draw)
So it's not as power inefficient as I might have thought at first, but still somewhat inefficient. It could make sense if the datacenter is somewhere that power & labor is cheap but hardware is expensive.
"We're based in Amsterdam and aim to work with Hetzner to provide colocation services in the US and across their European datacenter network. This ensures your laptop is hosted in professional, secure facilities with excellent connectivity."
Aka, some guy with an idea, a Claude subscription, and a Google Form.