the high price of memory affecting end users and the companies that make PCs. Building the AI ​​data center running out of RAM supply and pushing PC makers to raise prices. What happens if very few consumers can afford the computing needed for their daily work or their recreational gaming? PC makers may start asking us to lease our PCs like we do our cars.

HP has quietly started a program where consumers can rent a laptop for a monthly fee. Reddit users on r/HPOmen The subreddit first discovered the hauling of rental PCs in the HP website last year, although the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel and PCGamer brought it to light this week. Starting at $50 per month, users have the option of acquiring a Victus 15 gaming laptop loaded with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 laptop GPU (which laptop costs $1,150 at retail but usually sells for $950). For a top-end $130 per month subscription, you can claim a Omen Max 16 with Intel Core Ultra 9 and Nvidia RTX 5080 graphics.

Once you choose the laptop you want, you can buy additional HyperX peripherals for a few bucks added on top of your subscription, including a mouse, keyboard, headset, mic, or even a monitor.

After a full year, that high-end laptop will cost you $1,440, without taking into account any taxes or additional accessories. HP lets you upgrade after a year to trade in your gear for the latest and greatest. In fact, it could mean you can swap from the previous-gen Omen Max to the latest HyperX Omen Max laptop was revealed earlier this year at CES. The current-gen laptop costs $3,300, so after two years of using the high-end mobile gaming platform, you may have saved more money.

Of course, there is a cancellation fee

If you’ve ever had to deal with ballooning fees on streaming services, you already know the problem with subscription models. The top-end $120-a-month subscription is still too expensive. Sure, you get 24/7 live tech support (a rarity in this age of AI-laden chatbots) and free replacements. What you lose is any real control over the things you buy. There is a cancellation fee if you want to quit early in your 12 month commitment which can amount to hundreds or more of $1,000 if you try to end as early as the 4 month mark.

If you don’t return your device at the end of your rental period, you could be racking up huge return fees that can cost thousands of dollars. Unlike the phone payment plan, you don’t own the laptop, even if you pay the equivalent amount of the device. You should think about what sensitive information you are uploading to the laptop memory and remember to reset the PC before sending it back. You may not give or resell this device to someone else if you decide you want to upgrade.

And it’s not just gaming PCs. HP also has a similar service for its business end PCs. With that offer, you can get more reasonably priced mobile machines like an HP EliteBook 6 G1q 14-inch model for $85 per month or a 16-inch HP Pavilion for $35 per month. The same EliteBook will ask for about $1,277 (now on sale, although it has hit an MSRP of over $2,000).

HP’s business and gaming rental pages have been around for a long time November last year, according to the Wayback Machine. Gizmodo has reached out to HP for more details on how long the service has been in testing and its future plans, and we’ll update this story when we hear back.

This will be bad news for laptops

You have a choice of accessories and, according to Linus, the built-in features of HP’s Wolf Security. We at Gizmodo are big fans of HP EliteBook laptops for the professional minded. The downside is the same as before. You lose any sense of ownership of the device and are included in the usual payment. By following a subscription, users lose their ability to save for a computer that would provide real ownership.

HP hasn’t had much time to promote this service, so we don’t yet know how many customers have bought it. The question is whether consumers will trade ownership for short-term access. The issue is how expensive laptops will soon get. I’ve been watching PC component prices rise since October last year. Now, in 2026, the base version of the latest edition of Dell XPS 14 will cost $1,600. the 2024 model starting at $1,400. With a mid-range Intel Core Ultra X7 358H chip, Dell’s latest laptop costs $2,200. And that’s just one company.

We may be heading for a future where the only way to get access to even modest computing specs is to pay through the nose or pay monthly for cloud-based computing. Neither option sounds very appealing.