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Purchasing refurbished laptops
- Thread starter xlav
- Start date
It's a crapshoot. Sometimes you just get open box items that have been returned and repackaged, but you might also get my Lenovo laptop that was damaged in shipping and DOA and sent back...
In general I always check the warranty...if it's the same as for a new item then I would think about it but if it's less then beware. I personally don't buy refurbs for a major purchase like a laptop. Maybe a PSU, a case, or a router, but nothing with a lot of moving parts. You can generally search and find a similar price on a brand-new item.
Tony
"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me
In general I always check the warranty...if it's the same as for a new item then I would think about it but if it's less then beware. I personally don't buy refurbs for a major purchase like a laptop. Maybe a PSU, a case, or a router, but nothing with a lot of moving parts. You can generally search and find a similar price on a brand-new item.
Tony
"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me
I buy refurb PCs and laptops. Don't generally have a problem if you keep to something like IBM, Dell, Compaq, HP or Toshiba. Normally ask them to change the memory to the max possible and change the disk if it is noisy. Other than that, they're great. The refurb laptop I got in 1996 has just died and the one I got in 1998 is still going.
- Thread starter
- #5
Thing with refurb stuff is you sometimes get some weird software with it so I generally wipe the disk and reinstall from scratch. You also get some gems like the IBM butterfly which, I thought was absolutely brilliant. Shame they discontinued it.
ArizonaGeek
IS-IT--Management
In agreement with what most people are saying here, we have bought refurb servers from Dell and always make sure we get a three year factory warranty and wipe out the drives to insure nothing is on them. We've had no problems with them, in fact I just cycled out a half dozen servers and a few of those were refurbs and are now 4 or 5+ years old.
Before I started with my current company, they used to buy refurb PC's but at least the last I looked, I didn't see any huge discounts on desktops and laptops from Dell compared to new ones and by the time we add any extra hardware requirements (sometimes we'll have to add RAM or a bigger hard drive than the refurb has) the cost is pretty close to new. Depends on what you are looking for though.
Cheers
Rob
The answer is always "PEBKAC!
Before I started with my current company, they used to buy refurb PC's but at least the last I looked, I didn't see any huge discounts on desktops and laptops from Dell compared to new ones and by the time we add any extra hardware requirements (sometimes we'll have to add RAM or a bigger hard drive than the refurb has) the cost is pretty close to new. Depends on what you are looking for though.
Cheers
Rob
The answer is always "PEBKAC!
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