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Has anyone here ever bought a factory refurbished computer, or know exactly what the store means when they put that in the ads?

I ask, because I see what looks like a good deal on a computer at Future shop in their boxing day flyer, but most of their machines seem to be refurbished. Does it mean the some of the parts were in computers that were used and have been returned, or if not, then what?

So yeah, I'd appreciate any advice anyone could offer.

If you can afford to do it, get new. The biggest differences is the warranty, so if having easy access to maintenance if something goes wrong is important, I'd recommend getting a new machine.

I had a refurbed Dell laptop that came with the same one year warranty as a new one.
AFAIK, most refurbs from Dell are customer returns that are put through a series of checks, the HD is reformatted and the OS is reinstalled, and then resold.

The checks must not be too through though, as I had issues with the LCD intermittently blanking out.
However, Dell replaced the LCD and inverter board under warranty and that fixed the problem.

I'd buy a refurb, but I'd expect a considerable discount from the new price and I'd want the same warranty that was offered when the product was new.

I bought my Mac refurbed through apple. The warranty is the same, and I have not had any problems with it.

Thanks guys. In the end, I think I'm going to spend a little more and get something new from Dell. All the refurbs I looked at had a 90 day warranty, and I'm somewhat uneasy with that.

My laptop is a refurbished Dell D600. It's getting on a bit now (got it over three years ago), but is still pretty much fine. (The 'end' key fell out a few months ago, and the cd writer/dvd drive occasionally goes a little odd i.e. sometimes need to restart before playing some disks.)

observer_20000 wrote:Thanks guys. In the end, I think I'm going to spend a little more and get something new from Dell. All the refurbs I looked at had a 90 day warranty, and I'm somewhat uneasy with that.

I'd personally recommend avoiding a Dell, for various reasons. If the warranty is a big deal though, the HP that I picked up a couple months ago has a 1 year factory warranty. Of course this might be different if you're talking about a desktop vs a laptop. If it's a desktop, you'd definitely be better off buying new.

General Zod wrote:

observer_20000 wrote:Thanks guys. In the end, I think I'm going to spend a little more and get something new from Dell. All the refurbs I looked at had a 90 day warranty, and I'm somewhat uneasy with that.

I'd personally recommend avoiding a Dell, for various reasons. If the warranty is a big deal though, the HP that I picked up a couple months ago has a 1 year factory warranty. Of course this might be different if you're talking about a desktop vs a laptop. If it's a desktop, you'd definitely be better off buying new.

Hmmm, interesting. What reasons would those be? I've heard that they tend to price gouge with high end systems, but the computer I'm getting is fairly average, and I've never heard anything that bad about them other than that.

observer_20000 wrote:

General Zod wrote:

observer_20000 wrote:Thanks guys. In the end, I think I'm going to spend a little more and get something new from Dell. All the refurbs I looked at had a 90 day warranty, and I'm somewhat uneasy with that.

I'd personally recommend avoiding a Dell, for various reasons. If the warranty is a big deal though, the HP that I picked up a couple months ago has a 1 year factory warranty. Of course this might be different if you're talking about a desktop vs a laptop. If it's a desktop, you'd definitely be better off buying new.

Hmmm, interesting. What reasons would those be? I've heard that they tend to price gouge with high end systems, but the computer I'm getting is fairly average, and I've never heard anything that bad about them other than that.

Mainly because they have this nasty tendency of using substandard propietary components in their systems, and have rather shitty customer support. They're the absolute bottom of the barrel for end user computers.

General Zod wrote:Mainly because they have this nasty tendency of using substandard propietary components in their systems, and have rather shitty customer support. They're the absolute bottom of the barrel for end user computers.

Shoddy build quallity, the tech support has gone down hill over the past years.

The only thing dell has going for them is their unconditional extended warranty. Run over your laptop with a truck? no problem. Dump a can of coke on the key board? no big deal. Dell will fix it. I wish other companies had that kind of warranty

General Zod wrote:

observer_20000 wrote:

General Zod wrote: I'd personally recommend avoiding a Dell, for various reasons. If the warranty is a big deal though, the HP that I picked up a couple months ago has a 1 year factory warranty. Of course this might be different if you're talking about a desktop vs a laptop. If it's a desktop, you'd definitely be better off buying new.

Hmmm, interesting. What reasons would those be? I've heard that they tend to price gouge with high end systems, but the computer I'm getting is fairly average, and I've never heard anything that bad about them other than that.

Mainly because they have this nasty tendency of using substandard propietary components in their systems, and have rather shitty customer support. They're the absolute bottom of the barrel for end user computers.

It helps if you speak Hindi when dealing with Dell tech support , but once they understand that you do have a hardware problem they were Johnny on the Spot WRT getting me a prepaid shipping carton to send my laptop in for the screen replacement.

As far as the rest of it goes, I think they've moved away from using proprietary connectors (such as the infamous out of spec ATX power connector they had several years ago) and are pretty much bog standard ATX/BTX spec now as far as desktop machines go.
WRT laptops, I upgraded the processor, memory, hard drive, and CD burner in the aforementioned Dell Inspiron 1100 with bog standard parts from Newegg before I sold it.
My current Inspiron 9300 has more memory and a DVD burner installed in it that are also standard parts from Newegg.

As far as HP goes, I've seen HP desktop systems with both Asus motherboards (good) and Trigem (very bad) boards installed.


Whatever you get, be sure it comes with a minimum one year warranty.