I am looking at buying a laptop and am looking at a couple on ebay. They are sold from a company and have a one year warranty, but am a little concerned with the whole refurbished thing. Anyone have any experience?
Randy
It all depends on who did the refurbishing and their willingness to honor their warrantee. We bought a laptop for $300 on eBay, but it was a little older and was used, but not refurbished. We are happy with it.
has the company been around a while ? will they actually be around for a year to honor that warrantee if something goes wrong ?
You can be lucky, you can be VERY unlucky.
Be VERY VERY careful on eBay. You will find some of the most reliable dealers there, you will also find, pardon my language, the absolute scum. Check their feedback very carefully. If their are any negatives or neutrals make sure you find them and read them before you bid or buy.
Contact them by phone, if they wont reply promptly to messages sent before you bid can you rely on them to reply when you need support? On the phone try and gauge how comfortable you would be with them.
Computers rule my life. We have eight of them between three of us in the office plus four laptops. We have bought parts on eBay, but never a computer. With the prices and financing deals being offered by the likes of HP/Compaq and Dell these days think seriously about buying name brand new - especially for laptops.
John
as long as the seller has a very good feedback rating. I would not be afraid of a refurbished computer, with a 1 year warranty I’d say go for it
you can get outstanding deals on refurbished, even used. People give up on thier old computers for the simpliest of problems. If you don’t need, or want, the very fastest machine, they can be very cheap.
Ebay is my only problem. Be careful.
And John is right … for a basic laptop, Dell etc have very good bargains. And you know who you are dealing with.
Jim
Good advice - I would add, look at the brand. Some laptops survive longer than others, some laptops are better engineered than others. I wouldn’t buy another Compaq one (we had two, both overheat before they activate the cooling fan and therefore crash). Toshiba, Dell, and IBM seem to make solid, reliable machines - I bought a 1996 Toshiba Satellite 110CS used for £5 from our local PC recycling place (they take in old kit from local businesses and recycle it into cheap PCs for those who can’t afford the latest ones - they also have a devoted enthusiast following (including myself) hunting for spares and/or “classic” PCs - they sometimes get stuff they don’t consider worth refurbishing so they’ll let it go in return for a donation to their funds). I use it for lecture notes, it copes very well indeed despite being 9 years old (battery is long gone, but with new ones at £60 each I think I can live with a mains cord…).
We got one one from a dealer. It was very up front. He buys from companies that upgrade in lots and resells them on eBay. He tell you where he got the computer, etc.
It was a Toshiba.
I got a Toshiba laptop on e-Bay cheap! Crashes after 10 or 15 minutes! They didn’t mention that in their auction! Good thing it was cheap or I’d be major PO’d! Might be able to salvage it as soon as I figure out why it locks up.
Darrell, LAPping it up, but quiet…for now
I build computers. I dont buy em. Now with laptops. I purchase trusted brands like Toshiba at a store such as Best Buy. I want to examine the machine carefully and ensure it has the features I want in the laptop and perhaps carry it home in it’s retail box.
Something like computers I dont do on ebay. I once bidded on a computer that was worth a great deal of money on the off chance at getting something for nothing… turned out ebay security shut it down because that seller’s account was high jacked.
So much for buying computers on ebay. I prefer to build it myself or buy it after putting my hands and eyes on the actual machine I am thinking of buying.
I did rebuild a three year old machine that was getting obselete from a gaming point of view. I guess you can call it a refurbished machine, it still works like new and everything is in order. But I use it as a RAID back up server to my main machine.
Darrell, that sounds like a dodgy cooling fan to me - does it get hot at the same time? Not sure what other hardware problem could crash it after 10mins. Alternatively it could be that the OS install isn’t all it should be.
I agree with Highiron regarding desktops - I’ve built three now, a lot easier to service those than a factory-built one as you know exactly what went into it and have all the driver disks. I will buy components on ebay (where else would I get an ISA SCSI card?) but I wouldn’t try buying anything recent on there - with a bit of reading you can soon spot the difference between the enthusiasts trying to shift some old kit that’s cluttering their workbench and the less honest types (who aren’t usually offering the kind of kit I’m looking for - ISA cards have yet to become valuable collectors items!) I’ve also found PC World’s bargain bin section a good hunting ground - how do three new, boxed (with all drivers) network cards for .99p each sound? I snapped those up in about a minute, most of which was spent in the queue!
Computer stuff on Ebay
FORGET IT
Save a few more $$$ and go byt a new one from a good dealer. it will save you some headaches in the long run. You might get lucky and get a good one, but why take the chance.
I happen to deal in refurbished computers. what you want to ask or know is if they are"Factory Refurbished". This means they are refurbished by the OEM and not by an individual and are reliable. I also repair computers and laptops and my recommendation would be to stay away from HP/Compaq, Dell and Gateway. HP/Compaq are some of the worst computers made and all three of the afore mentioned have REALLY bad tech support especially Dell. They used to be great till they moved thier tech support to India thanks to VOiP and a greedy american telecom system, but that’s another story. Also be very careful about buying from eBay. I wouldn’t buy a laptop from someone unless thier approval rating is 99.5% or better. hope this helps
Thanks guys for all of your input. I too have heard aweful things about Compaq, I did purchase a HP(desktop) before the merger a like it a lot(except for the idea that the software came preinstalled). I am thinking of buying a computer from Sams Club. Avtec I think, anyone have experience in this line?
thanks again
Randy
Randy,
My very good friend purchased a “factory refurbished” laptop from CostCo (just like a Sam’s) and had nothing but problems with it. After about 1 month of trying to get it to work correctly,he took it back. After some, shall we say, spirited conversation, they agreed to exchange it. He is a marketing person for CostCo and works in the store he bought it! My advice, stay away from refurbished if you can. If not, buy from somewhere you can walk into and get helped. NOT EBAY. Anything you buy used is taking a chance, lets hope you get lucky!!
I bought an off-lease Dell Latitude PIII-850 with a 20 gig HD and Win2kPro installed from www.compgeeks.com about two years ago for $475 and it’s still terrific.
I typed a post and it turned into a hysterical rant on underpowered and weak systems that are incapable of keeping up with “power users”
Be very careful to take the time and study each and understand the major componets on the machine you are looking to buy. Think about and understand exactly what you are buying.
A video processing machine needs different strengths than a gaming machine.
A genuine office machine will take one minute or more to load a word document for you to type a simple letter.
The problem with VOip is that 911 cannot locate and track the physical location of the caller who is having the emergency. They advertise how nice it is to have internet based calls but dont tell you about the actions behind the scenes.
And last… dont let ANYONE pressure you into buying a computer right there in the store… one of the dangers is that they could sell you a demo or damaged (Charged off) machine to carry out the store. Stand your ground and insist on first class treatment like you would in a LHS when thinking of buying that brass engine.
If you happen to stump the sales man with your questions… then perhaps you might want to find someone who understands you.
Today’s HOT machine is tomorrow’s upgrade project… keep that in mind.
Good luck and let me know what you find =)
I am on a factory refurbed HP desktop. 3Gb chip, 40MB HD, 256 memory, good sound and video, modem and ethernet card, with a keyboard and a mouse, for $99 after rebates. I can’t buy components and upgrade the old one for remotely close to that. Works like a charm. Only thing I have done is install my old hard drive and load my subscription stuff from Symantic (Norton).
That is great Virginian!
Im riding herd on a onery machine … here is specs:
RAID 0 Stripe 200 Gig capacity, Two 80 Gig IDE Drives, 3 Gig P4, 2 Gigs of PC3200 RAM matched sets. DVD Burner Combo, massive cooling, 50 minutes worth of Electrical reserve in case of power outages or voltage brownouts and lots of other stuff based on a ASUS P4-800-E Deluxe Motherboard. A 6800 Class video card rounds out the whole thing. Firewire for the digital video and more software than I have time to use.
It started as a humble 3 gig machine with only one drive and 512 meg of ram 2 years ago. I slowly upgraded as time went by. I wanted a machine that could run the MSTS train game without stuttering. It evolved into a monstor.
Around christmas I will be replacing the case with a new one that has more capacity, bigger cooling fans and changing out the IDE Drives, Moving everything to the RAID and installing a new RAID 3 drive array with 600 Gigs of total space.
A new machine incorperating the PCI-X, Dual-core CPU and very large system bus technology is in planning.
I’ve never had any luck with the whole refurbished thing. Computers or otherwise. I try to avoid them.