reconditioned laptops

[One9iner]

All,

I'm on the market for a new laptop... Pretty standard spec, 3mg, 512R pent4 etc...

For my budget - <£500 I've noticed PC World and the like sell 'reconditioned laptops' which would normally retail for >£600 for an average of £450... Does anyone have any experiences, good or bad, from buying such machines?

Regards

[srobarts]

We have bought a couple of reconditioned IBM Thinkpads from Bigpockets and been very satisfied by the condition. Would use them again.

It started me looking at other reconditioned/refurbished items available - just bought a manufacturer reconditioned camera from Canon - delighted with that as well.

[ab33t]

I have bought one before and they come with a warranty so that should offe some piece of mind

[Keef]

I'm using a "reconditioned" IBM Thinkpad and am delighted with it. £1000 worth of laptop for which I paid £300.

[cargosales]

Can't say I've ever bought a reconditioned one but if doing so I'd avoid PC World like the plague.

For under £500 though, I'd seriously suggest a new one from one of the major 'resellers' E.g. Insight Deals at Insight UK Most of the big manufacturers make a batch of a particular model and then three months later they change the spec before making another batch. Any of the first batch they haven't sold get passed to resellers who price them to sell quickly.

At the suggestion of the tech guys at Toshiba that's exactly what I did when looking for a new laptop on a budget. £350 for a really nice machine with Toshiba's money back warranty thrown in for good measure.

Good service from Insight too - minimal fuss when ordering and it arrived the next day as promised. AND, I see that some of their Tosh laptops are still available with XP downgrade

Let us know which route you go and how you get on please?

CS

[Feline]

Used to buy second hand/reconditioned laptops, but these days you should be able to get a brand new laptop within your price range.
Two things to watch for - does it come with the original battery or a new battery? A two-year old battery will have a lot less life than the original battery.
The other thing I've noticed is that the screen brightness always seems to be a lot lower on a second hand laptop -though I suspect that's a function of age. If you can pick up an "open box" model (ie. one that has been returned to the retailer or manufacturer soon after purchase), then the above two points may not apply.
Also - have you considered a Netbook? I am well pleased with my Asus 904HD which I bought in February: 1Mb RAM (which I quickly upgraded to 2Mb), 80Gb HDD, XP and Open Office already installed. Only slight disadvantage is screen resolution (1024 X 600) - so bit more up and down scrolling. But weighs only 1.3Kg and runs for about six hours before needing recharging. Paid about £330 for mine.

[Shunter]

1Mb RAM (which I quickly upgraded to 2Mb)

I remember as a child growing up in the 80s getting extremely excited about the possibility of 2Mb of RAM. Finally it's here

[Aerouk]

Check out:

Acer Aspire 5732 Value Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

or

Acer Aspire 5536 Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer

I got one this week, cracking machines!

[marlowe]

If you go to Currys website they have a section on laptops that are "new" but used if thats not a contradiction ! for example i bought a Hewlett packard laptop that was originally for the Australian market it had Aussie telecom software on it, but it was being sold by currys in the UK as used but the box had never been opened and it was brand new. I paid £320 and the retail price in Australia was on average £800 have had it a year infact typing this on it right now .

[Keef]

Some of the £300-ish new laptops are indeed reasonable devices. My daughter has one and quite likes it.

But hers doesn't come close to my Thinkpad T43 - good reconditioned ones available for well under £300.

[Feline]

I remember as a child growing up in the 80s getting extremely excited about the possibility of 2Mb of RAM. Finally it's here

Thanks for picking that up Shunter! I've obviously been around this game for far too long and will undoubtedly fail my next Cyclic Redundancy Check with flying colours ...

Can't help but wonder whether the computer of today (with Gigabytes and Gigahertz) gets very much more, in terms of intellectual input from the user, than my original Apple II (which probably had less memory and processing power than the average quartz wristwatch these days ... But I'm not going down that long and winding road this late at night ... Sigh!