Refurbished vs. Used Computers
Several manufacturers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM sell
refurbished notebooks online, as opposed to the used portables sold by
individuals on EBay.
A refurbished notebook may have been used only a few days. For example,
Dell offers a 30-day, money-back return on new computers purchased by
phone or online. Inevitably, some computers are returned during that
period because the customer didn't like the keyboard, decided the
notebook was too heavy to carry, and so on. After testing the portable
to make sure it's in proper working order, it may be resold online as a
refurbished model.
A used notebook that you'd buy from an individual EBay seller, however,
may have been used heavily for months, even years. And it may not have
been cleaned up and tested for defects, as Dell and other refurbished PC
sellers promise.
Generally speaking, the refurbished notebooks available from Dell and
other vendors aren't the latest and hottest models. But you can buy
refurbished computers that are still active members of a manufacturer's
product line.
For example, as of early April 2004, on Dell's Web site I found no
refurbished models of its Inspiron 9100 multimedia notebook, which had
been introduced two months earlier. However, the site was offering both
brand-new and refurbished models of its Inspiron 8600 multimedia
notebook, which came out in August 2003.
