Why you should consider purchasing refurbished over new electronics:
[...] And there's another set of benefits to refurbished electronics these days, which I discussed with Lauren Benton, the general manager at Back Market.
"One major issue here is too much demand, and not enough supply of chips. Refurbished electronics helps alleviate supply chain woes by keeping chips in circulation longer. Back Market is leading the charge against buying new these days to support and promote sustainability in tech," Benton told me.
She outlined further the benefits of buying refurbished:
First and foremost, major cost savings can be realized. Refurbished devices are usually half the price of new while still functioning like new (they can be up to 70% off the price of new).
Better quality is another factor. Benton said that when working with professional refurbishers, consumers can expect a professional review of their device. I myself can attest to this since these devices have been proven to work reliably.
"For example, at Back Market, all sellers must meet a 25-point quality charter, which ensures that the defective rate on the platform remains low — generally below 5%. For reference, the unofficial failure rate of new devices hovers at around 3% (case in point, the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 Plus, which both came out at the end of 2017, were each reported to have a 3% failure rate in Q1 of 2018)" she told me.
Have you used reconditioned hardware and, if so, what are your experiences? If you have bought used hardware (but not reconditioned) has it turned out to be a bargain or a disappointment?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:35PM (4 children)
For personal use, I almost always buy used electronics. Not that I am poor - like 88% of the country's population has worse income.
I avoid "refurbished" - I can pretty much clean it with vacuum, compressed air, soap and etanol, reset the settings and reinstall the software without losing a screw or two or breaking a socket inside, thank you.
There are at least two reasons for not buying new (besides the obvious savings):
- The software I like to use (e.g. non-mainstream Linux distributions, LineageOS, etc) lags support for new devices
- One can never know which devices will turn out to be the good ones (early adopters, thank you very much for debugging all the trash they sell nowadays).
(All this is not really limited to electronics. Cars, furniture, houses, even some clothes tend to give better deals and way better diversity and choice on the secondary market)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:35PM (3 children)
Well modded. I'm about to quit buying new computing devices completely. Have an Acer tablet I bought new a few years ago, worst piece of shit electronics I ever had (besides the LG phone in 2006). The newer Dell notebook is almost as bad. I have a used Dell tower I bought at BLH, and it worked well until I went to install a program I bought a long time ago, you have to uninstall it from the computer it's on before it will install on a different machine. Excellent answer to piracy, unlike MS's BSA.
The trouble was they had installed some sort of anti-ransomeware junk on it that wouldn't let me install my $25 video converting software, or Bittorrent. Had to take the tower to BLH to have them remove the junk. That's the downside of buying used; who knows what else is installed on a used computer?
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:17PM (1 child)
>>who knows what else is installed on a used computer?
I know. Because I always do a clean reinstall.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @01:30AM
You think you always do a clean reinstall. All bets are off when the hardware lies to you.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @12:07PM
The only hardware newer has been a Nehalem-refresh era workstation and the odd hard disk (no newer than 2017 or so) to replace failing units.
That includes GPUs, cpus, etc. Nvidia Maxwell Gen2 and AMD GCN 1.2 both solidified the Intel ME-esque firmware signing, which combined with Steam leaks far too much data for me to keep gaming. The web browsers and OSes since also snoop on all that information.
Besides the obvious reasons for buying used/secondhand/aftermarket, there is also the simple fact that it can allow you to buy an 'anonymous' computer, that if properly isolated and used over a combination of tor/i2p/vpn (pick a minimum of two) can give you a level of pseudo-anonymity only people with backbone network access or 5 eyes level surveillance capabilities can thwart.
That said, trying to change typing style and reaction inputs enough to game, or safely use javascript enabled sites without risking identifying yourself has become *MUCH MUCH HARDER*.
The dystopia is growing with every day. Autonomous weapons systems combined with automated mining, energy production, and automated manufacturing will be the closing door on free civilization. And I am increasingly convinced I will be unlucky enough to see it in my lifetime.
Seeth, prepare, rage, and then watch it all burn.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:36PM (3 children)
Steep discounts, products are often good as new, and you can take it back if parts are missing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fnord666 on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:03PM (2 children)
My experience with them has been just the opposite. I've bought two open box items from Microcenter in the past 5 years and I've had nothing but trouble with them. In addition there was a bunch of hassles with them getting warranty work done because the open box that they claimed was not a return was in fact a return and had been registered to someone else.I suspect it was returned by that person because they were having nothing but problems with it. I haven't bought a piece of major electronics from them since that experience.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by vux984 on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:02PM (1 child)
I don't buy much that's refurbished, but this is essentially why. I assume that it was returned for a reason. I'm sure lots of good stuff gets returned for a lot of good reasons, but 'this thing is a lemon' is one of them, and I don't really want to waste time with someone else's lemon.
I did buy a graphics card this summer when my GTX1080 decided to burn itself out. I got a Radeon 6700XT that was open box return, its not the card I would have chosen, but because really there was nothing else available that wasn't a reseller ripoff and even getting this seemed like a near miracle I took it. I'm 90% sure that it was returned because it didn't fit into the original buyers PC, and so far no issue with it. But I bought it from a local PC parts place i deal with pretty regularly, so if I did have trouble with it, I'm pretty sure I'd have gotten what support was possible ... obviously a quick in-store swap/replacement wasn't going to happen though.
But generally I avoid used electronics. I do exclusively buy used cars though... and these day's they're pretty electronic.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Friday December 31 2021, @05:39AM
Yeah, some 25 years ago I got a refurbished Iomega Zip drive. Zip drives suffered from a huge, sales killing flaw, the "click of death". If the drive made that click when you inserted a disk, this somehow caused a total loss of all the data. Insert another disk, and that too would be destroyed. They knew about the flaw, yet they put those flawed drives back on the market, unfixed, as refurbs. Bastards. I took "refurb" to mean it was checked for all problems, and fixed. Nope!
Another thing I won't do any more is the mail-in rebate. Got cheated on a PC power supply rebate. There was a wave of rebate fraud around 20 years ago. I didn't hear much about it, but I noticed that mail-in rebates practically went extinct. It's instant rebate, or forget it.
Also had a bad experience with online purchasing, back in the days when the etiquette of charging the buyer's credit card when the item shipped had not yet been established. They charged my credit card right away, then it was delay after delay and excuse after excuse. I cancelled the order a month later, then it took another 2 months to get the refund. They would not refund my money, and I had to dispute the charge. It didn't help that customer service at the credit card company was so poor. Didn't tell me about "billing dispute specialists", let alone connect me to one, just kept telling me to work it out with the merchant. When I finally learned of that department, and reached them, they cleared it up in a matter of seconds. Soon as they heard that the item had never even been shipped, the agent said "this will be easy", and so it was. After that, I was hesitant to do anything by mail. But it really is no longer practical to stick to bricks and mortar.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @01:54PM (1 child)
I've already invested my life savings in ink and toner.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:51PM
You have laser AND ink? What, no ribbons or carbon paper?
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 3, Informative) by turgid on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:03PM (2 children)
In 2020 I put together a brand-new PC (AMD Ryzen) because my existing one was getting very old (Phenom II X6) and was starting to show its age. It originally started out as a dual-core Athlon 64 and made its way to 6 cores via 4 and it even had a new motherboard when the capacitors went on the old one.
I still had the Phenom II X4 in a box so I decided to see if I could get some second hand/recycled stuff off Ebay this summer. I also had an old intel Core 2 Quad which broke (motherboard and power supply went) which I fixed with parts from Ebay. I bought some parts new (power supplies, case, RAM, heat sinks) but got two motherboards and some RAM recycled and some graphics cards. I got some really good deals on some nVidia Quadro cards (cheaper than the equivalent gaming ones, and slightly higher specs) which all work really well.
Of course, it all runs Slackware64-current.
The Core 2 Quad isn't very reliable, though. It sometimes fails to boot with some weird kernel debug messages. I don't think it's the RAM. I checked that out. I did have problems before with worn-out SATA cables coming loose in their sockets causing problems on boot, but I replaced them. I won't be spending any more money on this machine. It's just there to heat the room and to be another physical target on the network for when I feel like it.
If you choose carefully and aren't afraid to put in a bit of work, you'll do fine with used stuff. I prefer to have one "good" machine made out of brand new components, though. There's nothing more frustrating than an unreliable machine that needs diagnosing and fixing, particularly when you've got other things to do.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:56PM (1 child)
I actually worry a little more about brand-new [nist.gov] components than I do recently-used ones. I guideline I got is that it's a much better bet (but a bet, nonetheless) when buying used, to restrict it to things without moving parts, such as solid-state storage vs. hard drives. Double down on that if it doesn't store any significant amount of persistent data that periodically changes, e.g., wireless routers, PC cards, monitors. While time makes fools of us all [youtu.be], there's nothing that can mechanically "wear out" proper.
Bad solder joints would seem to be your biggest concern from that point forward. In particular, once SSDs became affordable, that was the last significant moving part in a laptop, so one would think laptops would last a very long time after that. Modulo battery life, which battery health management [windowsreport.com] even improves on newer models.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Friday December 31 2021, @03:48AM
The perfect machine has no moving parts.
- A.C. Clarke, in his novel The City and the Stars
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilsa on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:13PM (6 children)
My past experience has been that refurbs have consistently been lower quality than new. For mobile devices, the battery life is always worse. Many devices have had obvious flaws, or outright failed prematurely. I've gotten "Open Box" products from stores that were missing parts. And then there's always the question of "what did the last person do to it?"
The only exception to this has been when I bought refurb macs from Apple. They've always been like new.
I would much rather buy refurb, for the reasons already stated, but I've just had so many negative experiences that I can't bring myself to trust them.
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:17PM
sometimes they do better things than the manufacturer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:33PM
I've always had similar concerns about buying refurbed items. So I always buy new, but then I use them as long as possible. While a 6 year old laptop is my "daily driver" computer, I have a desktop PC I built 12 years ago that I still use weekly. If it still works, why not use it?
It's the people who just have to have the "new shiny" that make the used market possible, of course, but I've always thought if more folks would just keep what they currently have, things overall would be a lot more sustainable.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:03PM
>The only exception to this has been when I bought refurb macs from Apple. They've always been like new.
They are new. Only the mainboard is preserved; everything else is replaced. For a phone/tablet, that's a brand new housing, battery, and display. For a computer, the entire case is replaced as well as the screen. One of the benefits of making everything from aluminum.
It's the best open secret about buying from Apple.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:26PM
If you are buying a refurb of a product only designed to last a year before falling apart, I suspect you are going to notice a low is quality and longevity.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:05PM
I would agree with this re Apple. Their refurb process is pretty good and I've never had an issue with anything refurbished that I have bought from them. I really like that they replace the battery in all of their refurbs as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @04:24PM
I think it depends heavily on the product. I've had good experience with used cars, used mid to high end lawn tractors, some PC parts, and some laptops. I have had bad experience with used graphics cards and power supplies, and used entry level lawn tractors. Smartphones have been a crap shoot, if I get refurbished there's about a 50/50 chance I have to return it and replace it. That's happened to me with iPhones, LG phones, and Samsung phones. The hassle is annoying, but eventually I get a good phone at a lower price.
Side rant - the thing that kills me about laptops is that 1600x900 and 1366x768 resolution are still so popular. If you're going to watch Netflix on the thing, that's fine. If you're reading text a lot, the fuzzy text causes eye strain. So for me and for family members, I have to spend a lot of extra time and money hunting for 1920x1080 or better, even if that means sacrificing on processor speed, disk space, or similar.
(Score: 2) by Dale on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:31PM
I've bought free standing copier/scanners for work (think HP9000 series, Xerox WorkCentre, etc). Those have all been great buys at a small fraction of the cost. For my personal electronics, I am almost always able to repurpose them for someone (my parents, coworker's kid, little old lady in the neighborhood). The biggest headache currently is un-accessible batteries. Often times with phones and laptops the device is fine but the battery is just shot.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:33PM (15 children)
are what you should consider purchasing over electronics, new or not.
(Score: 3, Touché) by looorg on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:09PM
But you need to follow #apocalypse2022 to know it started!
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:18PM (3 children)
MRE's Baby. I'm gormello like that.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Thexalon on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:22PM (2 children)
According to the military types I know, MREs are considered 3 lies in 1: They aren't meals, they aren't ready, and you don't want to eat them.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:52PM (1 child)
I always keep a case or two on hand, used to keep them in my kit bag at a past job for when I got the surprise midnight callout to a remote location and ended up staying a few days. Now it's just habit. I get mine from MealKit Supply [mealkitsupply.ca].
I've always found them to be convenient, tasty, filling, and a decent price/meal ratio. But then, I also eat them once in a blue moon, not three times a day for weeks on end. People who have to do that and then share their opinion on them is probably what contributes to their bad rep more than anything. Personally, I rather like them.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:20PM
That is the key. As part of a balanced diet, almost anything is good. If you have to eat the same thing, day after day, filet mignon would get old after awhile.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:53PM (3 children)
I feel sorry for schizophrenic conspiracy theory believers like you.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:29PM
Reserve the effort for feeling sorry for yourself later. You will need it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by creimer_is_a_virgin on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:46PM (1 child)
I feel sorry for spoiled, coddled, naive adult children that think they have it figured out.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/policing/emergencies/preparedness.html [canada.ca]
Guess the Canadian government must all be crazy according to you.
Know how I know you're a programmer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @02:13AM
No mention of ammunition, and canned goods are not good emergency rations. Save the weight for the water.
"
creimer_is_a_virgin
Know how I know you're a programmer?
"
Know how I know you're an asshole? and I don't even know how creimer is!
(Score: 2, Troll) by crafoo on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:30PM (3 children)
Let's revisit this comment a year from now, after another 12 months of record-setting inflation, and see how many people still want to mod it 'funny'.
3-4 months ago was a fantastic time to move your money into real assets and defensive stocks - consumer staples, industrial materials, real estate, maybe energy if you can navigate the energy wars going on.
Tech stocks and other growth stocks are going to get absolutely savaged over the next 12 months.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:57PM (1 child)
If you are calling any of this "record setting inflation," then you are clearly born after 1980. Because we didn't have Fox News and social media back then to gratuitously scare white people, the sky wasn't falling and breathless "prepping" comments wouldn't be modded "Insightful" or anything like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:34PM
You had real economy back then.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:00PM
They could be grossly overvalued.
Markets don't go up forever.
Science!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @06:43PM (1 child)
> ... new or not.
By all means, buy used ammo! It might be really cheap at a practice firing range?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:26PM
Nothing wrong with used ammo. You pop the spent primer out, put it into this here "resizer", press in a new primer, measure just this much powder into it, and top them off with these here bullets. If you get tired of measuring the powder with that little cup, you can invest in one of these ass-sembly line machines that does all the measuring for you, more accurately than you can measure yourself.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VanessaE on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:37PM (3 children)
A friend of mine years ago explained his reason for buying refurbs, at a time when I avoided such things:
If a brand new item has some common failure/breakage, that thing has most likely already been broken and fixed in the refurb item, to the point that it probably won't break like that again anytime soon. In theory, the refurb item should have a longer interval between purchase and breakage than a brand new item.
I've kept that tidbit in mind ever since; these days I usually reach for refurb or renewed over new.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @02:48PM (1 child)
Or better or worse depending on your view, the refurbed item was never actually used, it just had something as minor as a dented box or cosmetic scratch.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:28PM
This.
The customer opened the box and realized they didn't have a SATA mb, or they got the wrong size, or the ups box had a dent in the corner. I've gotten a lot of stuff that had clearly never left the original packaging. I would never use refurb for mission critical stuff, but for day to day general use? Absolutely.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:30PM
My experience, for whatever it's worth, is that if you buy a used or refurbished box, it's going to be one of two things:
1. A corporate office machine that got replaced according to the IT departments standard schedule. Which means it has had said IT department taking care of it for the first part of its life.
2. A gamer PC that got replaced because said gamer wants the latest and greatest whizbangs. Upside is that the hardware is likely to be very fast, downside is that there's a much greater chance of drink spillage and other mistreatment.
Another way I look at it: If I buy used, I'm generally spending a fraction of what I would have spent buying new, which means I can have some duds and still come out ahead compared to what I would have spent.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:05PM (8 children)
I've bought numerous ThinkPad laptops used. For years they came from IBM Used Equipment (with friends&family discount, a friend worked at IBM). Now that I'm sticking with Win 7 for awhile, I've bought a few used through Craigslist with little problem. IBM Used seems to have machines that have been used by their salesforce for 6 months or a year, and newer ThinkPads may not run Win 7 easily (missing drivers?)
One of the ones from IBM Used did lose a motherboard after a year or so, but touch wood the others are still going (back to Win98SE...)
There was some concern when IBM sold ThinkPad to Lenovo, but in general the quality seems to have stayed high.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:33PM (6 children)
Seconded. Those that return from leasing are seriously cheap and the high-end models mostly have just sat in some executive's drawer.
The T4x series was bad for the original lead-free solder. They'd all crap out with "flexing". I've still got a T60 in use (last "IBM"), which does fine, though a friend has the same which is occasionally playing up. Then a W500 (first "Lenovo"), which has been flawless so far, except a dark-ish backlight (but hey, 1920x1200 antiglare was the bees knees in the day and still is better than the FHD of today's mass market units). The W500 served great with KiCAD. I got one more W530 (last 15" with centered keyboard), but as of today, it sits idle and awaits duty. I was considering another T580 while they last...
If you look at the schematics, from T40 to W500, everything has been drawn by the same engineer at Lenovo. The changes came with the T410/510 when Lenovo outsourced themselves to Wistron (e.g. the W530 really is a "Wistron Kendo-4 WS").
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 30 2021, @07:36PM (4 children)
I'm definitely looking for links to sources for used Thinkpads, as I'd really like to buy 2-3 reliable ones to last me through my next hardware refresh. Do you have some good pointers?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Thursday December 30 2021, @08:16PM (2 children)
I got mine mostly from ebay Germany, or at least from vendors who have been on there. There is a number of small to medium shops, some come and go, some have been around for a while. I've had good experiences, except once when I got screwed over a promised COA sticker. Interestingly, many are run by owners with Russian-sounding names. I have no idea why the leasing companies dump their returns on them. Maybe it's the compelling arguments when Ivan and Oleg come for a visit?
Anyway, the offers correlate with larger corps upgrading their equipment. Most are what is returned after 3 or 4 years of leasing. Once they had lovely flightcase-style suitcases with a T60 and a compact inkjet in matching slots and some extra storage for under €200. The case alone would have cost that as new. Must have been from traveling sales reps or field engineers. Overall prices are slightly up since then, just gave it a quick check, W530 quad i7 16/320HDD for €400 (budget extra €140 for a 1 TB SSD), T580 around €800 (more with 4k or touch).
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:17PM (1 child)
In that case, do you recommend any Lenovo models as particularly reliable? Reliability (and being able to stick 32GB+ RAM into it) are my biggest considerations, at least for now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:51PM
The W500 hasn't let me down so far. Definitely the best from the old IBM/Lenovo legacy. Despite its nice 16:10 screen, it is underpowered for today's standards and will only take 8 GB of RAM. Yet, the Penryn 2.8 versions with maxed out RAM and, say, a 500 GB SSD are still lovely tools for office work and other everyday tasks. The touchpad is ridiculous and it needs a mouse (I couldn't get used to the cli..er.. TrackPoint). They go for below €200, but you'll have to budget for RAM and SSD (and mouse) on top.
For the newer ones, I can't write from experience. I got the W530 because it was the last with a centered keyboard (i.e. no numpad), but haven't used it much. The ThinkWiki says the quadcore versions go up to 32GB RAM. Its top i7s are probably still within beating distance of more modern stuff, but the newer NVMe SSDs make a difference for storage heavy workloads.
T570/580 are similar and the last to have 2 RAM slots, but I have precisely zero experience with them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:11PM
Through local Craigslist, I found a guy who works IT for a small-ish local company. He never said which company (which was fine), but his level of expertise led me to trust him. For his "bonus" his company gave him ThinkPads that they were taking out of service. He cleaned & re-imaged them and resold on the side.
One or two had been already updated to Win10, but he put them back to Win 7 for me. Another had a couple of bad keys and he replaced the keyboard before I picked it up. One was a nice T540p, with numeric pad. Price a couple of years ago was about $200 each.
Side story: There was one really shady operator on Craigslist, advertised a batch of laptops (different kinds). When I drove over at the agreed time, no one was there. When I got home I emailed again and then he told me that he gave me the address for the house next to his. No further explanation. I'm assuming he wanted to get a look at me before doing business...!
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:29PM
There are a lot of companies that just issue a laptop to all their employees, whether they actually need one or not. Maybe this has changed more recently, but end result was a bunch of ex-corporate laptops that essentially spent all their time sitting on a desk and not subjected to the kind of wear and tear you would expect on a used laptop. I just turned in a six year old W541 to my IT department that spent almost its entire life up to that point in its docking station with the lid closed. A few minor scuffs on the lid from stacking stuff on top of it, but the screen/keyboard and everything else looked brand new. Only the S.M.A.R.T. attributes on the drive betrayed that the computer had something like 15,000 hours of use. Hopefully that machine finds its way into the used market because it should have years worth of use left in it.
(Score: 1) by visiblink on Friday December 31 2021, @04:50PM
ThinkPads are both the boon and the bane of the used market.
I've bought some great used devices. But I've sent a few back too, because they often come with computrace enabled. You really don't want that: https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=114641&hilit=computrace [thinkpads.com]
The other major issue with ThinkPads is the very poor screen quality. I've replaced a few with IPS screens, but finding a decent IPS panel is very difficult. Most new screens seem to be factory seconds with dead and stuck pixels. Sellers often warn that up to five defective pixels is considered to be within the realm of normal (by who? not by any sane person!). Used panels are often defective too and if you've frequented eBay, you probably know how difficult it is to get a straight answer.
In any case, a good used ThinkPad is amazing. Getting one is not always so easy.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:22PM (2 children)
Refurbished parts, demo example of parts or things that are on sale for some reason are fine. Lots of things get transferred from machine to machine to as they get built. Only replace what needs replacing. I am not interesting in getting the latest and greatest anyhow. I don't play the latest games nor do I mine crypto. My work won't be faster and better cause the machine is new and improved. I just can't type that fast. Memory appears the only factor of importance these days. Never skimp on memory.
The only thing I don't buy refurbished, used or on sale are harddrives. Don't trust them. I tried it once to get a really large SCSI drive second hand back in the day. It was nothing but trouble and grief. Never again.
It's somewhat interesting that it appears people think they need the latest and greatest to do the most mundane tasks or watch their facebook/youtube/tiktok/whatever. That said I guess there just isn't a market for trying to sell modest hardware to the common man. It all has to be new and improved.
So all my computers are in some state of refurbishment, reconditioned or used pretty much. It's the way I like it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:26PM
Do you still harbor the same distrust of hard drives now that SSDs are very prevalent?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:05PM
Refurbished HDs are a good cheap option for NAS setups with redundant arrays, but will generally be too noisy for putting in your desktop. Maybe I've just been lucky, but the only errors I have had with refurbished drives are from dropping them myself.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:23PM
Two out of my three main cameras are bought used and about half my lenses too.
I have only had one slight problem with a vintage camera (not one of my main ones, mind you) that did not like the travel from Japan to Europe. That is, unfortunately, the risk of having things sent, especially from places that far away.
Despite not lacking for money, I always consider buying used before new, apart from some computer stuff, where the technology races ahead so fast that buying preowned/second hand/refurbished is not worth it. I tend to buy not quite top-level computers and then keep them as long as they are fit for purpose, which overall seems to be better bang for the buck than buying used. Buying computers I have to calculate the time in setting them up and transferring my data to them, which can be a difficult task sometimes as I'm running Linux, which is often not well supported on modern laptops.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fliptop on Thursday December 30 2021, @03:28PM (1 child)
For tablets, I prefer new. Computers, well I have a huge boneyard that I pick over when I need something. I got my Motorola phone for free when I switched from Straight Talk to MetroPCS. It's a decent phone, and the battery lasts 2 weeks before needing to be recharged. All my old phones were sold on Ebay.
When it comes to tools for working on a car, I have bought used OBDII diagnostic readers and they work fine. For older vehicles (where I'd need a dwell meter for setting points) I prefer older equipment. I have a dwell meter I bought in the 70's that doesn't require batteries, has an analog meter instead of digital, it's rugged and still works great after all these years. I do have a new digital dwell meter but the only time I use it is to calibrate the analog one. I don't like needing batteries.
I have a Simpson VOM that does require batteries but it has an analog meter and I prefer using that over my (purchased new) Fluke. Digital readouts are overrated IMHO.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @04:30PM
Ah, being of a certain age, I love Simpson meters! I had to get used to calling DMMs Fluke meters, as a lot of my co-workers do. Years ago they had no idea what I meant when I asked if I could borrow one of their Simpson meters to make some measurements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @05:49PM
I needed laptop - bought used Dell 4800. Got a nicely refurbished version, with really fast CPU and 16GB of RAM - my previous notebook had 2GB, and I configured it the same way so it's more for the future. Contrary to newest machines, the Linux support is great. This machine turned to be ME disabled edition - No idea where it was used.
However, my employer needed a high performance computing platform and bought a new dual Ryzen-based machine. This thing just flies through FEA computations, while previous one, which was a heavily upgraded refurb of server with 4 Xeons, was a bit laggy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @06:33PM
Mainly phones and hard drives. I've tried an occasional open box return but those generally don't work out, so I usually don't now. I've never owned a new smartphone (although I did buy one that was new old stock, so minimal battery degradation), and refurb hard drives are a great deal. Companies take better care of them than users do, and retire them at "EOL" with more than half of their functional lifespan left. Of course you can't get them in the same capacity as you can with new drives. 8TB refurbs are just starting to turn up, and that's a pretty small capacity for a new drive. You just have to avoid the bad models.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday December 30 2021, @08:05PM (1 child)
In November 2019 I got someone's Thinkpad E495 for about $500 off EBay, and it's clear he had no idea what he was selling. The ad even said "wanted a Mac for school, got this, WTF do I do with it?" more or less. Ryzen 7 3700U, upgraded to 32GiB DDR4-3200 and a Samsung 960 Pro SSD I got from a salvage machine, and it runs amazingly. It's still kind of slow for Gentoo, but Artix and Void run amazingly well and it handles everything I throw at it.
Thinkpads are about the only machines I'd try this with though, maaaaaybe Latitudes or Precisions or Elitebooks?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @04:28PM
Void on raw hardware? Cool. I only took it for a spin a few times, but it seemed pretty snappy and xbps was lightning fast.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SDRefugee on Thursday December 30 2021, @09:47PM
Since I retired in 2010, all of the computers I've bought for my families use have been offlease Dell corporate systems. Since, like many others, I hate Windows and run Linux on all my systems, the Dell Optiplex/Latitude/Precision line of systems perfectly fill the bill Linux-wise. Of course, they all come with that bloated spyware pig, so I create a "castrated" install of Windows, as a KVM vm and use the product key embedded in the system to make the system "official". Yes, I know MS doesn't *approve* of this, and I don't give a damn. I have the VM to allow me to run a bunch of Windows programs that don't play with Wine.
Prior to retiring, I bought from Dell's "outlet", where back in 2005, the company I was working for at the time was buying Dell GX620 Pentium2 systems in bulk, paying ~$1200 each. I found an exact duplicate of the models we were paying ~$1200 for on the outlet as a "scratch&dent" for around $500.. Same cpu/ram/disks but QUITE a bit cheaper.. Oh and mind you, when I recieved the "scratch&dent", I couldn't find ANY scratches and dents in the system..
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:05PM (1 child)
Old Dells were great. But I wouldn't give you much for any made in the last dozen years. Dell fell on hard times. Goes without saying NEVER EVER buy from their "value" line.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:43PM
Hasn't Dell been like this a long time? They build their reputation upon their (admittedly pretty solid) corporate machines, then use that to pass off a bunch of junk to the consumer/home market to people who are expecting better for their money because it's a Dell.
Also, I completely agree about their "value" line, assuming you're talking about the stuff they are pitching as a budget business-class machine, as those are just rebadged versions of their consumer line of junk. I assume they must be targeting small businesses and work-from-home types with those, as the large corporate customers all seem to know better than to have anything to do with that stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30 2021, @10:47PM
And the savings.
I buy all refurbished Macs because you can get 6mo machines at 20% discount.
My previous mac was a refurbished 2012 iMac 27", but it died this year. Sucks because it still was snappy and very usable after I put in a SSD. Luckily someone online was selling the same model for $120 so I grabbed that one. Considering that others were asking $400 for a 8-years old machine, one hundred $ was a deal. I opened them up, swapped cards, then it died after 3 months. Alternately swapped GPU, main board, & PS but no combination brought it back to life. It was a little disappointing, mostly from how much of a PITA in time and effort it is to disassemble and reassemble Macs, but not unexpected since it is 9yo.
One month ago I purchased a slightly used iPhone SE Gen2 for $140 ($CDN) from my cell phone provider. It was in perfect condition and still came with a 6 month Apple warranty. The price was $300 less than retail, then they gave me another $100 off. I would have kept using my iPhone 7 until it died if it wasn't for this sweet deal.
Someone gave me an old Apple TV. I can watch Netflix on it and Airplay videos to it via my phone. Free is always good.
Oh! Rereading this make me think the reader will think I am an Apple fanatic/fanboi but really, I am not. I just happened to mention in one comment the 3 Apple devices I currently use. LOL
(Score: 0) by creimer_is_a_virgin on Thursday December 30 2021, @11:54PM (1 child)
a ten year old laptop to boot. I upgraded the CPU and RAM with used parts from eBay. The DVD drive was replaced with a Blu-Ray laptop drive, that wasn't even mentioned in the manual but it just works. The HDD was replaced with a SSD (a painful process though).
Since it came in the original box I'll be able to get about 200$ for it on eBay if I decide to upgrade.
My electronics lab is mostly used equipment that is barely electronic itself. No USB devices, nothing digital. Tube-based or discrete transistors, nothing more than SSI chips.
The big problem over the last ten years is the disappearance of used electronics or computer brick and mortar stores. There used to be these nice junk places for electronics too, all gone now.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @02:15AM
Know how I can tell you're an idiot?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Friday December 31 2021, @04:02AM (1 child)
I use a local computer store. They have a policy of never selling the latest thing. The owner waits until components have been on the market for a year or so, so that he knows from industry news what works and what doesn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 31 2021, @07:07PM
I tried to shop at a store like that once. They didn't have anything I wanted. Soon they were gone. I assume I was not the only one who had that experience with them.
There are a couple of stores around here that specialize in refurbs and used computers, plus a Microcenter. One of them does phone repair too. Most of the rest are out of business. Online shopping is pretty tough on those little shops, because there's not a big space between "big corporations and grandmas that buy from Apple or Dell" and "hobbyist that wants to build their own and get the best price." Refurbs are still a viable niche for a local shop, because you can actually see what you are getting and you don't have to worry about some idiot on eBay breaking it first.