It made enough sense to me that I bought my first refurb - a dual-processor Dell workstation - in 1998, saving about 40 percent off the cost of a new model. There is even less risk of problems with a rightly refurbished PC than a new one. Whatever went wrong has gone wrong and been fixed. The refurbished PC has passed the burn through period.
His job was to make sure the refurbished PCs left in perfect working order. But he explained that Sony didn't want to ever see the PCs again. I expressed my disbelief in refurbished as being any good. One of the clerks explained that the shop was one of just a couple clearinghouses refurbishing Sony PCs. I observed a number of PCs and asked about them. I got my first tip off about the benefits of refurbished in the late 1990s when visiting a Sony repair store then located in Beltsville, Md. But it's my experience that at least with personal computers, refurbished often means better than new, because retailers or manufacturers are selling something at a loss they never want to see again. Unfortunately, the word 'refurbished' is loaded with bad connotations - used, damaged, unreliable - that can make items so labeled unattractive to many buyers.
Whenever possible, I buy refurbished PCs rather than new ones- and it's what I recommend to all my friends.
