Community Newsletter: Q&A: Your thoughts on refurbished or "recertified" computers

research is the key

In reply to: Your thoughts on refurbished or "recertified" computers by Lee Koo (ADMIN) 

I know numerous people that have purchased used products and they have all had good luck with what they have purchased. The key is to research the product you going to purchase and then ask questions. Research the product you are about to purchase for any kind of pattern of failures. For instance, here not to long ago all vendors had problems with failing capacitors on the motherboards. You would need to ask if the motherboard had been replaced with a board that didn’t have problems with the capacitors. The big thing is Google (or other search engine) becomes your friend when reaching possible patterns of failures. The key is to identify these possible failures before hand and make sure they were taken care before you get the device. Most refurbished and recertified computers come with some sort of warranty, while it may be small it is usually there. If you do purchase a refurbished/recertified computer, when it arrives run the diagnostics on the device. I mean really run the diagnostics. Most vendor computers HP, Dell and others have specific diagnostic programs that are available from their websites. These diagnostic programs can be generally set to run for long durations. This way you can catch those intermittent failures that pester us. After you have run the diagnostics and if anything no matter how great or small, is detected then call the vendor immediately to get it taken care of.
When it comes to printers this is a different ballgame, it comes down to usage and how well it was taken care of. For instance laser printers require maintenance kits every XXX amount of pages. You will need to know the page count on the device and at what count the last maintenance kit was installed. The reason why I mention maintenance kits is they are very expensive it is often cheaper to just go out and buy a new printer than to purchase a maintenance kit for the printer. If a printer has a high page count then you need to start worrying about possible failures of other parts, such as gears, rollers, and sensors. Printers are just full of parts that fail. Which is to be expected since it is still primarily a mechanical device. Having said that I purchase used printers all the time, but I do my own maintenance on them, which saves me a bundle. The thing about purchasing inkjet printers that are used is that you better plan on getting really messy and I do mean really messy. My wife hates it when I purchase 2nd hand inkjet printers. But you get one "MAJOR" savings when it comes to buying 2nd hand inkjet printers. The older HP inkjet printers used cartridges that are much larger volume than the ink cartridges for today’s printers for about the same cost. This means more pages printed per cartridge. This translates to a savings at the office supply store. For instance the HP Deskjet 895 had huge cartridges that would print a few hundred more pages than my Deskjet 600 series printer for the same cost roughly. I wanted go give you the positives before I tell you the negatives. If you buy used inkjet printers plan on getting messy, this is because of the cleaning you will most likely need to do. You will most likely need to clean the maintenance section and also the shaft that the print cartridge house runs back and forth on. Having said that, I have nothing but pre-owned inkjet printers in my home and have for years. After I cleaned them they preform flawlessly.
The big thing when purchasing any used equipment is to ask questions. You can even ask for possible pictures of the device(s) you are planning on purchasing. The more information you have the better you will be at making the decision as to if the difference between the cost of used or new is worth spending.