Dell Outlet laptops / refurbished laptops in general?

adamdynamic

Hey,

I'm need a new laptop after a memory fault on my current one has gone from 'a pain, but one I can live with' to 'renders the laptop almost unusable'.

I was looking at the Dell XPS series, they seem good though a little expensive for the spec, I noticed the Dell website had some reconditioned ones at a lower price.

Has anyone had any experience buying refurbished laptops direct from manufacturers? Are there deals to be had, or are you basically getting what you pay for? (i.e. cheaper, but broke once so more likely to break again?)

The last time I bought a laptop was 4 years ago so any advice on this would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Adam

closed

what memory fault? if it's software, a factory restore cures most ills.

you can get the price of dells down using voucher codes and topcashback http://www.dmxdimension.com/

inspirons are cheaper. http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/inspiron-15r-intel-core-i5-3210m-win7-hp-15-6in-1tb-1gb-amd-radeon-hd-7670m-386-1378193?

System

Dell outlet tends to be returns/cancelled orders rather than repaired machines.

Johnmcl7

The problem is 'refurbished' can mean quite different things, I see some companies selling ancient laptops after a quick wipe down and OS reinstall as 'refurbished' whereas Dell's definition is brand new machines that have been built for a customer but rejected.

I've bought quite a lot of machines from the Dell outlet and they've all been as brand new with the various packaging bits still stuck to the palm rest and display etc. Even the machine that was supposed to be scratch and dent with a 'major scratch down the side' looked absolutely fine to me. I find the outlet a great place to buy a machine if you're wanting something with pricey options as you can usually get big reductions on top end processors, graphics cards, displays etc. and the machines usually ship reasonably quickly as they're not being built to order.

I did have a fault with one machine which I eventually got replaced but the same could have happened with a new one. Dell's outlet is the only manufacturer refurbished store I have used, at least enough to form a reasonable a opinion on it.

John

macman

They're usually better than new if returned as faulty, as they'll have been fully stripped, repaired and retested individually instead of straight off the production line. Laptops are just a series of components; the failure of one part does not increase the chance of another part failing.
The warranty is the same, so really no issues about reliability.
Perhaps the only downside is that you can't pick your own spec as with a new build.

ajbell

I have bought 3 of them over the years and they have all been as
new.
I am actually looking for one now but for some reason there are only a few on their outlet site and they have been the same ones
for weeks. I want one with an SSD and Harddrive but they seem
to have been withdrawn.
They used to sell them on ebay Dell-outlet shop but that has gone now. There are some individuals selling Dell outlet PC's so i wonder if they are buying them up.

Johnmcl7

ajbell wrote: »

I have bought 3 of them over the years and they have all been as
new.
I am actually looking for one now but for some reason there are only a few on their outlet site and they have been the same ones
for weeks. I want one with an SSD and Harddrive but they seem
to have been withdrawn.
They used to sell them on ebay Dell-outlet shop but that has gone now. There are some individuals selling Dell outlet PC's so i wonder if they are buying them up.

As you're probably aware, patience pays off and it really is random what machines are on there. One of the last laptops I bought off the Outlet took a few weeks, I was refreshing all the time and got nowhere so gave up. A week later I powered up a desktop machine and then opened its browser which was still on the Outlet and sitting right there was the exact machine I was wanting (processor, screen, Blu-ray etc.) I was lucky with the last desktop as I happened to just check if they had these machines on the outlet yet and they had 9 so I could choose a suitable one, I didn't see any as good as mine nor as much choice when I checked after.

I don't know what the deal was with the ebay outlet store, they seemed to sell cosmetically damaged machines which they didn't offer on the UK outlet store (although they did in the States). I assume they stopped selling on ebay as they had a major upgrade on the UK Outlet part of which was to add cosmetically damaged machines.

People could well be buying Outlet machines and reselling the straight away on ebay, this was a major problem on the old Outlet as people had scripts running that would automatically grab a machine as soon as it was added. The new outlet limits this by having a capcha which does seem to work as in the later day of the old outlet I stopped using it as there never seemed to be anything on it (due to them being picked up the resellers it seems) but I've bagged a few bargains on the new outlet.

It's worth checking how easy it is to change the drives on a machine as it may be worth grabbing one that is a good price then buying the drives separately, usually this is one of the easiest parts to replace and can be fairly cost effective as well. The 256GB SSD desktops I was after were a silly price so I got one with a standard hard drive then took it out to replace with a better SSD and HDD combo.

John

adamdynamic

closed wrote: »

what memory fault? if it's software, a factory restore cures most ills.

you can get the price of dells down using voucher codes and topcashback http://www.dmxdimension.com/

inspirons are cheaper. http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/inspiron-15r-intel-core-i5-3210m-win7-hp-15-6in-1tb-1gb-amd-radeon-hd-7670m-386-1378193?

The best way to describe it is that the display looks 'shattered' when I use it, and gets worse when I use memory/processor intensive applications like Photoshop. I tried reinstalling Windows which didn't do anything. Oddly, when I run Ubuntu from a USB drive the screen is absolutely fine, might try installing it onto a partition and see if I still have the same issue...

As for the outlet, thanks for all the helpful responses! I'm not too bothered about getting the 'exact' spec (though I'd prefer 8GB of RAM to 4GB) so I'll keep an eye on what comes through and be ready to pounce!

Thanks again,

Adam

AlwaysSomething

Have used Dell Outlet several times for business and home. Always very happy with the machine, and no reliability problems. My friend ordered one from there, and felt that the hinge wasn't as smooth as it should be.
I have also had optional extras thrown in - extra chargers and batteries that weren't even listed in the store.