Refurbished computers can be a real bargain

All about "refurbs" — short for refurbished.

The price drops way down on computers or related equipment that has been designated as refurbished. Often they're new. Here's how it works:

Some companies will buy a hundred computers, for example, but then decide they only need 60. They return the others, which may or may not go back in the supplier's warehouse as new equipment. But more often than not the items get labeled and sold as refurbished. Why is that? Because unless you open every package and test the contents, you have no way of knowing whether it was used and put back in the original packaging.

In fact, this happened to us quite recently. We bought a Hewlett-Packard Windows 7 computer, sold as new by one of those giant office supply stores. When we opened the box in our office and set up the computer, we found that someone else had registered it and people had set up accounts for "Stan" and "Nancy." The computer started up and then froze. The store took it right back, of course, but it illustrates the point of "How do you know if it's been used or not?" Well, it's difficult — and time consuming — for a company to check every piece of returned equipment. So why not just mark it refurbished and cut the price? We have bought refurbished equipment several times over the years and never found anything wrong with it. Read more at http://www.telegram.com/article/20130324/NEWS/303249995/1002/business calculatoare sh