Features

Further down the range, reductions may not be quite so startling, but you can still expect to save around 20% on a brand new unit sold as end-of-line, and more on refurbs.

Cheaper items, such as cameras, printers and monitors, will often have higher percentage discounts, because suppliers know that if they only knock off a tenner then the deal won't seem worthwhile compared to buying new, even if the total price might only be £50. In short, you really can save serious money this way, or get a lot more hardware for your budget.

As with new machines, be sure to check the total price: some vendors quote ex-VAT prices up front (this is quite legitimate if many of their customers are businesses), and delivery charges will vary.

Cosmetic differences

While what you're buying may be as good as new, the same isn't always true of its presentation. What you can expect depends on the source of the product, and there are no hard and fast rules.

With a factory refurb, you'll normally get a good standard of packaging, says Morgan's Tom Willett. 'A lot of manufacturers won't send out a product with dog-eared bits and pieces; they'll put in a new mains lead, replace the manuals and so on.' Beyond very minor scuffs and scratches, the product itself will also be cosmetically 'as new'.

As makers increasingly appreciate the possibilities of the refurb market, they're even beginning to take a special pride in their remanufactured offerings. 'Some of them, such as Fuji, have created what's almost a sub-brand for remanufactured products.

ADVERTISEMENT

The packaging is different but it's equally nice, and you get a note in the box thanking you for choosing a refurb. People are making a lot more effort.' Tom reckons nine out of ten units sold by Morgan's are in the manufacturer's packaging, and 'everything you get shouldn't be much different from brand new - you'd be happy to give it as a present'.

At the other end of the scale, refurbished corporate machines, such as those sold by cheap-it.com, will have been with users for a number of months. This means there may well be physical signs of minor wear and tear, though this shouldn't go as far as actual damage, such as cracked casings or parts snapped off, unless you're specifically warned about it.

Of course, the original packaging will have long since disappeared, and since the attraction of these machines is a substantial discount, it wouldn't make much sense to spend a lot of money repacking them. Cheap-it.com carefully bubble-wraps and boxes each item with any essential accessories - 'nothing fancy', says Noel Fox, but enough to ensure the customer receives the goods intact.

As a more general rule, a nearly-new refurb machine that's been through a 'reverse logistics' cycle shouldn't show any significant wear, because it's never really been used. However, it may have been delivered to a customer, opened, perhaps set up and switched on, then repacked, returned to the supplier (and from there to the manufacturer if it wasn't sold direct), forwarded to the refurb vendor, and at one or both of these last two stages opened up again, set up, repaired, tested, and finally repacked.

By the time it's gone through all this and then been shipped to you, it would be amazing if it hadn't picked up a few signs of wear and tear. Boxes may be damaged (items are occasionally returned for this reason alone) and minor bits of packaging could be missing. More significantly, 'non-essential' items such as paper manuals may have gone astray, and any extra software bundled with a PC - not essential system software, but programs that may have been included with the original deal, such as own-brand utilities or disc burning tools - may be missing.