When I was in school, I worked for a number of refurbishing companies.

I would not touch anything that is refurbished. Usually these are returned
items that had faults, and were supposed to be repaired. Sometimes the unit
may have had a bad intermittent fault, that non of the regular service techs
were able to resolve. The unit would then end up being used by a refurbished
for parts. In effect, the bad part(s) may end up in another machine, because
no fault was seen at the time. This happens often.

The quality of repair is not always very good, because the refurbishing
contractors usually do not like to pay the rates for the proper tech people.
They usually hire students that are studying electronics, or the
inexperienced, or any related science field to do the work as part time
employees. They also skimp on the necessary test and diagnostics equipment
required to do proper servicing.

If you buy a refurbished unit, you may be very lucky and it will work out
for you. This is a chance that you are going to take when buying something
like this. My mother likes to buy cheap, and she has not been lucky every
time she bought something that was refurbished.

--

Jerry G.
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"Amiman" wrote in message
...
Dumb question time please. I've often read about refurbished
products being offered at a discount, sometimes not long after
the type was first introduced into the market. I know the general
meaning of the word in English, but exactly what does it indicate
as a trade item ?

I guess a used computer would be classed as 'refurbished' if it
was cleaned up, had some defective or obsolete components
replaced and then put up for sale again. But a refurbished
motherboard ? Esp a model that was introduced only a couple
of months back ?

Are such items those that were damaged in shipping or had
some manufacturing defects and were repaired ? Are they
reliable ?