I bought a "certified" refurbished laptop on Amazon late last year, a Dell Latitude with 14in screen, W7, 8GB of RAM, and a 128 GB SSD. It's the same model I had at my last job, and my brother also has the same model (E6430) for his job. Works like a champ. Came with a 1 YR guarantee. Sold by Skytech USA. Did not come with O/S CD/DVD, but I backed it up and loaded Linux on it too, so now it's dual bootable. No issues.
Price: $282
I had never bought a used computer before, but I'll definitely get another laptop like this one when it dies. I've got a custom built desktop I built with all new components, and I'll probably do that again. But I think laptops are a bit trickier, and worth going with a COTS system. But there's no need to pay full retail on them. To buy "new" was twice as much for cheap vendors, and as far as I could tell was about $1000 to $1100 for a new Dell.
I figure this model is about 5 years old now, and I hope to get another two to three years out of it. It's really "paid" for itself already, but spending $100 to $200 per year for a laptop is about right. If I drop it, or somebody swipes it, I've got a backup, and will go back online to get another decent quality used one. I won't have to cry and moan over losing an expensive device.
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