Monthly Bargains/Recommendations (October 2013)

I've come to be a strong believer in refurbished electronics. I'm getting frugal in my senior years.

HP AIO PC, laptop, nuvi, 2 color printers and a laser printer, all refurbished and all in service for more than a year. You usually get a 90 day warranty, sometimes longer.

My biggest recommendation, refurbished laser printers. I bought a refurbished Samsung printer for $80 1 1/2 yrs ago. These refurbished printers come with enough toner for 10k to 15k pages. How many b/w ink cartridges would be needed for the same number of pages and at what cost?

Is this from ebay, local purchase, or do you have a link to share with the rest of the class?

You can find refurb printers many places. Most of the electronic storefronts have them including the websites from the "big box" stores. I recommend Micro Center as they consistently have good deals but New Egg, Frys, Dell, even HP offers them.

I agree with buying refurb stuff - HOWEVER, when buying a complex item u must be able to FULLY check it out. I have a 23" LG monitor and an HP computer. They both had a problem that was not found by mfg or recertification.
One took me 2 months to get resolved. HP eventually had to replace the MB but I had to convince them there was a problem. The LG auto brightness didn't work and the unit was replaced.

So IF u buy refurb abd save lots of $$$$ make sure u can totally test it out for unfound issues.

Also it is better to get refurb recertified by the mfg and not a 3rd party. But that doesn't chg the testing requirement.

ANOTHER HOWEVER. I just bought an Asus motherboard - brand new - and it and Asus drove me crazy for 2 months. It had a very strange issue which turned out to be a bad MB. So buying new requires full testing of all functions also. -- That is where refurbs come from.

just bought an ASUS 300 Transformer Tablet Refurbished. Hope to get it in the mail tomorrow or Wed.

I've used my TF-300 with the keyboard for well over a year now. I bought mine new, but it is a great unit and ASUS does keep the OS updated to the latest release.

Walmart with free in-store pickup

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Garmin-Refurbished-nuvi-50LM-5-GPS...

Just a heads up to potential buyers. This is the USA map model, not the North America model. Check the listing to see if areas covered include the areas a buyer will potentially travel to:

lower 48 states, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Cayman Islands, Bahamas, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthelemy and Jamaica

I recently purchased a refurbished 3580LMT off Walmart's website for only $143. However, when I plugged it into my laptop and ran Garmin Express, it showed that the unit's serial number was different from the serial number on the back of the unit.

I believe that the SN in Garmin Express was the unit's SN before it was refurbished. Unfortunately, that meant that I could not get any more map updates since that SN was no longer valid, which defeats the purpose of the LM part of LMT.

I returned the unit and ordered another one to see if it will have the same problem. Note that GPS units only have a 15 day return window at Walmart, and I almost missed it since I did not try to update the map right away.

Thanks for alerting us to a problem!

The second refurbished 3580LMT came in today and it does not have the same problem as the previous one. Serial numbers match and I am now downloading 2014.20.