Dell refurbished PCs

[Donkey]

Has anyone heard either good or bad news about these refurbished PCs that you can get from dell.
A friend of mine wants a PC and wants to spend about 800 pounds (uk) on it and i'm finding it hard to find anything suitable. Wants an athlon or PIII 500 at least. The prices of these dell systems seemed quite reasonable. Any ideas?

[Seeker9x]

Dell has two basic lines of computers. The cheaper one is nice and standard and things work fine. The more expensive line is non-standard in many ways, they even modified the DOS program. Be careful. A local shop can probably build you a fine PC even cheaper. Then you know what you've got.
Jeff

[tonym]

I agree with Seeker. The Dell hardware is "funny"...odd brackets and the cases generally go together like a contortionists nightmare. Some people lover them, others hate them. I never had a problem with any Dell I've ever used, except at upgrade time!

Always beware of "refurbished" hardware. Normally that term means "repaired with components from other returned systems (that had bad parts) deemed good and put in your system". There's always a warranty, but my neighbor found out the hard way that Fedex spends more time with his refurb. machine (not Dell, however) than he does!

If you must do it cheaply, roll your own...

Tony

[This message has been edited by tonym (edited 02-08-2000).]

[This message has been edited by tonym (edited 02-08-2000).]