Need help picking a refurbished desktop

and will run Linux for savings on operating system, you can move up a bit to this. That's a good motherboard too. The CPU is hotter than you need, but you can use the option to lock some cores if you want and add to the power saving. Unlock them when needed.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8793779&CatId=332

I'd say no. It's one thing to get a refurb from the manufacturer, it's another entirely to get one from places like Best Buy. I didn't work for Best Buy, but I worked at a place similar for a while and you don't even want to know the kinds of things they pull when fixing units like that. The manufacturer is the safer bet by far and away.

I'd also avoid Tiger Direct myself. It's a rather shady company that's probably best steered clear of. Plenty of their deals are more than a bit too good to be true. The odd ridiculously good deal here and there you can explain rather easily, like Woot where they basically have one or two items for sale at a time, but with TigerDirect they just happen far too often for far too small a company to be completely on the up and up if you ask me. At the prices they sell a lot of things they can't possibly be making much money which then makes you wonder how they'd finance buying enough inventory to get that kind of price break from the manufacturers. So either I'm missing something blindingly obvious or we're dealing with inventory salvaged from scrap piles and that fell of the back of a truck.

Going straight to Dell and HP was a bust. Everything is way out of my price range. I just can't go higher than $300. Any other suggestions? Other manufacturers that might be a little more affordable?

Deals come and go all the time. So far good luck, but HP is not a name I'll go near anymore.

never had a problem with them myself.

And do your experiences represent the sum total of everyone else's? Does not having a problem getting the items you shipped have anything at all to do with the too good to be true deals they have on a regular basis? No to both? Alright then! Thanks for playing, here's an imaginary toaster as a parting gift.

you'd argue with a door post I think. It was a valid statement.

Nope. I get the whole starving college student thing, and given the laws surrounding student loan debt which make it basically impossible to get rid of, I'd say you're being smart about it, but you've basically priced yourself out of almost any computer worth the effort to sell. I would generally tell people to avoid any sub-$500 computer like the plague because they're going to be cheaply made and be an exercise in frustration to use.

and that includes any I mentioned. It had all you need and nothing needed to add to it, plus W7 which makes it more a winner.

Are you referring to the one from best buy that I posted the link to?

customer service may not be what it once was, but doesn't mean all it's products are the same.

What about this one?

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/refurbished-desktop-intel-core2-duo-2gb-memory-80gb-hard-drive/2897026.p?id=1219082025616&skuId=2897026&st=categoryid$pcmcat212600050009&cp=1&lp=10

I am not computer savvy enough to know if it is a horrible idea. but the specs say 3GHz, 2GB RAM expandable to 16GB, SATA hardrive.

Aren't those all things that I want? Would this computer be able to stream video well, and would it be able to be upgraded a little if I wanted to down the line?

Thank you so much for your help. I am sorry to keep bothering you.

I gifted one like that away on freecycle in 2010 (moving across country) and it was in need of a stick of RAM so away it went. 80GB HDD? very dated, bad deal.
Bob

i see your point. My current hard drive is much more than 80GB. wasnt thinking about that lol.

Awesome! Thanks

Dell's refurbs were all WAY out of my price range, so were HP's. That's why I went looking at best buy. I wish it was a possibility to spend more, but I honestly don't have it to spend. Spending $300 is my max and that will mean I'm going to be eating ramen noodles for a few weeks. I have a host of other issues, broken AC in my car and in my house lol and I live in southern Alabama so AC is a major priority also. I just can't win from losing. I just have to find the best I can within my budget. It's vital I have a PC ASAP. I am just hoping best buy can be trusted.

that James pointed out is looking pretty inviting all the sudden. Throw a Linux distro on it for now .
I've dealt with Tiger Direct several times and have had no problems or complaints YMMV.

Digger

But the hard drive he could update or add a second one later on.

read on "capacitor plague" and also google "Dell capacitors optiplex". Whatever you do, DON'T get an optiplex of any sort.

You do realize that what you're talking about was an INDUSTRY WIDE issue. EVERYONE from Apple, Dell, Sony, Toshiba, HP and whomever else I'm thinking of had issues with capacitors around the early 2000s. It actually hit just about any kind of electronics. Some company stole an incomplete formula for the gel used inside the capacitors, flooded the market with capacitors priced to undercut the competition significantly, the missing bits of the formula then caused massive problems for pretty much everyone.

in the Optiplex line.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373069,00.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_OptiPlex

http://news.cnet.com/PCs-plagued-by-bad-capacitors/2100-1041_3-5942647.html%22

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"According to company memorandums and other documents recently unsealed in a civil case against Dell in Federal District Court in North Carolina, Dell appears to have suffered from the bad capacitors, made by a company called Nichicon, far more than its rivals. Internal documents show that Dell shipped at least 11.8 million computers from May 2003 to July 2005 that were at risk of failing because of the faulty components. These were Dell's OptiPlex desktop computers — the company's mainstream products sold to business and government customers.

A study by Dell found that OptiPlex computers affected by the bad capacitors were expected to cause problems up to 97 percent of the time over a three-year period, according to the lawsuit. "