Considering a "Grade A" Refurb Laptop from Dell/Newegg

BraveSirRobbin

BraveSirRobbin

Moderator
Has anyone here purchased a refurbished laptop from Dell (sold by Newegg)?  This one is rated Grade A and I'm considering it for my wife's sisters who are not power users (browse Internet, occasional Word or maybe Excel document, no streaming, pull up a picture from an email).  A computer (desktop) that I purchased for them five years ago died and I would like to replace it with this laptop (just get a Microsoft Office license for it).
 
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16834843495?Item=N82E16834843495
 
This laptop has a very attractive price of $145 as is advertised as:
 

DELL Grade A Laptop Latitude 3340 Intel Core i3 4th Gen 4005U (1.7 GHz) 8 GB Memory 128 GB SSD 13.3" Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
 
It's on sale for the next 24 hours.  I'm concerned about embedded Malware, quality of the laptop, etc...  I know I can do a fresh install, but I just don't have the time (they are in a remote city that I happen to be traveling to for work).
 
Thanks for any advice!
 
Good prive if you don;t want to use it for browsing. Gen 4?
 
I just dumped a 2.2 GHz single core laptop because the advertising animations slowed it down to the point of not finishing loading the page beofre it updated again. I could never view some weather services.
 
Intel did something amazing to their Core 8th geneartion CPUs. They changed caching and a few other things unknown. Even the slowest CPU flies circles around anything I have seen before. I was a dedicated  AMD fan because they were always faster, but not anymore.
 
My new Dell gen 8 i7 laptop  lasts 22-25 hours on a battery charge...no touchscreen. Picked it up at Bestbuy.ca refurbished. There have been a few problems but o/s updates have fixed it all now.
 
For me, I wouldn't waste the money unless you have a dedicated job for it in the closet. Then a RPi may y do it better.
 
Thanks Larry.  That's the kind of advice I was looking for...will look elsewhere using your recommendations.  Thanks again,  BSR
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
Thanks Larry.  That's the kind of advice I was looking for...will look elsewhere using your recommendations.  Thanks again,  BSR
Click to expand...
Ther is a quirk in the specs.
The old CPUs they would rate at 3.0 GHz and when they were not required they would crank them down to 0.5GHz or some power savinglevel.
 
MY Dell Core i7 is rated at something like 1.8 GHz but unadvertised when needed it peaks out at 4.3? GHz or some ridiculous speed. Faster than blazing crap!
 
IIRC they boosted all the cache sizes of every CPU  and stepped them up, right down to the i3. You'll have to look at the specs. I don't know why it wasn't all over the media but I am really impressed.
 
I found one good test for an in store quickie. www.theweathernetwork.com  If necessary type in a city to actually  see the weather. This website is so full of animated advertising crap it would cripple my old 2.2 GHz laptop. Most of the "new" laptops on display in the stores, would take 30-45 seconds to load and display the page whereas all the Gen 8  Intel CPUs would flash it up in about 1-3 seconds. The Google units are really fast but not going there.
 
Part that pissed me off, is all the salespeople would ask what you want to do on the laptop. Then they would say,,,"oh yeah this little cheap one would be good enough for just browsing."
 
Today, I don't know of anything more CPU intensive than just browsing webpages, with all the animations and video streaming  on every square inch of screen. Then you will come back in another year and need a better laptop...but those ones  are only for the ridiculous gamers, that need the speed (sarc).
 
Here using Lenova T540P's with Haswell i5's and 16 Gb of RAM and one HP Pro Skylake i5 with 8 Gb of RAM.
 
These were corporate off lease computers and they were not wiped at all and came with Windows 10 and Office.  I got access to a few of them and reset them and others I wiped and installed new Windows 10. 
 
Suggested to one Homeseer user to get a Lenova T540P off lease and he purchased it on Ebay for $180 with 8Gb of RAM.
 
Most of the ones I am seeing come with a Windows 10 Pro licensed...not seeing many coming with Office on them.
 
Last couple of years got an email to my old college alma mater.  That said I used my old (very old) user ID and with that I have been able to get MS educational licensed software for free including MS Office.
 
Just a suggestion relating to using your alma mater connections.
 
Guessing that Dell cleansed the computers that they are selling.  $150 for a Haswell chipset i3 (low powered) with 8Gb of Ram / Windows office is a good deal though.
 
You can go with a newer chipset but the prices will go up.

Buddy here wanted a new laptop and purchased an AMD wide screen HP with touchscreen laptop package from HP around $500. Thinking HP store offers MS Office at a discounted price. I told him to first go to Best Buy to have a look at the laptops then pick one and order it from HP.
 
AMD is typically more discounted than Intel CPU laptops.
 
I just bought a Lenovo with I7 Intel from costco for my wife. I like costco because they pretty much have a "no questions asked" return policy and good prices on last year's models.
 
Mike.
 
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