IF THE PHRASE "REFURBISHED PC" MAKES YOU THINK of sketchy parts of Nehru place in New Delhi, and of hardware with a shady past dealt by totally unprofes¬sional guy (Who is just good with screw-drivers), you can dispense with that notion. Refurbished systems today can be almost as new as new, and they can eas¬ily save a small business a considerable amount. As of now no big manufacturer offers refurbished PC's in India but it might change soon looking at the pace India is catching up with rest of the world.

You should shop for refurbished equipment carefully-
much as you would for new hardware. In some ways, it's like looking at second-hand car market. Since the market is not yet organised you have to be very careful while shopping, rely¬ing only on references provided to you by someone who has done it before. The situation is totally different in developed countries. There all the major manufacturers offer refurbished systems, and these reconditioned systems are said to be strin¬gently tested before they are shipped out. You can get just about any class of machine, from basic business pes to high-powered workstations. What you probably won't get is the very latest thing. Because of the return/refurbish cycle, systems tend to be at least 60 to 90 days old-more abrasive-edge than cutting-edge.

Refurbished can mean a lot of different things; there is no government- mandated
definition for the term. The only rule is that companies or vendors cannot sell refurbished products as new ones. Probably what all refur¬bished systems do have in common is they've been rejected, for one reason or another. Some were found faulty at the factory, usually due to component failure. Others were found faulty by the customer and returned. Many have been repaired and tested by the original manufac¬turer, or by independent refurbishers. Some just weren't what the customer needed. When either of the above things happens they get routed towards the refurbished PC market which is growing day by day. In theory, by the time refur¬bished systems are back in the market, they are once again fully functional, if not pristine, machines.

So What Is a Refurbished PC?

A typical refurbished PC's history goes like this: A customer buys a PC and opens the box. He then sets up the system and for some rea¬son decides that it is flawed or he doesn't want it. He returns it to the manufacturer or vendor (which ultimately gets routed to manufacturer again). The manufacturer's techs then put the newly returned system through a wide variety
of tests to see if anything was wrong with it. If they locate an issue, they make the necessary repairs-usually not major and more often than not cosmetic in nature, such as dented or scratched cases.

After the repair and retest cycle, the manu¬facturer reconditions the system. This usually means cleaning the hard drive and replacing the mouse and keyboard. Then it is time to reinstall the original operating system. Microsoft has recently made this process a bit simpler (see sidebar above).
Once the new OS is installed, the manufac¬turer puts the PC through the same battery of tests it did when it sold the PC originally, making sure that none of the components were damaged in shipping or by the first owner. If the system passes these tests it is boxed up and resold.

So by the time the system is back in the mar¬ket it has been fully verified, unlike a PC pur¬chased directly from the previous owner. When you purchase a system directly from previous owner or pre-owned PC vendor, there are no guarantees and you have little recourse if things go wrong. On the other hand if you buy a cer¬tified refurbished PC from the original manu¬facturer or from a reseller you've come to trust, there's no reason to keep glancing over your shoulder.