Is a "refurbished" laptop worth £170 savings?

[former player]

I need a new laptop.  My current Vaio F11 has been great but after 4 years is just beginning to get less reliable, so I am planning to relegate it to spare and buy new.

I'm looking at the Asus N56VB-S3181H as a replacement.  It comes £170 cheaper in a refurbished model with 1 year guarantee from a large and respectable UK retailer -
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/search-keywords/xx_xx_xx_xx_xx/asus+n56vb-s3181h/xx-criteria.html

Are the savings worth it, or should I go new?  I am not in the least techy.

Cheers.

former player

[Dibbels81]

I've purchased two PCs refurbished--no issues with either.  I think refurb is the way to go.

[daverobev]

Depends on the who from and what warranty, but generally yeah no issues with refurb. Apple in particular are known to be good. I've had a refurb Toshiba, refurb Dells, no issues.

Only thing I would say is that this is a previous gen i7, big clunker at 15.6 inch, and only 1366*768 screen res. I'd suggest an i3 or i5, and for that price either a 13-14 incher or something with a better display. Or perhaps you need the nVidia graphics... but if so why the crappy screen res? But that's your call.

[gimp]

Short answer: Usually.

Long answer: Depends who refurbed it and why it's refurb. I've been bitten by refurb many, many years ago - but not since then. I try to buy most stuff used or refurb. Laptops should be ok, as long as there's a warranty.

[former player]

Thanks Dibbels, daverobev and gimp.

daverobev: as I said, not in the least techy, so it's useful to see your views: thanks.   On size, the laptop is essentially a desktop substitute, and is unlikely to leave the house much (but does move around inside the house, so a desktop is not the answer).  I do need reliability, a biggish screen and decent power for some serious word-processing (think rewriting the tax-code serious), and it has to be windows/word or wordperfect for compatibility, so no Apple.  Not a gamer, so graphics irrelevant but do seem to come with the screensize I need. Screen res I agree not perfect, but otherwise the screen gets good reviews so for the price I can live with it, I think.

Thanks again to all.

[gimp]

The laptop you chose is fine. It meets your needs and it will work for 5+ years, likely longer, as long as you occasionally clean out nasties. Windows Defender is included in Windows. Malwarebytes is free. CCleaner is free. Run each of those every several days, at least once a week. Those three tools are just about all you need. For porn, get a flash drive, and put ubuntu on it (google: unetbootin ubuntu live usb drive, for everything you need to know); porn is the source of 95% of viruses. The other 5% are downloads of executables from suspect sources (email, random websites, etc). Don't use internet explorer and don't install toolbars...

[former player]

Gimp, that's brilliant, thanks.

I love this community.

[daverobev]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/X550CC-XO071H-15-6-inch-i5-3337U-Processor-GeForce/dp/B00GD98E64/ref=pd_cp_computers_2

Cheaper, slower - a bit - but might do what you need?

[former player]

Cool, thanks.  I agree, i5 is as good as i7 for what I need.