Gouri, what's your professional opinion on buying refurbs from reputable sites such as new egg, tiger direct, or amazon?
I actually
prefer certain items if they're refurbished if they come with an extended warranty that would otherwise cost extra. The things you don't buy refurbished are single ICs like CPUs, RAM, SSDs, and HDDs. Reason being is that finding an error in the CPU, or sometimes in RAM, can be a pain in the ass and might go somewhat unnoticed for awhile, not have easily reproducible errors, and may not be covered by any warranty. SSDs and HDDs are different beasts, they are more complex and can be adequately refurbished (HDDs in particular), however, unless you're in RAID-0(1)/5 then you're basically okay with losing data. Even on my Usenet-only 4-tera array, I don't want to lose anything. I had a 2TB RAID-0 array die on me not even 4 months ago and I lost a ton of shit... Fuck Seagate (the parts were brand new and under warranty, but data loss is permanent).
Devices I don't mind getting refurbished are:
Graphics Cards (because ATI cards are broken out of the box anyway, and are my preferred card - might as well get a free warranty!),
Monitors (if in new condition, with extended warranty), cases (c'mon),
Mobos (all refurb processing is basically find-and-replace burnt out IC, which is a pretty good fix for most problems - again warranty)
Speakers, easy repair,
Modems and Routers, again, easy repair and often there's nothing physicall wrong with the component - usually a bricked DD-WRT flash!
Cameras, free extended warranty is worth the trouble.
Buying complete systems refurbished is a great idea if you can find a good deal. Usually something ridiculously simple was broken. Wifi radio, bad CMOS flash, hard drive platter cracked while shipping, hell even a bad sector on the disk causing Windows to not boot can result in a PC getting sent back for refurbishing..
I might avoid a refurbed PSU just because I'd hate to meet St. Peter at the Gates on some "dude, I saved $20"