What is refurb?

There are a number of reasons why a machine might be marked refurbished. It might be that the item was returned to the store and sent back to the factory. As someone who worked on a return desk, I could tell lots of stories about items that were returned for no reason, or at least no good reason. If the factory determines that nothing is wrong with the item or that the problem can be easily corrected, then they will simply repackage the item and ship it back out as a refurb.

Sometimes an item is marked refurbished because it was damaged in shipping or while on the sales floor, and the damage is only cosmetic. A product can also be sold as refurbished because it was a demonstration unit. Clearance merchandise that hasn’t been sold or damaged can sometimes be marked as refurbished as well.

Whatever the reason it was marked down, refurbished equipment can be a good buy. It helps stores and manufacturers recover the cost of returned items and it can mean a great deal for you.

What you need to watch out for

Most stores have a different return policy for refurbished items. The return may be exchange-only, the window of time for returns may be shorter, or the item may not be returnable at all. Be sure you understand how the store handles refurbished returns and how they may differ from the store’s normal return policy.

Sometimes a store will sell refurbished equipment alongside the new stuff. This is an excellent opportunity to compare prices and return policies. For example, an MP3 player that would normally be $100 with a one month return policy compared with a refurb for $30 and an exchange-only return allowed for one week. Clearly the price is right, and if you aren’t picky, then this might be a fairly obvious choice. But, if you buy the unit and realize later that it doesn’t have a function you consider crucial or it doesn’t perform as you want it to, you might regret spending your $30 on something you’re not happy with.

Buying refurb makes sense when:

1. You’re sure about what you want and know that this model is the right one
2. There’s a deep discount in the price
3. You are comfortable with the return or exchange time frame
4. You don’t care about imperfections or cosmetic damage
5. You’re comfortable with the store’s reputation
6. They have several refurb items in stock, allowing you to choose the best of what’s available

I have purchased many refurbished items over the years. I tend to buy refurbished for items that I want but don’t need. When I’m buying something that I really rely on or a product that I don’t know much about, I tend to opt for new unless the discount is really deep.

The store you’re shopping at also makes a difference. If it’s a store that I shop at regularly, I’m more likely to trust the items they put on refurb. Putting an item on refurb is a judgement call on behalf of the store, and you want to make sure you’re shopping at a place where they exercise good judgement. A store with nothing to lose in terms of their reputation has no incentive to avoid unloading their junk on you.

There have been a few times that I’ve bought a refurbished product that I was unhappy with, but the same could be said of my new purchases as well. It can be easy to blame my dissatisfaction on the fact that the item is refurb, when it just might be that I got suckered by clever marketing on a substandard product.

Buying refurb doesn’t always make sense, but there are times when the deal is too good to walk away.

The PDA

It wasn’t too long ago that the PDA, or Personal Digital Assistant, really took off in the business community and became a must-have gadget. Before that, truly organized people did it with paper, and some still do. PDAs were small, easy to backup and useful…very useful. This one little device could carry around all of your contacts, all of your appointments, all of your task reminders and could run simple programs to calculate, convert or store important data. It allowed someone with a mobile phone to bring critical data along wherever he or she went.

PDAs could synchronize with computers. This meant that information added to a computer or the PDA would magically appear on the other device. Mobile Phones had phone books, but keeping a comprehensive list of clients on your mobile phone up to date was tedious work, typing away on a little keyboard where you had to press keys multiple times to get a particular letter. Most people only kept a few phone numbers stored in their actual phones for the people that were most important or that they called the most.

Convergence

While PDAs were incredibly handy, it meant carrying around two devices, each of which needed to have a battery charged up on a regular basis, and trying to juggle both of them to look up a phone number while dialing the phone was an exercise in dexterity. The obvious solution was to merge these two devices into a single unit. Doing this in a small, attractive package, however, required a lot of clever engineering.

For several years now, there have been a number of devices available which successfully merged organizer and phone. The new trend is to add in wifi wireless Internet capability, so that the device can use local free wireless hotspots, instead of having to access the Internet through the phone company’s service which means paying the phone company for each piece of data transferred.

A Plethora of Choices

There are lots of devices available if you want a Smart Phone. There are devices focused on business users, average consumers, the tech-minded, those obsessed with the ‘cool new thing’, and teenagers. To make a good decision which is right for you, you need to know what these devices can do, so that you can ask informed questions about which phones offer which services.

Contact Management

Every mobile phone has a phone book, to store numbers you might want to call. Consider how much information you want to store. Just the phone number? The Phone number and the address? Everything about your client? Then consider how that information gets entered and how easy it is to synchronize that information with your computer or online address book.

Schedule

A good smart phone will act as an organizer, informing you where you need to be when. Again, how easy it is to synch it up with your computer is important.

Internet

An Internet browser is more and more becoming an important feature for your phone. Various websites offer versions of their site optimized for mobile phones, and some new smart phones offer full web browsers that allow you to surf just like you would on your computer at home. Of vital importance is whether the Internet is accessed through the mobile phone towers, for which you pay for every last byte of information, or whether the phone has Wifi, which would allow you to surf the Internet for free every time you’re near a Wifi hot-spot that offers free access.

GPS

Many phones offer GPS. Some phones will not only show you where you are, but how to get where you are going either walking, driving or taking public transit. We’ll soon be at the stage where every public transit system in North America is accessible through a GPS enabled smart phone. It will tell you which bus or train you need to take to get where you want to go, how long it will take, when you’ll arrive and how much you’ll need to pay. For me, the biggest disincentive for using public transit is having to figure out which route goes where and when I need to leave and how I find my connection to the next route. I’ve seen phones already that deal with all those hassles for you instantly in cities where routes are available online. Just punch in your destination and your phone will tell you just when you need to leave your house to catch the bus you need.

Camera

I never thought I would actually want a camera phone when they first came out, but I have to admit that I’ve really come to appreciate having a camera with me at all times. I often whip out my camera to take a picture of something I’m thinking of buying so I can show my wife and record the price. I take pictures of people I meet so that when I look up their phone number later I have a visual reference and I’m sure I remember who I’m calling. Having a video camera to record the circumstances of a fender-bender might help with your insurance company down the road.

Media Player

A lot of phones now offer playback of videos and music. You can load your favourite video of your child or grandchild and have a little something to show your friends about how cool your kid has become. You can get headphones, and use a smart phone to listen to tunes at the gym or while you’re out for a walk.

Invest Some Time and Money to Get the Right Thing

Having one device that does it all with just one battery that needs to be charged makes a lot of sense. If you use it well, then you’re quickly going to find that a smart phone is an indispensible device that organizes, entertains and offers security. Spending some time and money to get a device that you like and works well is a solid investment.

Mono, Stereo, Surround

A sound signal that only has one channel is called mono. A sound signal that has two channels is called stereo. A stereo signal, because it can deliver two different sounds to two different speakers, can give a sense of left and right.

Surround sound uses more than two speakers to give a greater sense of physical space, which can be very effective in increasing the dramatic experience of a movie. A 5.1 surround system places three speakers in front of you, two speakers behind you and a sixth speaker that only delivers deep bass. The human ear cannot interpret direction based on very low sounds, so bass doesn’t count as a full channel. That’s where the ‘.1’ comes from. Most DVDs offer audio tracks mixed for both stereo and 5.1 speaker configurations.

What difference does it make?

Because 5.1 audio offers more options for where the sound can come from, a sound can be directed to the front or back, as well as side to side. This means that if a character in a movie hears someone sneaking up behind them, the crunch of a shoe on gravel can be heard from behind, giving you the same experience as the character and heightening the reality.

A 3.1 audio system doesn’t have the rear speakers of a 5.1 audio system, just 3 front speakers and a bass speaker. A 7.1 system has all speakers of a 5.1 system, with additional side speakers.

Most large HDTVs come only with stereo sound. Some smaller screens come with 3.1 or 5.1 audio built in. The assumption is that if you’re only buying a small screen, then saving a few dollars by bundling together the TV and improved audio makes sense. For a larger screen, the assumption is that you’re more likely to want to spend serious money on a serious sound system, so why waste money putting in audio extras when you’re just going to replace them?

If you primarily watch TV shows, then you probably won’t need anything more than the stereo sound that comes with the TV, as most of them only offer stereo sound. If your focus is watching movies, though, then buying a better audio system will make a huge difference in the quality of the experience. TV programs don’t often have the time and money to invest in optimizing the sound experience for multiple speakers, and even if they did, the vast majority of their audience has only had stereo broadcast options up until now. Movies, on the other hand, have the luxury of budget and time frame that allows them to optimize the experience for better sound systems.

Wireless Rear Speakers

A thome theatre with Wireless Rear Speakers transmits audio to the rear speakers by a radio signal. This means that you don’t need to run wires from the Home Theatre System to the back of the room. You can plug the rear speakers into a power outlet at the back and they will automatically connect themselves. Most rooms are easy to run speaker wire in, just by tucking the wire underneath the baseboard. If there isn’t an easy way to run wires because of the layout of the room or the way its finished, spending a little more for wireless speakers may be a good option for you.

‘Wireless Ready’ usually means that the Home Theatre System is able to transmit wirelessly to rear speakers, but the speakers that come with it are not wireless speakers. This gives you the option to buy wireless rear speakers, but you’ll have to pay extra.

How much will it cost?

You can get a basic Home Theatre System for several hundred dollars that will make your movie watching experience much better. For a truly immersive experience that heightens the feeling of being there, you can easily spend several thousand dollars on a high-end audio system. If you have the money, then spending as much or more on the sound for your TV than you spent on the TV itself just might make sense.

Digital

HDMI cables are the best option available for connecting your TV to Disc players, cable boxes, satellite receivers or gaming systems. HDMI stands for High Definition Multimedia Interface. An HDMI cable will carry a 1080p signal and 5.1 surround sound audio together on a single cable, without losing any audio or video quality because the cable is digital.

Digital audio cables transfer audio (not video)  in a digital format. If you have a home theatre system (external speakers), it is best to run a digital audio cable from the television to the stereo system.

Component

Component cables are the second-best option if HDMI is unavailable. These cables are a bundle of five wires that have RCA plugs on the end. RCA plugs are the type that you might use to connect parts of a stereo system together that plug into the little red and white donut-shaped holes on the back of your CD player. The five wires in a component cable are divided into three for video (Red, Green and Blue) and two for audio (usually Red and White). The video wires transfer red, green and blue video signals separately and the audio wires transfer left and right audio. Because the video colours are kept separate, or in components, they produce better images than composite cables, which mix (compose) all three colours into a single signal passed over a single wire.

Composite

Composite is a word used to describe a variety of cables. Coaxial cable is the old style of television cable with the screw-in end that you attached to the back of your TV on the threaded silver post that stuck out the back. RCA cables that had three wires (Red, White and Yellow) passed audio on the red and white wires, while all the video passed through the yellow wire. S-Video had a round plug with four wires positioned inside. All of these cables are called composite, because they combine the three colours into a single wire. They should be avoided if at all possible, because they do not produce as good a picture as the newer styles of cable.