I... didn't think clearly through and just jumped at the price and the opportunity. Even after tax, It was more than $100 cheaper than from Amazon.
I thought that because it's the holiday season, anyone who returned it probably did it brand new. But it seems that's not really it.
I mean, I honestly thought open box > recertified, but it looks like it's worse - they wouldn't even guarantee that it works out of the box. Recertified at least guarantees it's working...
But after looking at the spotty record of open boxes, I am very, very worried.
In addition to the possible loss of power cable/battery, I've read that ppl need to to bios/vbios flashes, and a bunch of other things that an amateur can easily brick a computer.
.... So I'm extremely worried that the unit is just "bricked" and will be DOA.
My question is this:
Is there a way to check an open box or refurbished laptop if everything is in order, and there's no hidden flaw that will only be visible after the 60 day return period has passed?
I'm looking for the possibility of running diagnostics or perhaps a "checklist" of things to look out for any new laptop - i.e. the graphics card could have easily been improperly overclocked by a n00b and I'll never know until it burns out in the middle of a video one year from now. But I'll have no way of knowing this...
Any help/guidance regarding what I should check the first thing when I receive the laptop will be appreciated.
The entire risk as to the quality and performance of these items is with the buyer. These items have been tested for functionality, but may have superficial physical defects
Unfortunately you pretty much have to take that risk if you want to keep it. As you say, the dangerous things like reduced lifespans from excessive OCing will only show themselves way after the 60 day return policy and you have no guarantees on what's been done to it before you get it.
You should still have the manufacturer's warrantee but that will only cover manufacturing defects and if they find evidence of OCing then you'll be SOL. The unit being DoA or missing power cables isn't really a problem since you can just return it if that happens.
The flipside is, if you're only planning on using it for ~2 to 3 years, anything that doesn't cause problems in those first 60 days probably won't cause problems until well after you've replaced the laptop anyway. So, I think it comes down to how long you want this thing to last..
Things to check: - boots into windows ok (obviously!) - CPU, GPU and memory frequencies are at the defaults (get something like CPU-Z and GPU-Z) - run Furmark for a day, check no artifacts - run prime95 for a day on each core, check no errors
If those are all clean it'll probably last you 5 years even if someone screwed around with it before you got it.
Furmark for a day? Are you sure abut this? I read from some of the forums that running furmark for even 3 minutes caused it to heat up to 80C... Would running it for a day be... adviseable? How demanding is it - is running furmark for a day the same as running sc2 at ultra for a day?
try the below Download testdisk 1.1.3 or whatever version is available Do not run any programs or download anything else to it after acquiring it somehow run testdisk 1.1.3 for a while ( afk for some time ) and check it later ( you could check most of the things they did via this even if they did reformat ) duno if they can set things via bios in a laptop...
unless they were overridden several times, data would still be there ( reformat = relabels everything as nonexistent/blank/free to be written over/ but the data will still be there/ also applies to deleting things )
run memtest for a few hours also try intel burn test thing you can also test with orthos, and prime95 is more popular
orthos/prime95 = fast fourier transforms and lucas lehmer calculations/ stress tests I guess
prime95 = prime numbers
testdisk = for recovery data even after you reformat... provided you didn't overwrite too much ( you might be able to find things the previous owner deleted
EPT
