PC Refurb Success?

[Dameize]

I was wondering how many of you guys have much success with computer refrubishments and what popular things to actually refurb are.

I was thinking of running a campaign with leaflets and on facebook playing on my name. using maybe this text

"Monsters may not be pretty but your computer can be!"

and then for say 80gbp offering a new case installation and a tuneup and then i can also upsell them on more ram and a better hdd etc.

Do you guys think that would have much success? I mean everyone (almost) has a desktop.. and if they think they can get it looking new and faster for that price why not?. Ill get nice looking cases cheaply as they are maybe 20 pound.

Thanks

[YeOldeStonecat]

We often do a minor upgrade to clients computers...to stretch another year or two out of it. Install a new quality hard drive like a WD Black Edition or RE3, crank up the memory, BIOS/drivers updates, give it a tuneup..all Microsoft updates, web players, general cleaning/defrag.

As far as a new case..nah. You'll find that ends up being more of a headache for you...and a lot of people frown on cloner cases...they just end up looking like a cheap computer unless you get something nice like a Lian Li or Antec Sonata series.

[tankman1989]

Upgrades are a good sell to people who don't have the money to buy a new system. This is especially good for people who like their current OS and especially if they have an old hard drive that is almost full. By running a simple defrag on the old HD you might get better performance.

If you were offering a refurb I would always include a new hard drive, with the OS loaded on it. I would keep the old HD in the machine as well and put a page sys file on it to help spread the page sys workload over the two drives.

Next would be adding more ram then maybe a larger monitor or a second monitor if their graphics card supports it.

[dgast]

Join the Microsoft Refurbisher program it allows you to buy OS's at a highly reduced rate. As an example upgrade XP Home to Win 7 Home (must be equal version) my cost is $35 per unit bought in 4 units. Good resell during client refurb OS & Install. You can also recycle all the P4 HT's and Pent D's that you can get your hands on for a good markup. I have found that once word gets out that I have units to sell they sell pretty quickly.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally Posted by dgast

Join the Microsoft Refurbisher program it allows you to buy OS's at a highly reduced rate. As an example upgrade XP Home to Win 7 Home (must be equal version) my cost is $35 per unit bought in 4 units. Good resell during client refurb OS & Install. You can also recycle all the P4 HT's and Pent D's that you can get your hands on for a good markup. I have found that once word gets out that I have units to sell they sell pretty quickly.

Have you found that to be really economical though? Once you bump rammage to 4 gigs in the old machine (at least 60-80 bucks)....put in a new hard drive (approx 80 bucks...cuz I don't want to use an old slow hard drive that has a higher risk of dying now)...plus the cost of the OS upgrade license. Possibly a graphics card too, cuz older hardware may not have an Aero compatible card. Now you're up near the price of an entry level brand new computer once you've factored in your time for doing those upgrades...and the clients data and programs have to be installed/copied in...cuz doing an XP to Win7 upgrade ain't really an upgrade. And that P4 H/T and PATA hard drive ain't a ball of fire with Win7. Unless the hardware is true dual core Pentium D...or higher, I hold off of 7.

[dgast]

Originally Posted by YeOldeStonecat

Have you found that to be really economical though? Once you bump rammage to 4 gigs in the old machine (at least 60-80 bucks)....put in a new hard drive (approx 80 bucks...cuz I don't want to use an old slow hard drive that has a higher risk of dying now)...plus the cost of the OS upgrade license. Possibly a graphics card too, cuz older hardware may not have an Aero compatible card. Now you're up near the price of an entry level brand new computer once you've factored in your time for doing those upgrades...and the clients data and programs have to be installed/copied in...cuz doing an XP to Win7 upgrade ain't really an upgrade. And that P4 H/T and PATA hard drive ain't a ball of fire with Win7. Unless the hardware is true dual core Pentium D...or higher, I hold off of 7.

That is why they are refurbs, the client knows up front the machine cannot take advantage of all the Win 7 features. They are buying them because they are inexpensive and have the latest OS availqable. I prefer to sell them P4's with XP on them because the money is a little better. But if I go through and test and replace any bad parts the refurb license is available if they want to pay the additional cost. As long as they know up front it is a good sale.

[PCX]

As already posted, upgrades are great for people who cannot afford a new system and most people are not impractical enough to buy another case and pay for their hardware to be installed. As for everyone having desktops, you will probably find that not to be true. Most people now have laptops, or in the very least, that is mostly what you are going to see come into your shop.

As far as refurbs go, when I think of refurbs, I think of broken or old computers that you literally refurbish and sell. This is how we started our business and we still do it today. We easily make another $20,000 to $30,000 a year on these. We could probably make more, but we have very high standards. For instance, We will not sell Acer, eMachines, most Gateways, and most HP's. We will also not sell anything that has less than Vista or simply looks like crap. This helps to prevent customers from coming back for warranty issues.