It is only human to love new things and the latest technology, but the growing climate crisis has made many of us pause. Is it morally right to buy a new laptop, or should we make our old slow devices last a bit longer? Is there any way to have the best of both worlds: environmental friendliness and a shiny new laptop on which to work? Yes, it is quite possible: refurbished laptops are the happy medium that you are looking for and there are many reasons to choose this option. Let us take a look at some of them:
Refurbs are Reliable
The makes and models of laptops that are chosen to be refurbished tend to be strongly built devices that stand the test of time. This makes sense if you consider that more flimsy laptops will be discarded when they break – usually during their first owner’s tenure – while those that are still in good condition when their owner decides to upgrade are more likely to become refurbished models. This means that your new-to-you laptop is much more likely to be a sturdy one!
An additional benefit of a refurbished laptop is that the software is usually installed for you, loaded and ready to go once you log in. This might seem like a small benefit, but you might disagree if you have ever spent many a frustrating hour trying to boot up your new laptop for the first time, only to have to wait hours as it finishes off the installation and registration processes!
Refurbs are Cheaper
Money is often a dirty word, especially when we have to spend our hard-earned cash on big-ticket items, such as electrical devices. But you will be very happy to buy a refurbished laptop when you realise that the price can be up to fifty percent less than the cost of a brand-new, equally efficient, equivalent. The savings on pre-loved items often knock on to extra expenses like insurance, which is based on the price you paid, and software and replacement batteries or cables, which become cheaper the older your laptop model is.
Refurbs Offer More
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If you are kitting out your home office, having settled into a new hybrid working pattern, choosing to buy a refurbished laptop can be an excellent way to get more for your money. While your budget might have been just about enough for a new mid-range laptop, it could easily score you a top-of-the-range refurbished laptop – making your money go further, and giving you more bang for your buck.
For many people, these two financial benefits can be enough to sway them towards a refurbished laptop, with the ecological advantages coming along as a pleasant surprise!
Refurbs Save the Planet!
Every new item that is manufactured, especially if it requires the mining and processing of minerals and metals, has a heavy environmental tag on it. Laptops contain a plethora of rare goodies usually found deep inside the earth, and the manufacturing process can be harmful at every step of the process, from mining to smelting, to manufacturing, even to packaging and transport for sale at a location convenient to you.
Instead of indulging in a tempting brand-new laptop, opt for a very good quality (which most of them are) refurbished laptop. This will allow you to enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that not only have you delayed the manufacture of a new laptop, with all the consequences that bring along with it, but you have also begun to reduce the existing environmental impact of the refurbished laptop’s original manufacture. In short, the longer the laptop is in use, the lighter its ecological impact is.
Buying second-hand – and it is not only laptops that offer environmental amelioration of this sort – is an excellent way to look after the earth’s precious resources, keeping them in use for longer and delaying the need to mine more raw materials.
Refurbs have Warranties
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A big worry for many people coming late to the idea of second-hand purchasing is the idea that previously used products will not be – cannot be – guaranteed. This is very wrong, and it is more the norm for a refurbished product to be sold with various guarantees and warranties than for them to come to you with no ‘safety blanket’ at all! In many cases, you will be able to buy a refurbished laptop with the same buyer and end-user protections as you would be offered when buying a new laptop
Just as manufacturers offer guarantees on their parts and assembly work, so too do those companies who work to refurbish devices. And you can be certain that every refurbished laptop has been carefully quality-control checked before being passed for sale, while new laptop assembly lines are less thorough, checking perhaps one in every hundred or so.
Conclusion
The days of disposable living, when each new model was seized upon as the ‘latest must-have’ gadget, with hearty disdain for the ‘old and shabby’ are long gone. We humans have finally realised that this way of living is dangerously reckless, threatening to use up the planet’s resources sooner rather than later. This has seen people from every walk of life making small but significant changes to re-use, recycle, repurpose or resell their unwanted items. If you need a new laptop, you now have five excellent reasons why you should join them and treat yourself to a new (new-to-you, anyway) laptop!
Author Bio: This article was written by Eloise Tobler of Wisetek Store. Wisetek Store was created to give our customers access to high quality, reliable and affordable refurbished laptops.
