Reconditioned laptops may seem cheap alternatives to a new laptop, but are they worth the trouble for the lower price? While that’s entirely up to you, there are few points to consider while going out to shop for used or renew computers. Remember these are personal belongings and as such they may be in any condition you can think of. From mint to barely operating the range is wide and choosing wisely is not always easy, but if you follow this short checklist to avoid stupid mistakes you can’t go wrong.

1. Get to know the seller. Some small talk has never killed anyone and is a great way to get to know the person you’re buying from and to uncover if anything shady is going on with the reconditioned laptop. If there is none you have great chances of making a friend.

2. There are private owners who sell laptops and companies making a living off this market. Companies are often the safer bet as they have harder time disappearing after selling a faulty unit. They usually also offer some kind of warranty to attract customers. 1-3 months would be the bare minimum I’d personally say is enough, as most of the problems will come out in the first two weeks.

3. Look for reconditioned laptops that are newer models. Yes, they are somewhat more expensive than other laptops in the shop, but newer models have higher chance at being in mint condition. Some owners jump at every new model their favorite brand releases and sell a 2-3 months old laptop back to the shop without thinking twice. These are the reconditioned notebooks you are looking for.

4. Always make sure you’ve at least seen and tried the laptop you’re paying money for. On Ebay and other auction sites this is obviously not possible, but a high positive feedback rate can help you decide on whom to buy from. It doesn’t automatically mean that you can’t buy junk, but by carefully reading everything in the description of the laptop for sale you’re probably getting it as described.

5. If you notice some fault on a reconditioned laptop after you’ve bought it, don’t hesitate to take it back to where you’ve bought it. Warranty is warranty for a reason and you should be able to take advantage of it whenever it happens to be necessary. Don’t be shy; you’ve paid some hard earned money on it.

6. Always check the hard disk drive should you have the time. Hard drives are basically the only component in a laptop with moving parts apart from optical drives and cooling fans. If a cooling fan or the DVD rewriter fails, you can still get them repaired fairly cheap, but a dead hard drive takes all your photos and cannot be substituted by external solutions. If it has bad blocks, your chances to store data on it safely are slim. Just don’t fall for ‘But it’s been like that for years and it’s been working fine’. Bad blocks have the annoying habit of spreading.

Buying a laptop from previous owners or companies selling them is not that hard but requires some attention. If you treat every detail with scrutiny, you can comfortably avoid making some really frustrating mistakes, but if you’re not that computer savvy or are not confident enough to make such a decision, ask your friends. Whoever makes their living working with computers should be able to help you with picking the right reconditioned laptop.