Refurbished versus New XPS M1210

I'm right now having a hard time deciding on which laptop to go with. Originally my budget was around 1000, e1505 and 1501 in particular interested me. But then I started looking at the M1210 that are refurbished. In some cases, the savings appear to be almost 600$, dropping the price from what would be a new 2000$ laptop to around 1400$. So my questions are...

Has anyone had negative experiences with buying from the Dell outlet?

Opinions on whether its worth it to spend extra to get the refurbished M1210 over a e1505 or 1501.

Thanks in advance

p.s. I'm a first time notebook buyer so hoping for a positive experience with dell

 

1.) Dell Outlet is a good place to look if you're on a budget--I have heard good things but I'm sure other members will chime in.
2.) Read the reviews, see what you think. If you won't be gaming, the m1210 is probably a good bet, and much more portable. If you will be gaming you'll want to consider the e1505 or m1210 for their mid-range graphics cards (see the GPU guide)

 

If you can, stay away from refurbished laptops.
Refurbished is just another name for 'used'. And these such laptops are VERY used!!!
I work for a fairly big company that leases notebooks for our company and we lease twice a yr and lease about 40-50 laptops.
We lease mainly Dells, Acers, Compacts and some IBMs.
These laptops get used and abused for 6mths then we give them back and get 40 new ones.
The only thing we keep is the HDs and send the rest of the laptop back.
The laptop company will put new HDs in them, clean them up a lil then unload them to a reseller.
If you ever go to a shop and see they have 10 or 20 etc of the same laptop with an really cheap price then you'll know they bought a bunch of business leased laptops that were returned
Most will only come with a 90day - 6mth warranty.

If you plan on keeping your purchase for a while, then i suggest u buy new

 

ive had very good luck with the outlet most if not all are as good as new (at least they are throughly tested before shipping) also the warranty is the same as new the only difference is the cost of the notebook, its usally a good deal and hard to beat
jim

 

hopefully u are not going to get my recently returned m1210, cuz u will be sending it right back to the outlet.....

 

Thanks for all the feedback, I'm going to be doing light gaming, and I'm not overly concerned with having the graphics settings up to full. WOW, STALKER etc. The portability is key to as I'm going to be lugging it around and the Inspirons seemed abit flimsy compared to the m1210.

Another question I forgot to ask before was, does DELL ever run the massive 450$ or 25% off sales on the XPS series that it is running on the Inspirons right now?