I have a quick question, why are there SO MANY refurbed 7805u's floating around on Ebay and other places....

it makes me wonder how reliable the 7805u is in the long run... is it because its very problematic? if you guys look on ebay, theres tons of people selling the reburbs for $800+... anybody know if its better to get a new one or a refurbed 7805u because im gonna order this week

 

refurbed means they just did a fresh install of the os. mines never caused a problem. too bad debt got the best of me

 

i think its a little more than that

 

Refurbishing implies anything from changing out the ram or the hard drive, to more complicated things like the motherboard or screen. The reason why there are so many refurbished 7805's is because they are the premier budget consumer gaming notebook at the largest electronics retail store in the world. Not only are the 7805's refurbished often, but many other popular notebooks at best buy, such as the asus g50's. Why? Because a ton of people buy them. Aside from that, the only other reason I could see people returning these to gateway is for overheating hardware. If you think something might be wrong with the notebooks, then I'm positive you'd be made very aware of it on these forums.

 

The reason there are refurbs because BestBuy sometimes allow customers to open them up before purchasing.

We got a lot of WUXGA freaks that keep going to BestBuy and insisting they open up the laptop to ensure they are getting a WUXGA screen and not the WXGA model.

They cannot be sold as new if that sticker is removed.

Imo, they are making the wrong choice because the WUXGA screen is the inferior screen in this round. (weak contrast ratio, cloudiness, and edge light bleeding are common problems)

The other problem is like others said, these gaming notebooks have a higher defect ratio than normal ones because they are usually pushed the hardest.

A lot of gamers buy them and tries to overclock them and return them back to BB if they can't hit a certain number.

 

will a person be taking a leap of faith with those sealed refurbs on ebay, i mean how many of them are defective? And should i just stick to getting them from best buy?

 

I'm wondering the same thing. I'm from Holland, Europe. If I purchase a refurbished notebook, I have to be 100% sure that the notebook is not defective - can I be that sure?

 

Now I got to step in as a power seller on ebay. I don;t know about the sealed box sellers but I do open each and every box to not omly apply the upgrades I am selling the computers with but also to check the visual and hard ware related issues. So far I sold 12 of these and only one came with a defect. It had a broken side panel which caused the media panel not to fit tight. It does not effect the performance but it is matter fact a defect. I am keeping it for my self. If you want to buy one ask the seller (if it is not me) to open the box and run at least 2 runs of 3dmark06.

 

do you have any personal warranty or is it only through mfg?

 

I allow the buyer a week to test it out for any issues. Rest is manufacturer warranty.

 

You appear like a great seller, i wish you are selling one right now but what about the rest

 

To the OP, resellers (Alitunay and others like him/her) are the reason so many refurbs are floating around on Ebay. When Best Buy sells off their refurbs to Tigerdirect/Compusa, Alitunay and co buy them up and put them on Ebay for a profit.

As Alitunay attests, some do provide testing and other value-added services, but many resellers are just leeches looking to get in between you and the real seller so they can make 50-100 bucks off the top without providing any value whatsoever.

My idea of how the resellers can earn their pay is to test out the machines to make sure they have no problems, return any that do, and offer services like installing a preferred OS (like XP), W9 RC, or a tweaks package to make the machine run better/more stably. Selling hard-to-find add-ons such as a notebook bag that fits these somewhat large machines would also be a good value-add.

To me, those are useful services deserving of a reward, since it saves me the time and effort of doing the same. I'm happy to pay someone a little extra to make sure that what I buy is good quality and configured the way I want it.

 

I agree alot of the refurbs are being sold without being tested, some are even being sold without the seller taking it out of the box.. So yeah, most sellers on ebay who are selling these refurbs are out to make a profit and screw the buyer..
As for the 7805u's though, the 9800m GTS I do think is a defect from factory, I had 2 7805u's (refurbs) and both the GPU's were artifacting and overheating. I had a few friends who had the same problems with theres. I also seen on the forum here more people having GPU issues with them.
I heard from a source that gateway's next FX series laptop will have the GTS 160m replacing the 9800m GTS. Maybe then these units will last abit longer and wont have the current issues.

 

If they replace 9800m with a GT160M they will loose all the reputation they got. They need at least GT 260M.

 

I said the GTS 160m, not GT

 

Anything with 160m is equvalent to 9600m. Call it GT or GTS. They need at least 260m.

Edit: Never mind. I see that GTS 160m is equvalent of 8800m gtx which is pretty good but still that would be a step back from what we have now.

 

I may have to disagree with you about the "selling as new" only if the the sticker isn't removed. I had the people at Best Buy tell me they had no stock ones available but they had their pre setup version available(P7805u), (bloatware removed and optimized), which they removed from the box and I fired it up to see whether it had the good screen, which it didn't. So they put it back in the box and back on the shelf. It was actually $199 more than the stock units. They are selling these as "NEW", so I don't think just because the box is opened they say they are used.
I mean BB is opening them up and having techs roam around the OS on the pre setup machines, so are they really "used machines"?

BB doesn't sell "used" anything, its either "Demo" or "New".

Just my opinion.