For those interested in how buying a reburbished Z890 went

I want to share my experiences because many of us are on a budget but a little timid about refurbished goods.

I'd never bought a refurbished laptop before but decided to test it out with a refurbished Z890. I paid about $1500.The specs - 3.06 GHz, 500 gig, 7200 rpm HDD, Blu-Ray read/write, large capacity battery. I got it today and looked it over so carefully. It looks brand new. All stickers in place, etc. The only evidence that it's a refurb is that the corner of the windows sticker is undone and there's a big "refurbished" sticker on it. It came double boxed, and wrapped in plastic to a piece of cardboard affixed to the bottom of the box. Think saran wrap stretched over leftovers. The laptop is perfect in every way...except when I connect it to my 23" LG I can see horizontal flickering like pulsating electricity across the screen. The laptop screen itself is beautiful. No flickering.

If you have any concerns...based on my experience you should be okay. They give a 30 day return policy.

I'm sure the Z11 is even better but would cost $3200 for the same setup. I bought an F11 a couple of months ago and have a love/hate relationship with it so I didn’t want to spend too much. This should do for a while. I do wish it had backlighting though.

 

is it hooked up via VGA or HDMI or DVI or other?

 

I hooked it up vga.

 

Does the flickering go away if you run your laptop on battery?

 

Good question. Yes, it does it when plugged in but not on battery. It goes crazy when plugged in 1/2 way. It doesn't pulsate when plugged in without ther external monitor. Battery or no battery. Power supply?

 

Plug in the monitor and laptop to different power outlets, or might have yourself a ground loop.

 

Will do I'll let you know. I really appreciate your help.

 

I have no problem with refurb Sony except for one issue: I am told that refurb does not qualify for Sony branded extended warranty along with accidental damage. If it wasn't for that, i would get refurb also, especially in the configuration that you have. I picked up a new one in December using BING of the same config for $1800 shipped after Bing rebate. Would not mind picking up another one if I can get your price, AND qualify for Sony's extended warranty.

UL

 

I got them going into different sockewts from the same outlet. Still the same. Will try at work in the morning.

 

Got extended warranty. I took 1 year It's offered in the check out process.

 

@Glashub
From the sound of your (new) machine, it has a T9900 CPU?
Can I ask how it performs? That is, do you notice it clocking itself down regularly with sudden lagginess?

Also, rather keen if you plan on doing some modding in the future (eg, swapping out the HDD for a SSD, or adding a 2nd HDD in the DVD bay)?

...And... Any idea how old overall (from leaving the factory floor) your Z is?

 

@ Glashub

Are there the diagonal lines present on the screen and how noticeable if so ? Have you hooked the Z up to an HDTV via HDMI and played a Blu-ray yet ? I too am wondering how the T9900 performs, especially since I have a P8700 in my Z. Thank you for the update on your purchase.

 

@namaiki - It looks like you are right. I brought the laptop into the office and it works flawlessly when extended. It must be an electrical problem. I don' understand why my 2009 SR never exhibited a problem. Interestingly the power went out in our neighborhood this morning. Thanks for putting me in the right direction. I'm bringing another monitor home today just to check if it’s a monitor problem. If I remember correctly there is a little device I can buy to eliminate the ground loop.

@5ushimonster - I have not noticed any lagging at all. But I haven't done any real testing. I have an F11 that throttles down on battery. This doesn't seem to. I'm having an SSD put in not too far in the future. The manufacture date is 10/2009. As stated though there is no sign at all that this laptop was ever used.

@ehosey2 - No diagonal lines. And no problems with the laptop now that namaik put me in the right direction. I don't think see any difference in the T9900 and my i7 the way I've used it so far. Tested a blu-ray...loaded quick and played beautifully as far as I went with it.

 

You can try a cheater plug (I haven't seen these in Australia, so I not any experience using one), but for my same issue I have a 15M or so extension cord that goes upstairs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheater_plug

Or you could purchase an AC adaptor for your laptop that has two prongs. I, uh, assume that your sockets at home are grounded.

 

@namaiki - Well some are and some aren't. The house is about 100 years old. The blessing and bane of living in Portland, OR, is that it is rich with millions of excellent old houses but alot of them haven't been fully upgraded.