Refurbished just means it was sold and for whatever reason it was returned to the vender. The vender will usually go through the unit and make whatever repairs to make the unit sell-able again.

While you should ( not always ) get a better deal on the refurbished laptops, you have to read the fine print. In some cases, you can not send the computer back to the regular warranty repair station. You have to send the unit to a another designated service center. Sometimes the warranty is also shorten as well. I seen it drop from 1 year down to 90 days.

There are usually some minor scratches on refurbished laptop unit and they are occasionally marked “refurbished”. The one thing I have notice, they are usually not the current models, generally a model or two previous to the current one.