Refurb laptops are the way to go for me. I just handed down to my mom a Dell one I had been using for 4 years that I bought refurb. With the memory & hard drive upgrade we put into it, it will serve her well as a web surfing machine for quite awhile but it didn’t have the speed anymore do things I needed like process RAW files. I replaced it with a refurb 13″ MacBook. There’s such a price premium on laptops, the discount buying refurb helps! I took the cash I saved from the discount and put it into a memory and hard drive upgrade.

My favorite way to get gadget discounts on what I need is to try to time my purchases with the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and shop on Black Friday sales. I’ve gotten insanely cheap SD cards and portable hard drives, for instance, by waiting in line at Staples before they open. That weekend is absolutely a fabulous time to buy electronics, especially if you don’t need the top-of-the-line models.

I have no problem buying used or refurb (iPods, laptops, cameras) and have had good luck. I try to make the right decision to get things I will use often, but do get the occasional item that I end up not using much like the JVC hard drive camera. It’s a pain to convert the video to a more common standard like MPG or AVI. Thinking about selling that one.

Haven’t tried the Craig’s List trade off approach. Might look into that.