There is one place that is famous in the UK for buying and selling tech particularly newish… if I can remember the name I will post. It’s practically a household name and better recommended than ebay (though ebay has some good names)
EDIT remembered…it’s CES. Seen good reports both buying and selling
I’ve no experience of them but QWERTY is available,
The Facebook group only links sellers and buyers - there are no online transactions. Generally, you message, then phone, then go to view/try the equipment, and pay (if it’s what you want).
Is that CEX?
I only really use my mobile phone for everything and the one I have now is a recent reconditioned model from GiffGaff….(less than a year old and with warranty)
I just checked and they don’t yet do laptops
In U.K. there’s music magpie and whilst I have only ever bought second hand cds from them for my mum on birthdays and Christmas which have been good as new I think they also do second hand laptops etc….might be worth a look…,
Oops yes
I thought that too Lily, but as, after 50 odd years of typing my command of the skill is worse not better, I am wondering if it makes much difference to have an azerty.
I have a recon Dell laptop that is very temperamental. I have to batter it now and again to get bthe top row to work and this morning the curser wandered vall over bthe nplace. I then did what I often do nwhen it won’t fire up, disconnect everything, including the battery. That bteaches it to misbehave.
BTW, I have left the previous para just as it was typed to demonstrate my vanishing skills. These 2 sentences* alone required 4 corrections. Even when I look at the keys I can’t guarantee to hit the right one. *4 sentences 9 corrections, who needs qwerty, not me I reckon. 
@David_Spardo 
I have tried Azerty because my son and DiL said I would get used to it, wrong! It’s fine if just for small short jobs, but emails and letter writing I find I am reluctantly keeping them short 
My space bar needs a hard tap, otherwisethishappens, probably crumbs 
any advice how to clean?
With the laptop turned off, turn it sideways so it stands on one edge, then go all round tapping it gently to dislodge dirt. If you have a blower brush/canned air then also give that a go to see if it can blow out the detritis.
Some keyboards are more prone to this. I had Sony that developed an problem where some keys required a real thump to register, ad the only answer was a replacement keybaord.
I’ve got a special attachment that fits onto a hoover nozzle something like this - mine’s not as fancy. Set the hoover to a low setting - eg curtains so as not to do damage.
You’ve set me thinking there Sue, I have a small compressor which I used as a bellows when we used the log burner. It is really for blowing up airbeds etc. but poked through the holes in the doors it soon got the flames going with no back draft of ash.
I reckon a quick spurt with that might save me from bashing this bloody laptop.
I have bought refurbished Macs (and iPhones) - mostly from Apple themselves, with no problems at all.
If you buy from Apple you get the usual warranty, and also qualify for AppleCare.
My 10 year old Mac Pro (which was a refurb is still going strong.
However I would suggest taking a good look at the new M1 Macs - they are a step-change up from the old Intel-based models and are worth paying a bit more for.
I kept my old Mac Pro to use as a big file storage box, and for my email and general admin, and in March added an M1 Mac Mini as my main photo and video editing computer (I am a professional photographer).
It’s very good for that, and cost me around £850. So if your budget can stretch to an M1 Mac I think you will get more life out of it than an Intel Mac.
PS M1 Macs need less RAM than Intel ones, so don;t be put off if it “only” has 8GB or 16GB of RAM, that will be fine.
It’s worth just qualifying that - if you’re a normal user then this is quite true.
However if you’re a user of something like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop then the applications still need the same amount of RAM that they did with an Intel machine, and will resort to use of a swapfile. This can slow things down a little and may have implications for SSD lifespan (there were some early reports of premature failures, possibly now sorted). For those doing photo, video or audio editing, granted this kind of machine isn’t going to be your obvious tool anyway, but something with a greater capacity should be favoured.
Not a problem in my experience - and the reviews of the M1 Macs that I watched/read before I bought mine seem to bear this out - the RAM usage with M1 Macs seems to be more efficient, partly because the RAM is more closely integrated with the CPU and GPU I believe.
I edit RAW photos in Lightroom and 4K video in Premiere Pro on my 8GB M1 Mac Mini, and performance is noticeably better than on my old Mac Pro, which has 48GB of RAM and an 8GB Radeon RX 580 graphics card.
The M1 chip is very very good with LR, but next time you’re editing it’s probably worth having a look to see how much RAM is being used and how much data being sent to the SSD. Some of the guys I know who bought early M1 Macs have sold them on again for this reason, waiting for the professional version to be available with more memory.
Granted you may already know all about this, but there’s a thread on another forum that may be useful - I’ve known some of these guys years, and trust their comments from their own experience: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/2020-macbook-pro-13-m1-8-or-16gb.728185/
Yes. Completely agree with those on here who buy recon. laptops and phones, tablets. Well worth it. (One plus, no one wants to steal your mobile). Go for it.
I am looking for this type of laptop (continually checking Apple refurbished site) because, rightly or wrongly I am hoping it may be the last one I have to buy 
Re-conditioned and bought from Apple is a pretty safe bet. In many cases these are products returned by a customer within their grace period, so hardly used, but no longer sellable as new. However Apple does not get too many such returns, so you need to keep an eye on the website.
A couple of other considerations: 1. Apple products tend to remain in use for rather longer than PCs, typically being passed down the family for up to ten years. However as you might expect, after a while they will no longer run the latest software, so buying one that is not current may make this the case rather sooner.
And 2. Apple has just made a change to the chips it uses. No significant changes to how it works, but these new chips (M1) give much longer battery life, and are generally faster than the previous ones. This is a step change, so you may want to be on the more recent side of this change, for better battery, speed and longevity
Hope this helps
Eh? I’m writing this on a non-Apple laptop (was Windows, now Linux) that I brought with me from the UK nearly 10 years ago - and I bought it secondhand!
I’m not an Apple user, but was under the impression that their built-in-obsolescence was a real problem?
