New computers are fairly inexpensive now, but refurbished computers are the cheapest of all.

Refurbishing carries with it the idea that somehow the computer has been rebuilt because there were serious problems. In fact, this is almost never the case, not least because rebuilding would usually cost more in labor and parts than you could get for the computer.

Dell, for example, has long had a policy of taking any computer that's been returned and marking it for sale as refurbished, even if it's never been out of the box. Why would it have computers returned that had never been out of their shipping boxes? Well, schools and businesses and government agencies often order more computers than they actually need and so they send the extras back.

Bob ordered one of Dell's refurbished computers a few years back; there were no problems and it still works fine. All of Dell's refurbished computers come with a full warranty, and this is generally true with other companies as well.

We did a search around the Web and found that users were generally quite satisfied with refurbished computers from Dell (dell.com) and a less well-known seller, PublicSurplus.com. Public Surplus gets most of its computers from schools, and many of these have been used for only one semester. It sells tons of items, only some of which are computers, through online auctions, much like eBay.

Hewlett-Packard refurbished computers got less-than-stellar comments from blogs we looked at, not because of anything wrong with the machines, but because of H-P's intrusive and sometimes peculiar software. If you're technically hip, this can be removed, of course. One of the best sources is often your local newspaper; companies going out of business or changing offices will usually unload their computers for just a few dollars.

A free service at VirusTotal.com  will take any PC file that is ten megabytes or less and put it through a rigorous scan by 32 of the best anti-virus programs.  

You start by downloading some software from VirusTotal.com. You then send them a file simply by right-clicking the file name and choosing VirusTotal as the “send to” destination. A full scan takes about one minute.

The site can handle files in any of 20 European and Asian languages. The web site managers point out they cannot guarantee that a file is 100 percent safe if the scan does not find any problems, but any virus that escapes detection by 32 anti-viral programs would have to be something very unusual. 

This service is generating considerable controversy between users and producers. As you might expect, a number of makers of anti-viral software are rather upset about the free scans and some have taken legal action to try and block the site from using their software. Trend Micro’s software, for example, was recently removed from the list of programs used by VirusTotal for their scans.