It's hard for me to visualize what the landscape will look like in 3 - 5 years with all of the innovation going on. The item that's relevant today will most likely be obsolete in 6 - 12 mos ? ie: DDR 2 memory, IDE HDD's, and Core 2 processors went the way of the Dodo bird during the past year.
LOL ... Five years from now something that hasn't even been invented yet will already be obsolete.
As far as consumer grade goods go it appears to be a race to the bottom ?
There are niches. The Mac products seem to appeal more to the discerning customer. The Mac refurbs appeal more to the discerning customer on a budget. The difficulty would be to get your hands on enough units to make a go of it. There's probably some kind of setup where you send in your Mac products that failed or got dropped while under warranty for an immediate replacement. It's like a factory approved refurbishing center ?
For working class & many middle class folks it's a trip to Wal-Mart for their electronics. In their minds there's a certain stigma attached to "refurbished". It's considered "less than". They're more apt to go with something new even though it may be of lesser quality.
I wonder if it would be better to do less of the consumer grade work & focus on providing " total care" service contracts to institutions like schools, govt agencies, and businesses. It would probably be cheaper for them to farm the work out to a private contractor than to keep an IT professional on salary. This would position someone on the ground floor for when new equipment is being purchased and old equipment is being taken out of service ?
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