Where do you find a refurbished Mac Mini other than Apple?

Question

Bare w/ me for a moment.  Here's my situation...
I currently have a 2003 1.25 Ghz single processor MDD.  I got it on eBay for about $200 a few years ago and it looks almost brand new.  Also have about $200 in replacing the hard drive, PRAM battery and adding more RAM to the limit of 2GB.  I love the Mac, but it's been doing the infamous start-up problem lately.  Have read here that the PRAM battery needs replaced, since it was unplugged for a while.  Am in the process of ordering a new battery...
Anyway, if (hope not!) the MDD becomes toast, I can't afford and don't have the time to fix it.  If it dies, I'll need to sell (how much is a dead MDD worth?) or give it to another Mac person that would want to work on it...  I certainly would not put it in the landfill (I try to be "green.")!  It runs Tiger and was thinking about upgrading it to Leopard, but that OS is at least $100 on eBay...  Am getting scared that the MDD isn't going to be reliable and I want to stay with a desktop.  I do not want an iMac because of they're too expensive and hard to upgrade if needed.  Certainly don't want a G5 with all of its cooling etc. problems.  Apple is making it hard on chosing a decent desktop, IMO.  I am a Windows "switcher" and like Mac and its easy way of doing most things.  Certainly don't want to be forced to go back to uh, Windows just because of limited destop choices...!
Anyway, back to the subject matter at hand... 
Have looked at used Minis on of course, eBay.  Can't believe that a lot of them are going for ridiculous prices, as a new one from Apple is about $700 (which I think is insane!).  Of course, my budget is limited and most the ones that are in my price range are the G4's.  Have read how "fun" it is to upgrade the G4's etc., and I don't want to even miss with that if I had to!  I can't afford the refurbished ones from Apple.  They're almost as expensive as a brand new one.  Have only found refurblised ones at Power Max, but most of them only have small drives (80GB or less) and less than 1GB of RAM.  Are there any other companies that have refurbished Minis available at a decent price?  I wouldn't be able to afford much more that $350-$400.
Sorry for rambling on, but I maybe getting at wits end, if the MDD croaks!  Just want to see what my possible options are.  Thanks.
silverado93

Answer 1

when it doubt, purchase applecare. we have been successful in applying applecares to cowboom items
and then having them fix small problems, like a bad wireless card, but your milage will vary. apple wont
applecare ebay items, but best buy is a licensed apple dealer so they might go for it.
we have received scratch and dents from cowboom, but so far apple of course won't remove the
dents or scratches of course, but for other problems with refurbished or reconditioned cowboom items
applecare has been most generous
ive also noticed that amazon is a good place to buy new mac products, they had a gold box deal on a mac mini server
just recently for a little over $900.
microcenter is a good place too to buy mac books new too