The Digital Dog told me that they have an Olympus 450 Zoom that has been refurbished by the manufacturer. They said that it was a brand new camera that had been returned to Olympus and that Olympus put in an 8MB memory to replace the 4MB one and that they added an aspherical lens so that the LCD image on the camera appears less pixelated. They want $439 for the camera. Is there any reason that I should not believe them? Is there any way I can find out if they are lying? Should I worry that there is something wrong with the camera that they are not telling me about? I am a pretty suspicious person so it is hard for me to just believe their word.

thanks, angie

-- Angie Locatelli (jim_angie@hotmail.com), March 02, 2000

Answers

Hi Angie,

There are a number of vendors selling refurbs. I don't know if I'd buy the bit about replacing the lens... It should have had a decent one to start with unless there was some unusual defect?

Anyhow, just doing some quick webchecking through:

www.computershopper.com

I found: http://www.compdirect.com/

where they have the same model NEW for $449 and only $369 for the refurbished version...

Good Luck.

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francomm.com), March 02, 2000.

Angie

I would check this link out before I would buy from Digital Dog.

http://www.20-20consumer.com/htm/distributorinfo.asp? page=3091&sid=1692#survey

Tom

-- Tom C (tjc74@prodigy.net), March 03, 2000.

Um, I am getting the impression that they are telling you that the camera ships with a 4 megabyte card, and that they are doing you some kind of "favor" by putting an 8 megabyte card in it for you, as an added incentive for you to buy it? Am I understanding this correctly? As far as I know, everything I have read about this camera has indicated that *all* Olympus 450 Z's, even the brand new ones, come with an 8 megabyte card. If they are trying to tell you that it normally comes with a 4 megabyte card, they are lying to you. Sorry if I misunderstood what you were tryiing to say, but if not, then I hope this helps. Good luck! -Daniel

P.S. I just got my Casio QV2000 UX from Buy.com two days ago. The camera was about $518, but they had a $10 off coupon for new customers, so it only cost me $508. I then added a 32 megabyte compact flash card, and it ended up being $594, including the shipping costs. The Casio QV2000 is actually very similar to the Olympus D-450Z (which I had initially ordered, but then cancelled because it was out of stock everywhere) except that it is a 2.1 megapixel instead of the 1.3 megapixel resolution of the Olympus D- 450Z. This means I should be able to print pictures up to 8X10. Plus, it offers full manual control over shutter speed, aperature, manual focus...it even has the same kind of sliding lens cover that the D-450 has. I'm a happy camper!

-- Daniel Culbertson (8of9@voyager.net), March 03, 2000.

"Added an aspherical lens so the LCD image would be less pixelated"? - That's absolute hogwash. (a) AFAIK, the 450Z has an aspheric lens in the first place, (b) A mfr wouldn't be "adding" a different lens in the process of doing a refurb. (c) Aspheric lens elements have nothing to do with pixelation. I'd run, not walk away from those guys, find a dealer that doesn't try to bamboozle you with technobabble. (And as noted by others here, that price isn't so fantastic for a refurb unit in the first place.)

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), March 04, 2000.