Cash advice

Kitting out the kids (or yourself!) with gadgets for school or university can be costly. But the Financially Fabulous Money Team says you needn’t pay full price for a new laptop or printer. Use these tips to be an A-grade bargain hunter…

1 STUDENT DISCOUNTS

Apple and Microsoft offer online savings on laptops and tablets. Save up to £270 on the price of selected Apple Macs, or up to £55 on an iPad Pro until the start of October. Or, save up to £280 on selected Microsoft Surface laptops and tablets. For Apple discounts, register with Unidays (myunidays.com/GB/en- GB). For Microsoft, you’ll need a uni email address ending in ac.uk.

2 REFURB BARGAINS

Retailers including Argos and Tesco sell heavily discounted laptops through eBay’s refurbished tech store (ebay.co.uk/rpp/refurbishedtechnology). These devices have been returned by their original buyer, but are then tested and repaired, if necessary, before being resold. Both Argos and Tesco offer a 12-month guarantee. At the time of writing, we found refurbished £300 laptops for sale with a £60 discount.

3 DISCOUNTED PRINTERS

It’s not just refurbished laptops that offer great value for money. Choosing a reconditioned printer is another great way to bag a bargain. By shopping around on the eBay tech store, we found refurbished HP printers on sale for half the normal price.

4 TRADE-INS

Get a discount on a new laptop by trading in your old one. Currys PC World offers trade-in discounts of £50 to £200, depending on the age and condition of your old laptop. At the time of writing, Apple offered us a £165 Apple Store gift card for a MacBook Air (2012 model) with 256GB of storage space.

5 DELETE DATA

Remove files, photos, videos and passwords before trading in a device, and download Eraser 6 to overwrite files stored on Windows computers, advises tech expert Carrie-Ann Skinner. Got a Mac? Hold down the command and R keys at the same time. Select ‘disk utility’ and click on the sidebar. Under the ‘erase’ tab, enter the required info and click ‘erase’.