I purchased many computer and ipods directly from Apple - both new and refurbished. Apart from the plain-box packaging, I have found refurbished products to be indistinguishable from new items. I have an emac I bought refurbed 5 years ago, and it is still running strong. One time, I bought a shuffle, and I had problems with it - but Apple quickly replaced it without any questions. The other ipods I've bought over the years have been going strong.

I purchased a refurb nano and after about 8 months the light went out in it. It was still under the one year warranty so I was able to get another one by paying the shipping which was $25. Expensive for shipping but they had DHL to pick it up in about 12 hours and they had my new one to me the next day. That one has since been stolen, so I am about to purchase another refurb from them.

Does it make sense to pay $34 for the extended warranty?

i got in on the refurb iphone deal... it couldn't be in newer condition.

Got a refurb iPhone from them, same story, plain white box, but packaged like new and works great to this day

I got a refurb nano from Apple.com that would not take a charge after a few months. I returned it at the Apple Store and I got a replacement without any problems

I've bought two refurbished iPods: a 60 gb iPod photo from Small Dog in 12/2006 that came with a one year Apple Warranty and an 8gb iPod 2nd Gen nano from the Apple Store. The nano has had no issues except for occasionally freezing after I've synced it with my iBook that a hard reboot always fixes. My iPod photo has been sent in for service so many times I've lost count (I think 4 times). I did get the Applecare extended warranty for it after the second incident since it was after period when you can no longer ship it back to Apple for free. It started freezing up again a few weeks ago with the sad iPod icon and Apple has agreed to replace it with a different model. They were going to replace it with the 80 gb iPod classic but they also gave me the option to upgrade to a higher end model for a nominal fee. So I opted for the $250 upgrade to the iPod touch 32 gb since I don't want another hard drive based iPod after my experience with the iPod photo. So I'd recommend getting Applecare if you opt for one of the hard drive based models.