Congratulations...!
Congratulations. You saved a bunch of money... and your GPU is actually warranted for longer than it would have been on a new model.
Ironic, ain't it?
I'm on my eighth month with my refurb MBP, and it's been flawless. Sure, something can always go wrong, but as far as electronic purchases that's always the case. So far, so good.
I run smcFanControl and have created several different speed settings that I use, and for 90% of the time I run the fans at 2500rpm. I call that "real light cooling," as I name all my fan settings. I've got six settings - default: 2000rpm; real light cooling: 2500rpm; light cooling: 3000rpm; higher speed: 4000 rpm; max chilldown: 5500rpm; and top speed: 6000rpm.
Obviously you can create your own settings, but I find it routine to just monitor my temps on top of the screen, and manually speed things up if the temps start to climb over 120-125F. Most of the time they hover between 108F and 118F, unless I put a big video processing load on it. For typical multi-tasking (FF 3, iTunes, Aperture, Google Earth, OpenOffice, Crossover running Windows Office 2000, Dreamweaver...) it usually stays fairly cool, and well within the range I want it to.
It's not just heat that's the enemy of the GPU (all of them) but more importantly it's the constant swing from cold to hot, up and down as laptops are closed, put to sleep, transported, etc over the course of a day, compared to a desktop machine. If that temp range is reduced considerably, and temps maintained within a very reasonable range, I think it could make all the difference in the world over the long haul. I'm not a believer in stressing the hell out of my machine just to make it fail so I can get warranty work on it done. I like to take care of my machines, even though I do expect them to do the job. It's more than cosmetic care, (which some folks are more interested in with all the protective covers, etc,) but it's knowingly keeping the temps steady... and reasonably low.
Some folks would rather take the position that if they paid $$$ for it, they should be able to just run the hell out of it without any consideration for how they could help it last. That's their choice, but I haven't had any warranty issues for a long time with almost anything I've purchased. I don't think I'm all alone in this, but you mainly hear from those who have complaints, and not those who are just happy plugging away doing work.
Enjoy your refurb MBP Classic, and just don't go looking for every little nitpicky thing to complain about. If you treat it right, it will last a long time. And if something goes wrong, Apple has the industry best standard of customer service, bar none. Don't let the horror stories sour you on what should be a happy, productive time with a great laptop, one of the best ever made. Still got Consumer Reports top ranking again this year, not that they're the last word on things, but they are non-biased and the MBP Classic rated tops, even though it was not the cheapest laptop in it's class.
Anyway, congrats again.
