I just want to watch movies and stuff. Can this thing be seriously locked to the cloud (I guess he means he doesn't have the password?) and not be reset to factory defaults?
Yeah, I was going to ask for the serial number. I'm going blind trying to watch movies in bed on my ipod touch. I did manage to get an old version of Netflix on it. I call it my ipad nano. I'll grab a full size ipad off Apple's refurb site after they announce the bigger one.
You mentioned that you intended to check the serial number. Just in case you didn't know about the option, there is an easy way to find out if a particular iDevice you find for sale was locked down by the previous owner, which could indicate that it was actually stolen or lost. But you'd need that serial number to do so.