Prepping to Sell

I'm selling my iMac soon in favor of a nice, new (well, refurbished) MBP. I have a question though about erasing my data.

I want to get rid of essentially all of my data on the machine, but I want to make sure the iLife suite is kept on it for the next user. Any way to do this? IIRC, I did not get a disk with the iLife suite on it when I got this machine, although I may not remember correctly. I've never done this before, but I assume that when I wipe/erase my disc it will get rid of everything any not conveniently leave iPhoto and the like.

Also, if anyone has any tips for prepping the machine for sale it would be appreciated. Thanks.

Do you have the original restore disk or Snow Leopard disk.

If so you can do an erase and install. You can download the demo of iLife and install that, so that the new user will get a new install, and the 30 day trial of iLife as well.

Another thing you can try is to create a new user account. Then, go back and secure erase your old user account. That should do the trick without having to go through too much headache reinstalling or tracking down discs.

Thanks guys.

I actually just found out/remembered/realized (not sure which ) that iLife comes on the OS disc that comes with the system, so if I wipe this and re-install Snow Leopard (I'm going to give them my copy of SL since it's coming with my machine anyways) I should be able to reinstall the iLife suite from that disc using the packaged software installation, correct? Or can I only do that if I install Leopard (which is what the machine came with)?

Really appreciate the help!

Doesn't work that way - you can't use the install disk of your MBP to install onto the iMac - it has the wrong drivers (i.e. the drivers are for the MBP not the iMac) The disks that come with the machines are not the full retail disks. So you could probably install Snow Leopard on an old MBP from your MBP disk but not an iMac. Besides it breaks the EULA and SL upgrade is $30.

IvanLasston said:

Doesn't work that way - you can't use the install disk of your MBP to install onto the iMac - it has the wrong drivers (i.e. the drivers are for the MBP not the iMac)

Click to expand...

I never said I was going to do that. You're either confused or I presented it wrong, or possibly the former because of the latter.

An install disc game with my iMac. I later bought SL when it came out. Reinstall SL then reinstall the iLife suite from the install disc that originally came with my iMac. There should be nothing against EULA about that.

That should work OK, but you would need to reverse the process. Use the original install disk first to install iLife and other apps and then use the SL upgrade. The SL upgrade will leave iLife and other apps intact.

Regards.

Great. Thanks for your help!