New MacBookPro User? Advice wanted on used purchase.

Greetings everyone,
Thanks for letting me join. I'm brand new to the forum, and possibly brand new to a Mac. Research has led me here for advice from current users. I've been a satisfied PC user for years and am very PC "literate" if you will. Father was employed by IBM for 35+ years, we had PCs galore in our hands for years. Have happily owned many PC desktops near trouble free. I have recently become intrigued by Macs as my brother is a user, and I am VERY happy iPhone 4 owner, my girlfriend loves her iPhone and iPad, and her entire family loves their Apple products.
I write because a colleague of mine has let me know he is selling his 15" MacBookPro that he purchased about 8 months ago. For the past two months, the laptop has sat idle, opened but once or twice to check an internet page, and transfer some pictures which is why he is selling it. Otherwise it darn near brand new. This seems like a great deal, and I am in the market for a new Laptop and Desktop both. I think I'm ready to make the switch, especially with the price I was offered, $800 with a case for a $1,300 machine that has hardly any mileage. But I have some questions first:

-Will the warranty, if any is left, be transferred to me in the sale?
-Will I be able to register the product in my name to take advantage of updates and new product info/specials?
-Will I still be able to take it to a Mac Store for technical support as a transferred/2nd owner?
-What can I do, and who can I trust to go to for help resetting the maching back to factory settings as if it were brand new out of the box? (This is the most important to me, as I want to start from SCRATCH and sync my phone, pictures, and music in one place that will easily sync with my iPhone. I want it RESET to FACTORY start, deleting his pictures, passwords, settings, etc., I don't know if this is difficult, with a PC it isn't TOO difficult, but sometimes a pain.)

Thank you so much in advance for anyone and everyone's time and help. I'm excited to make the switch.

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

-Will the warranty, if any is left, be transferred to me in the sale?

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Yes. And if you choose, before the initial warranty expires (1 year) you can add Apple care which will extend the warranty an additional 2 years.

-Will I be able to register the product in my name to take advantage of updates and new product info/specials?

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Yes.

-Will I still be able to take it to a Mac Store for technical support as a transferred/2nd owner?

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Yes.

-What can I do, and who can I trust to go to for help resetting the machine back to factory settings as if it were brand new out of the box?

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Our forums can assist you doing just that. When you're ready, post back and we can guide you through the process.

Just got home with it. Has the original hard drive disks and am about to start reading around online what to do. Any suggestions?

If you have the original disks, you're pretty much all set. I would recommend booting from the disks and SKIPPING the installation part at first, go to the menu bar (after the language choice selection) and click Disk Utility and ZERO OUT the hard drive (just one pass is more than sufficient).

Then go back and do the installation process as normal. It will go very smoothly. Once done, be sure to run Software Update until there are no more updates to do (again, this won't take terribly long).

Enjoy!

20 minutes and counting. Thanks for the all the help!