Preparing a MacBook to sell on Ebay

robert guyerrobert guyer
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014


We are going to sell our 2009 Macbook on ebay next month and I had a few questions about preparing it for sale.  We will delete all of our photos and music prior to selling it, but what about the rest of the software?  We have Office, Adobe CS5, iLife, and several other programs that a new buyer may enjoy but I want to make sure that if we sell it with software loaded, we can still use the software on our new machine.  


 


How should I proceed?  

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Robert Guyer View Post

    We have Office, Adobe CS5, iLife, and several other programs that a new buyer may enjoy but I want to make sure that if we sell it with software loaded, we can still use the software on our new machine.




    Well, that's illegal. If you're selling it with Office and Adobe stuff, you won't be able to use Office or the Adobe stuff on your new machine unless you buy a new copy. Same with iLife, but that's of less concern as Macs come with that.


     


    Legally you have to send them the Office and Adobe discs when you sell the machine if you're selling it preloaded with that software.

  • Reply 2 of 6
    robert guyerrobert guyer Posts: 4member


    I upgraded to CS Creative Cloud, so do I need the old discs? As for Office, I will delete that.  

  • Reply 3 of 6
    robert guyerrobert guyer Posts: 4member


    I upgraded to CS Creative Cloud, so do I need the old discs? As for Office, I will delete that.  

  • Reply 4 of 6
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Then it's pretty straightforward. Copy your data off, zero out the hard drive, install OS X, install the software you're sending.

  • Reply 5 of 6
    robert guyerrobert guyer Posts: 4member


    how do I zeroe it out if I did the upgrade to the latest OS via the App store?

  • Reply 6 of 6
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Robert Guyer View Post

    how do I zeroe it out if I did the upgrade to the latest OS via the App store?


     


    Reboot and hold Option. Choose the recovery partition. In the Menu Bar, choose Tools, Disk Utility. Find the proper hard drive, go to erase, and choose zero out. You don't have to do 7- or 35-pass. Once that's done, go back to the installer, and it will reinstall Lion from this partition. It'll boot into it when it's done.


     


    Or you can burn yourself a Lion disc with the Recovery Disk Assistant in Macintosh HD/Applications/Utilities (though I think you might have to download that manually…).

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