68K Performa

Nice score.

As for your final comment, what did you find, and what the hell were you doing going through someone else's personal stuff? (assuming you were)

It was only a tax return! Just something I would never do with all that identity theft crap that goes on. Needless to say I will delete those (being the honest guy that I am).

Oh, right, I thought it was going to be something major.

As for me, if I was to get rid of a computer, I'd pull the HDD out before getting rid of it, for the obvious reasons.

Whenever I get an old computer, I always take a quick look through the hard drive to try figuring out what it was used for.

Found an old PowerMac that belonged to a radio station(Had some pre-recorded radio jingles and some recording studio software)

Found a Mac Classic II that was used by a college student, who I assume eventually became a teacher of some sort(Had bunch of college type essays, and then newer documents were work rubriks and stuff like that)

If I see a copy of quickbooks installed or something, I'll delete the program and the files because I don't have any interest in looking through peoples tax stuff, same with saved aim passwords, internet history, and pictures(one exception I made, that radiostation mac had some pictures taken from a quicktake of the mac when it was setup and various other pictures from the station's buidling)

It was only a tax return! Just something I would never do with all that identity theft crap that goes on. Needless to say I will delete those (being the honest guy that I am).

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Admit it, the previous owner left nekkid pictures of his girlfriend on it!

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Liars... lol [] ]'>

Well I read every single document thourougly, look at every picture and try to find hidden and deletes files for close examination whenever I get a long used computer or harddisk in my hand.

You never know what terribly interesting things you might find.

Take Holland for example. Some state attorney (pf.... I hope that's the right word) dump their computer with *all* work related documents right on the drive, not even password protected.

You could get rich... famous... whatever.

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One of my Compact Macs was used by the host of "The Movie Show" and has interview scripts etc on it.

I don't think it's wrong to look through what's been left by previous owners as long as you don't release the details or use it for the wrong purposes.

And no, Quadraman, no nekkid pics have turned up yet

I just don't like it, because as it is its already hard enough to get old machines, with people being paranoid enough about data as they are today, without people talking about going through people's HDDs. A lot of people really don't understand the whole concept of "If you take the hard drive out, its impossible to recover any data from the rest of the computer", and are therefore paranoid, so yeah, I just don't like it. I'm sorry.

A lot of people really don't understand the whole concept of "If you take the hard drive out, its impossible to recover any data from the rest of the computer", and are therefore paranoid,

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I think most of those people probably don't know what a hard drive is.

I just don't like it. I'm sorry.

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If somebody sold a wallet on eBay would you look to see if they had left any money in it?

In terms of ownership rights, by selling you the machine *with* the data, they can't complain if you look at it.

They may be selling you "a copy" of the data, yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it is ethical to look at other peoples private affairs.