Apple iBook G4. Credit: Apple Inc.

Someone donated a cool little Apple iBook G4 (ca. 2006) to our Friends group. At first the recipients thought it was dead. Turning it over to me resulted in a functioning computer ready for sale to benefit the group.

A cautionary tale is, however, in order:

Once I got the notebook booted I started looking around on its hard drive and checking the machine’s applications. Nice: Mac OS-X ver. 10.5.8. All of the Apple basics. Very good. Wi-Fi access — hmmmm…… what’s this in the Safari browser? The former owner’s Gmail account… OPEN! And her Amazon.com account login! Gad!! Between those two things, plus the identity information she failed to remove from the Mac, I could have purchased no end of items and produced no limit of trouble for the goodhearted Ms. K.  Yikes! Thank goodness the Mac wasn’t sold to some bad guy!

I instantly logged out of Gmail, erased the browser history, cleared her identity information. Ideally the hard drive should have been formatted but, with no OS installation discs, that would have reduced the used computer’s sale value to near zero. Clearly, however, the former owner’s level of risk has been vastly reduced through the little bit of work I did in her stead.

And if the Friends can’t sell the little Mac, I hope to buy it!