Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

A good gift PC represents the bare minimum of what you should do to get your computer ready for a new home. Fortunately, that doesn’t take much time, effort, or money. It essentially involves removing your data files thoroughly and clearing out basic network settings.

You won’t have any access to files on a PC that leaves your possession, so if you haven’t already copied them off its hard drive, you’ll need to do so before you delete them. The My Documents folder is where most of your files live, but if you have multiple Windows users, there’s a My Documents folder for each one. If you use AOL, you probably have personal files in its Downloads folder. Quicken, QuickBooks, and TurboTax put their data files in unusual locations you should double-check: Quicken uses C:\Quickenw, C:\Program Files\Quickenw, or C:\Program Files\Intuit\Quicken. QuickBooks data files live in C:\Program Files\Intuit\Quickbooks. TurboTax usually stores its files in the TAX01 folder inside the default installation folder; search for files with a .tax extension to be sure.

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Tags: buy, computer

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

You can add a lot of value to an old computer by installing and configuring software that its new owner could really use, and by resetting the operating system to as close to factory fresh as possible.

No one should be without at least a word processor (if not a whole office suite) and an antivirus program. If you’re removing such software for licensing reasons, at least install some free alternatives. OpenOffice ( www.openoffice.org ) is an excellent substitute for Microsoft Office (and Microsoft Word). Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition ( http://free.grisoft.com ) is a fine alternative to any commercial antivirus product, and your beneficiary won’t have to pay for annual virus-definition subscriptions.

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Tags: buy, computer, software

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

The best gift PC is a computer that’s as close to new as possible, in terms of both hardware and software. It represents the most work for you, but the reward is a computer that will be as trouble-free as possible, and no one can pull your personal data off the hard drive, because you’ll be replacing it.

Windows works best when it is freshly installed from scratch on a clean hard drive, so if you’re looking to make the computer as trouble-free as possible, reformatting the hard drive and installing Windows from the Windows installation discs is one way to go. But prices of new hard drives have come way down—you can get a 40GB drive for under $60 and a 200GB drive for less than $100—so consider replacing the drive.

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Tags: buy, computer, hardware