For several weeks, Staples has been selling laptop and desktop computers with a unique offer.\u00a0 They will give you a $50 discount if you give them a laptop or desktop to recycle.\u00a0 That is between a 5 and 10 percent discount on the price of a new computer.\u00a0 I am all for saving money when the opportunity arises.\u00a0 Nevertheless, you have to be cautious when something appears to be \u201ctoo good to be true,\u201d and this offer bears some scrutiny.<\/p>\n
The fine print of the Staples offer is quite specific.\u00a0 They want you to give them a computer that works.\u00a0 Yes, your trade-in has to be able to boot to Windows (XP, Vista, or even Windows 7), have a \u201cworking AC adapter and undamaged screen.\u00a0 At the time of trade-in, laptops must power on and boot up to operating system, desktops must power on.\u201d<\/p>\n
I am not at all certain why they have this requirement, but I don\u2019t like it.\u00a0 If you give them a working computer, it has all of your files on it.\u00a0 It has all of your e-mail correspondence.\u00a0 It also has all of the web browser sessions where you have plugged in your user id and password, because you cannot remember what you used for you bank account versus Amazon.com.\u00a0 In other words, it is a treasure trove of personal information that could \u2013 in the hands of a malicious individual \u2013 be used run up charges on your credit cards, ruin your credit rating, or steal your identity.<\/p>\n
To their credit, Staples has text on their web site that assures customers that their technicians will, in no way, look at any of that information before they run a utility program to delete all of the data on the computer\u2019s hard drive.\u00a0 I believe their lawyers had to insist on that.\u00a0 At the same time, do you really want to take that kind of risk just to save $50?\u00a0 I certainly don\u2019t!<\/p>\n
Yet there is something you can do to protect your personally identifiable information before you give them your computer for trade-in.\u00a0 It takes less than half an hour and requires just a few simple steps.<\/p>\n
The \u201ctrick\u201d is to create a new user ID on your computer.\u00a0 You will then log on to your computer as that user, and remove your existing user ID.\u00a0 This will eliminate the majority of the personal information that can easily be obtained and give you some peace of mind if you decide to take Staples up on their $50 offer.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you need to do:<\/p>\n
Click Start and select Control Panel.\u00a0 Whether you are in Category View or Classic View, double-click User Accounts.<\/p>\n
Under \u201cPick a task\u2026\u201d click Create a new account<\/p>\n
Under \u201cName the new account\u201d type in the name for the new account.\u00a0 I would suggest the following, NoOne, and click Next.<\/p>\n
Under \u201cPick an account type\u201d use the default, Computer administrator, and click Create Account.<\/p>\n
Close this window and the Control Panel.<\/p>\n
Now restart your computer.\u00a0 Click Start, Turn off computer, Restart.\u00a0 The new user ID will appear on the Windows Welcome page.<\/p>\n
Click that new account.\u00a0 Windows will spend a few minutes creating the desktop \u2013 it will not have any of your customizations, but will look just like when you first got your computer.\u00a0 (Some of you may not remember that far back\u2026)<\/p>\n
Once again, click Start and select Control Panel.\u00a0 Double-click User Accounts.<\/p>\n
If you are using Category View, under \u201cPick a task\u201d click Change an account.<\/p>\n
Then, under \u201cPick an account to change\u201d click your old user ID.<\/p>\n
Under \u201cWhat do you want to change about your account\u201d click the Change my account type link.<\/p>\n
Under \u201cPick a new account type\u201d select Limited and click Change Account Type.<\/p>\n
You will be returned to the \u201cWhat do you want to change about your account\u201d window.\u00a0 This time, click the Delete the account link.<\/p>\n
Windows asks if you want to keep the files \u2013 and the whole purpose of this exercise is to eliminate them \u2013 so click Delete files.<\/p>\n
Windows has a final prompt, to make sure you know that everything will be deleted.\u00a0 You want to do that, so click Delete the Account.<\/p>\n
Depending on the number of files you have, and the age of your computer, the delete process can take either a few minutes or a half hour.\u00a0 Get a cup of coffee, read a magazine, or go run some errands.\u00a0 You must have the patience to wait this one out.<\/p>\n
After it is finished, you can close Windows and feel better about giving your computer to Staples knowing that you have eliminated the bulk of your personal information and can save $50 on a new computer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For several weeks, Staples has been selling laptop and desktop computers with a unique offer.\u00a0 They will give you a $50 discount if you give them a laptop or desktop to recycle.\u00a0 That is between a 5 and 10 percent discount on the price of a new computer.\u00a0 I am all for saving money when …<\/span> Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everyone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heliotropicsystems.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}