Edinburgher gets cracking!

nattypants

I have two old laptops, however I wasn't sure how to 'clean' them? (as in get rid of any incriminating evidence:D)

edinburgher

I used a free product called CCleaner to tidy up, have used it for years and it works pretty well.

The main thing is making sure you delete your own documents/cookies/favourites/passwords from browsers etc. I'd also take off any software that you can't provide licence documents for (or at least a valid key)

Any professional reseller/site will do it for you, the DIY approach only comes in when you have a private sale (i.e. eB@y)

nattypants

Thanks Ed - yes exactly, it's all my dodgy MS @ffice I need to 'loose'

Is deleting/cookies/passwords/ fairly straightforward please?

jamesd

It isn't straightforward to delete everything.

If you have a recovery disk and know that you can boot from it - try! - then you can go with a hardware security erase then reinstall from the recovery disk. That'll be safe against all normal amounts of recovery effort but not against intelligence agencies and highly capable forensic computer labs looking for high value material like cryptographic keys. Ordinary law enforcement isn't likely to be able to justify the cost of such lab work and normal consumers certainly can't.

The issues with other methods include lack of completeness if it's just cookies and recent files, or lack of access to on-drive sectors that were damaged and copied somewhere else, so the originals can still be read. That's completely routine on modern hard drives, done at a level that the operating system never even knows about. It's why the hardware secure erase can beat overwriting programs.

edinburgher

Great comments from jamesd, but I have to pray that an intelligence agency isn't buying my laptop That, and I have nothing I'd want to hide from them (unless they're into current account fraud)!

Thanks Ed - yes exactly, it's all my dodgy MS @ffice I need to 'loose'

It should be easy enough to remove this from your laptop by going to 'Add/Remove Programs' in your Control Panel.

Shock horror revalation today as I started looking more seriously at remortgaging for next March. I had assumed that making an overpayment to take us from 85% LTV mortgages to 80% LTV mortgages would save money over the life of the mortgage.

Looking at the L&C best buys for today, it would cost us another £1400 to go down to 80% mortgages. As we can't save £1400 in 2 years, am I right in thinking that (over the life of an assumed 2 year fix), it doesn't make sense for us to OP until we can afford to go down to 75%?

I am confuzzled.

jamesd

Just be more creative. Unsecured borrowing lowers affordability but can be used to decrease LTV. How much can you spend on a 0% for purchases card or two in a year to eighteen months, leaving lots of remaining time after a remortgage to get on with reducing it and balance transferring?

You may not be able to save £1400 but you may much more easily be able to spend that and more if you're determined to put all possible normal spending on the card to accumulate a savings pot or increased equity. Do you do enough routine spending, or do you and your friends and co-workers, to get 10% or more on cards and 75% LTV by the time your deal ends? Look on it as a challenge.

nattypants

Thank you both Ed and James for your comments re laptops, this is really helpful.

edinburgher

Just be more creative. Unsecured borrowing lowers affordability but can be used to decrease LTV. How much can you spend on a 0% for purchases card or two in a year to eighteen months, leaving lots of remaining time after a remortgage to get on with reducing it and balance transferring?

So you mean between our remortgage (March 2014) and the one that comes after that? That's a pretty good idea for us actually, we don't spend masses but could manage c. 5% LTV a year on this basis. Thanks for an interesting idea to mull over, I think we have the discipline to make something like this work these days

jamesd

That one or the earlier one, whichever timing works for you. I know people who've gone and enlisted friends to accumulate balances.

To keep you honest just set up a savings account and pay the card money into it. Does the savings account balance equal the card balance or not? If not, something needs to be adjusted because the spending is not being done just for the accumulation.

misscousinitt

Hi Ed

Just caught up. Great news on the 'new' car.

Hope all is well otherwise.

MCI