Need thoughts on OS X and selling old Mac on eBay

I'm selling my wife's dual G5 on eBay. Should I leave it at Factory fresh 10.3 or install 10.5, which I have a purchased Family Pack CD for, but can't ship with the G5?

For the PowerMac G5, I've reformatted (and secure deleted) the hard drive and reinstalled from the factory CDs. It's at OS X 10.3.4 with iLife 04(?).

I bought OS X 10.5 Family Pack for our Macs last year and plan to buy Snow Leopard at release.

I don't know if I should install 10.5 on the G5 for sale. In eBay, all Macs, even old G5 machines, have 10.5 installed. So I don't want to take a hit on sale price because I'm selling with only 10.3. But I can't provide install media if I sell with 10.5 installed, since I have a Family Pack CD, not a CD specific for the G5.

I considered installing 10.5 and promising to ship the Family Pack media in Sept when I've upgraded to 10.6. But, ignoring eBay and sellers' promises, if I buy 10.6 upgrade and later need to reinstall my system, will I be stuck if I no longer have a 10.5 disc to start from?

I'm 98% legit on my software use. (My wife is 102% legit, so on the whole, we're completely legit). I don't want to do "wrong" things to sell this G5. But I want to sell it and make some bucks and want to be pragmatic.


Past that: do I include iLife 08 and iWork 08? Or sell those separately? I'm not sure which maximizes profit.

Thoughts or suggestions?

(And if you'd like nice dual 1.8 GHz G5 tower, PM me. It's not on eBay just yet and I have a reasonable "buy now" price in mind. For an HTFer I can include legit iLife 08 and iWork 08.)

Whenever I have purchased a used computer the first thing I do is reinstall the OS from scratch regardless what the sellers says they have done to prepare the machine for sale.

So, if it came with 10.5 installed but didn't included the 10.5 media there would be no value in having 10.5 pre-installed to me.

Personally, I would leave it with 10.3.

-Keith

That's good to know. I don't know if typical buyers of used (esp. 5-yr old) systems are noobs who need to ready to go or savvy users, like yourself.

Dave, I personally find it borderline offensive when sellers sell a computer "with" software but no discs.  Of course, an OS is a much lesser issue.  It's usually something like "The software alone is worth the selling price" sort of crap.  What I would do is install 10.5, but include the 10.3 disc and state clearly that the 10.5 discs are not included.  That way you sort of get best of both worlds.  I also completely wipe (zero out, not just format) any drive or computer when I get it, new or used.

I've done a 7-pass secure delete on the hard drive, and it has OS X 10.3 fresh installed for now. We're not including any other software; this is not a "free Adobe CS pre-installed" deal.

My original listing text said just what you suggest, 10.5 installed but no media included. I'm starting to lean away from that. Any savvy Mac buyer would already have 10.5 media to install on their own, as Keith implies.

I could include iLife and iWork with media if it would help the sale. But I'm leaning away from including that software. I'll sell those separately, or give them to friends.

I've looked at other eBay ads with OS in mind, now. No one sells a Mac without 10.5. Many, however, do not provide the media (or say nothing about it).

I think I'll install 10.5, and clearly note that its media is not included. The original 10.3 "factory" DVDs are included. I'm not enthused about this but pragmatism to present a competitive, attractive ad is getting to me..

I'll also install iLife 06 and include the box w/media. (I don't think this will sell for anything so it at least gets it out of the house :))

Thanks all for comments. I used your inputs to guide how I crafted the ad. It's up and live; here's hoping for a high selling price!

The G5 PowerMac sold for a decent price. Not as much as I'd hoped for, but I attribute that to my very limited history and feedback with eBay.

I've got iLife 08 and iWork 08 for sale now: these are mostly to try and build feedback. I don't know if I'll actually make money on these. Mac users don't seem to buy used software.

Depends. There have been a handful of users at work in the last year that wanted a copy of Tiger to install on their older Macs that didn't meet Leopard's minimum system requirements. I think two of them turned to eBay and three of them got what they needed on Craigslist.

You're right. End of the auction brought surprisingly decent bids for the software.

DaveF:  How much if you dont mind me asking did it sell for?

I have a Powermac G5, DC 2.0 with 7 gig of ram, Leopard and 2 hard drives 160, 500 pristine condition.  I want to sell that and my mini to put towards a good used powerbook intel...Just not sure if its worth the hassle ya know...

Thanks,

Jonathon

I got about $300. Search eBay for completed auctions on systems similar to yours to get an estimate of selling prices. I think it depends on your eBay history. If you have a a lot of feedback, I think you get better prices. If, like me, you're new to eBay, prices are lower.