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Chart: Where to Sell Your Used iPad

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:27:01 +0000

According to Mashable’s Christina Warren, people are selling their original iPads in droves to finance an upgrade to iPad 2. So if you’re hoping to do the same, you may be wondering which outlet will give you the best return on your original investment. Here’s a handy chart that looks at a number of your current options, and what you can expect to get paid using each. Click on the chart below to see a larger version.

These aren’t the only options out there, but they do give a general feel for what you can expect to pay. The resale value of other models compared to their original prices does vary a little bit, but generally speaking, the basic 16 GB model is a good barometer of the overall market.

For my part, if I don’t just keep my original iPad as a backup device, I think I might just sell it to a friend or family member for a little bit less than I’d get using any of the above methods. That way I can spread some Apple love while also recruiting yet another person to use collaborative apps or play multiplayer games with. If you’re upgrading, what are your plans for your first-generation device?

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How to Prepare a Used iPad for Sale

Josh Asch — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:02:51 +0000

With the nearly guaranteed iPad 2 announcement drawing near, there are going to be a lot of used first generation iPads soon going up for sale. The process to follow in order to sell your own used iPad is similar to what you do when you’re selling a used Mac, but is carried out differently.

Backup Your Content

If you’re planning on buying an iPad 2, you’ll probably want to save your apps, settings and other data from your current device. It’s extremely easy to do — just plug your iPad into your computer and let iTunes perform a sync. If you want to be doubly sure that the latest version of everything is definitely backed up, you can right-click the device in the iTunes sidebar and choose Back Up.

iTunes stores these backups forever, even if you restore the device and sync it again, so don’t worry about losing anything when you get a new device.

Deactivate Find My iPad

Once you’ve sold your iPad, it’s not your business where it is, and of course you shouldn’t be using the remote wipe feature from MobileMe’s Find My iPad service. It’s highly likely that your MobileMe account will be removed from the device when you perform a restore later on, but keeping your device list clean of things you no longer own is reason enough to deactivate it yourself in advance.

Tap the Settings app, then open the Mail, Contacts and Calendars section. Tap on the entry for your MobileMe account at the top of the list and a popup will appear with a few options. Hit the big red button labelled Delete Account to remove every trace of your MobileMe account from the iPad. You then won’t be able to log in to Find My iPad and see where the device is.

Destroy Everything

Once you’ve got a backup of everything stored on your computer, it’s time to reset your iPad back to how it was when you opened the box on day one. This takes no effort at all, but can be quite time consuming, especially if there’s a lot of content on your device.

In iTunes, click the name of your iPad in the sidebar, then click on the Summary tab if it’s not already open. Now click the Restore button. If iTunes asks if you want to restore from a backup, choose No, since you want everything wiped.

Let iTunes run through the restore process, then when it’s done your iPad will be just like new again. Just unplug your device when you finish instead of going through the new device setup process.

Reinstall iOS

Once you’ve done the restore, you may wish to use the Check for Update button to check that your device has the latest version of iOS installed. This saves the new owner of your iPad having to update it themselves, and ensures there are no software easily-fixed faults which they may pick inherit and blame on you. Since iTunes is pretty good at checking for updates, and it’s hard to miss news about a new iOS version, it’s unlikely that your device will need an update, but it’s good to check.

Give It a Cleaning

Your iPad’s new owner won’t be too pleased if they open the box to find a dirty device covered in fingerprints. Smudges on the iPad’s screen are inevitable, since it’s a touchscreen device, but you should wipe them off before giving your device away.

iPads come with a screen wiping cloth, so use that to clean the screen to start with. A trick I found is if you breathe close to the screen, the resulting condensation does wonders for smudges and smears. Don’t worry, a little condensation won’t hurt the iPad. If you lost your cloth, a glasses or computer monitor cleaning cloth also works well.

The back of an iPad is simple to clean; just use a damp cloth and gently wipe away the grime. Make sure to wring out the cloth well first, since the iPad contains liquid contact sensors, and you don’t want those to be activated. Plus it won’t do much good for your device to drip water into the dock connector or headphone jack.

Conclusion

Once you’ve done all of the above, your iPad is ready to be passed on to another user who will hopefully take good care of it. Did I miss any vital steps? Let me know in the comments.

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Why I Bought a Used MacBook Instead of a MacBook Air

Alex Layne — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:30:30 +0000

The new MacBook Air is guaranteed to be on many a Christmas list this year, and I’ve been dead set on getting one ever since it was announced. So how did I end up typing this on a four-year-old black MacBook that I bought on eBay?

Price

I won this MacBook on eBay for $330, minus shipping. The starting price for the MacBook Air is $1000. Like many potential Mac buyers, I’m a full-time college student. Buying the MacBook saved me $670 that I can spend on other stuff, like tuition, or food, which helps me remain alive.

Upgradability

One of the biggest complaints I hear about the new MacBook Air is that you can’t upgrade it yourself. The battery can’t be removed and you can’t upgrade the memory or flash storage after purchase.

I can do all of that on my used MacBook. I’ve already ordered a 1GB stick of RAM, and I’m looking at getting a 40GB Intel SSD. Currently, it has a whopping 150GB, 512MB of RAM, and a speedy 2 GHz Core Duo processor. Even if right now it’s not winning any speed races, when I put the extra RAM in and upgrade to an SSD, it should perform almost as well as a new MacBook Air.

And yes, those upgrades will drive the price up by about $100, but that’s far less than what I’d spend on an Air.

Need

I’m not a graphic designer, or a computer gamer, nor do I do any kind of video work. I’m a writer, and writing doesn’t take much in the way of resources. My entire documents folder on my main machine takes up about 30 MBs of space. I used to write on a substandard Dell with broken hinges, and I managed. It’s nice to have the latest tech, but it’s also worth taking a step back and evaluating whether it’s also necessary, given your usage habits.

What About the iPad?

I’ve been using my iPad to take notes in class for the last few weeks, and it’s been frustrating at times. I’m not fast enough on the virtual keyboard to take effective notes, and then it’s annoying to have to go back and correct all the typos I make. That said, I do love how light the iPad is and how easy it is to stow it away. But that doesn’t make up for its deficiencies. For all the good an iPad provides, it still doesn’t have the power or versatility of a Mac running OS X.

Conclusion

I won’t pretend I don’t still want the MacBook Air, or that I don’t drool over it when I pass by the Apple kiosk at Best Buy. But I’m also happy with my decision, since my Mac is doing exactly what I need it to do, and doing it well.

What do you think? Am I insane for using an older computer rather than getting the fastest and shiniest new thing? Or is choosing the right machine for your current habits a better policy than investing in the latest and greatest? Tell us in the comments.

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Gently Used iPod for Sale, Comes Complete With Military Secrets

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:00:21 +0000

It’s a good thing we’re on friendly terms with New Zealand, because one of the residents of that green, hilly island recently acquired 60 pages of sensitive U.S. military data. Total cost of national secrets? $15. Which would’ve been great if that’s what the man who bought it was in the market for, but he was actually just looking for a working MP3 player, which Ars Technica reports the used iPod was not. Data found on the iPod included the personal information of military personnel, and details about mission briefings and deployment.

The purchaser of the used iPod, Chris Ogle, has been looking through the information, and even tried calling some of the numbers listed. Some of the calls actually connected with the correct individuals, indicating that the information is not, in fact, out of date. He also says he’s made the U.S. Department of Defense aware of the mix-up, but has yet to receive any word back from them. Maybe they’re hoping that if they stay real quiet this will all go away.

This is a fairly sensational example, but the fact is that many people don’t think about making sure their personal data is really gone from their iPod before selling it or trading it on the secondhand market through sites like eBay, Kijiji, and craigslist. Your iPod, just like a computer hard drive, contains data that can be recovered unless you go out of your way to make sure it can’t. Proper data erasure is even more important now that the iPod Touch can retrieve and store emails and other sensitive information.

If you have an older iPod that still supports disk mode, then you’ll want to use Disk Utility to completely reformat the drive, and then Restore the iPod using the latest firmware available for that model. Check out this useful tutorial describing exactly how to do that in detail for more info. You can also do a secure erase from Disk Utility, but for any of this to work you have to enable Disk mode on the device.

If you have an iPod touch, you could just do a Restore, which will wipe all your data, but to be extra safe, you may want to try formatting the iPod a couple different ways. First, go to Settings > General > Reset and choose the “Erase All Content and Settings” option. Once you’ve done that, proceed with a normal Restore when you connect the device to your computer, but set it up as a new iPod, instead of restoring from a backup.

That may still leave bits of information on your device, so here’s another method to try that involves writing over sensitive info with filler material and then erasing again, as described by Macsimum News:

1. Change passwords for all mail accounts that are synced to the iPhone or touch.
2. Make sure the device can no longer open the mail accounts.
3. Do an erase/restore of the iPhone or iPod touch, preferably using another computer or at least another account than the one the device was synced with.
4. Sync as many songs/videos of a non-compromising nature and nothing else to the newly restored device as will fit.
5. A good tool I recommend using to fill the drive up with data (songs/videos), is PhoneView. You can directly access the disk on your iPhone to totally fill it up.
6. After you have filled the drive up, do another erase/restore.
7. Repeat steps 4/5 with different content and erase/restore again. The more times you do this, the more times the data will be overwritten, thus having a less chance of recovery.

There you go, now you can make sure that if there’s a leak of sensitive information about your country’s military, it won’t have come from you.

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