speaking of computers.....
we just found our ten year old Dell laptop and are about to donate it with the next charity pickup...not sure if they want old pc's though lol.
I'll have to wipe the hard drive first though, just in case there's personal data on there.
I wonder if 7 passes is enough.
We decided not to donate that old dell laptop...who would want it now after we removed the hard drive and drilled holes
through it

It wasn't worth much having such a small amount of RAM etc. These days I'm sure laptops come with at least 1 GB where that old dell had a ridiculously small amount.
Hi Sue,
Just as a suggestion for the future, if you ever want to donate a computer... an easy way to clean it up would be to save off anything you want to keep, then create a New User with a Generic Name. Log out of yours, and log in to the new one. Then delete any old User Accounts via Control Panel, which will remove the data in those accounts too, leaving only the new one. And Uninstall the printers, scanners, cameras, etc., and any programs you don't want to give away. Then install CCleaner (it's a free download - if you get the one w/o Tech Support).
It will clean up a lot of the mess that's left behind from uninstalling programs, to make it a little faster, and you can also have it perform a
Wipe Free Space that you can set to 1 or 7 sweeps in a pretty good format (the last option on page 1). I think you can set the Level of the Wipe, too. It also has a Registry Cleaner to help with the Clean Up. This will leave the computer usable with Windows installed, but fairly clean. It's great for a Free Program, for your application, and it also can lend other benefits to the present User. This way, you could do it yourself, and not have to worry about what some else saw or left behind.
Disconnect may be able to say if this would get enough of the personal files to be secure enough for you to feel comfortable about giving it away, but it would at least be a very good start.