Change name of computer?

[LightWave]

My wife just got a used iMac. She would like to change the name of the computer. When you click on Finder in the left column under places, the computer has the name of the previous owner next to a picture of a house. How do I change this?

[Turboladdade]

Oh, that's not the name of the computer. That's the name of the person's account on the computer. You should create your own brand new account and delete the previous owner's account, which contains personal information, documents, passwords, etc...

Do this by going to the "Accounts" pane of System Preferences, creating a new account of type Administrator. Log out of the old account and into the new account, and it will be as if you just bought the computer. Go back to the "Accounts" pane of System Preferences and then delete the old user account.

A better alternative would be to complete erase the hard drive and install Mac OS X and all software fresh. This way there is no wasted space or rogue software.

[LightWave]

Isn't there a way to simply change the name that is already there?

[kriegvision]

You really aught to do the things mentioned above by Turboladdade. What you're looking at is the name of the account folder of the previous owner, which probably contains personal files, settings, music, videos, applications and other stuff you don't need or want.

The best way is to create a new administrator account and from that, delete the old one. Or reformat your computer and install everything fresh.

[chasm]

If you change the name of that folder, DISASTER will result.

Mac OS X Leopard finally (FINALLY!) has a safe way to do this from within Accounts in System Preferences, but DO NOT under any circumstances just "change the name of the folder" or you **will** lose data and pay a tech big bucks to fix things!